The itunes-like music browser feature at Magnatune (click "browser" from the home page) now uses a builti-in flash music player.
The upside to this change is that playing music is now completely contained in the window, much cleaner looking, and it's really quick to bounce between albums because I've found that very few people know about the smaller, more compact variants of the music browser.
I also added links to the "smaller/smallest" versions of the browser on all the variations of the music browser.
You can get to the Magnatune music browser by clicking "browse" on the magnatune home page or going to http://www.magnatune.com/browse/
My plan is for this music browser to be one of the main ways subscription-paying users of Magnatune will play music. It's compact, and feels like itunes, yet has all of Magnatune's music in it. And, when the subscription feature is available, it will be commercial free for this users, as well as using Flash's excellent internet-buffering, which is much better than mp3 streaming for avoiding Internet-bandwidth-caused stuttering. Of course, the music browser will continue to be available for free, with the commercial ("you just heard...") at the end of each song.
What about Mobile phones?
The downside to this change is that few flash-enabled mobile phones exist, so phones using these interfaces won't be able to listen to music.
That's not a big loss, because I don't know of any mobile phones that worked with Magnatune previous to this change.
While I thought .m3u files and thus mp3 streams, would work in mp3 enabled cell phones, the phones I've tested with (such as the Nokia N80) almost worked, but gave errors when they tried to play the m3u file.
I'm guessing that adding Flash support to mobile phones that have Internet access (And web browser) is a high priority for the phone makers, since so many sites use flash, so when they add that support, mobile phones will work with the Magnatune music browser.
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