Jango : gotothatsite.co.uk

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In just a few keywords I can explain what Jango is about: free, customized, social networking, internet, radio. Sound good? Read on and find out why I’m raving about Jango!

A few days ago a friend mentioned a song that I liked so I was in the mood to listen to it again. It was by chance that on my search I found Jango. I was somewhat taken aback when the song I was looking for started playing! Curious about the site I found myself on, I looked into it further.

Jango is first and foremost an internet radio station that you customize yourself based on artists and songs you enjoy listening to. There are a few ways to go about doing this, but personally I prefer to directly edit my station and add artists to my favourite list manually – this allows me to go straight into rating the songs. Speaking of which the rating is extremely simple with the option of banning a song so it never plays, liking it so it plays sometimes and loving it so it plays often.

It really gives you quite a lot of control over what ends up playing too. My setting is to play mostly artists and songs that I have chosen, however it has other options (found on the “my home” page) should you want more variety. The majority of songs played for me, for example, are ones I have stated an interest in – any others are from similar artists, chosen because other Jango users like that artist as well as some of the other artists from my station.

This is where the social networking comes in. I quickly found out that clicking on an individual song of an artist will start up a users station because they’re listening to it too. On Jango you can send auto thank you for the station, add the user as a friend, send a personal message, bookmark them (you can also bookmark artists and songs, all of which are available on your Jango home page), or send a quick shout that will show up in your player if sent from a Jango friend. You can also comment on a users profile or on an artist page. When you start up a station it also shows what songs people that share the same tastes as you are listening to should you want to tune in to theirs instead.

Other features include a Lyrics button (it opens a new page on metrolyrics.com), a Share option to email a link or paste in directly in an IM client to a friend, and a Buy button in case you like the song enough to get it from iTunes or Amazon.com. Perhaps the best feature of all is that the website states it is legal and pays royalties to the artists or labels that own the songs played.

A few things I don’t want to neglect to mention… You get the best experience if you register which requires an email address and a password, however, you can still listen to music as a visitor – if you’re willing to put up with the nag screen of course! I also want to point out that Jango is in beta so there are missing artists and songs, but they’re constantly adding more. They’ve made a great start so far though and have not just a growing music catalogue but also plenty of users too.

I haven’t been as excited about any “new” website in a while so I am pleased to tell others about Jango. If you like listening to music and social network sites then you can’t go wrong in my opinion.