The Web holds huge potential for music sharing and music discovery, but figuring out how to make that potential work — and how to navigate copyright and licensing laws in the process - has been a major challenge. This week, the creators of the website Mixaloo promised to “bring mix tapes into the digital age.” Whether you buy into that concept or not, or their particular implementation, the site does demonstrate both some of the opportunities and legal hurdles in Web sharing. They also inherit the closed model supported by labels (no full streams, previews only, DRM), but already that’s changing (MP3, and the promise, hopefully, of full-length tracks soon). It’s like a microcosm of the whole business at the moment.

Mixaloo.com

I spoke to the founders shortly before launch, and they described how their approach differs from the online radio model, which is constrained in part by the law:

There’s the streaming radio camp … you have a minimum of forty tracks, you can’t have the same artist twice in a row, and then you get into the whole mess of royalties. Then there’s the way we’re going — user-generated albums. And we like that because it’s personalized.”

The basic model:

• 10 or more tracks on the “mix tape”
• Mix your album from 3.5 million + tracks.
• Majors and indie music — the founders say they have “deals with all the major labels” but also “a ton of independent aggregators like CD Baby, The Orchard, and Iota
• Embed players and market mixes on Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc.
• Sell tracks via any of your players and earn a 50% commission
• For now, 30-second previews — but hopefully that will change? (more in a moment)

It’s been a while since I looked at widgets for music applications, but here’s a new one, and it might be enough to make me switch back to Dashboard from Konfabulator:

BigBlueLounge Dashboard Widget

The widget includes a keyboard with built-in sounds (though no MIDI sending, sadly), tap tempo, and three calculators. You can calculate how much hard disk space you’ll need for a session, convert time to number of samples (not that I’ve needed to do that, but okay), and calculate the speed of sound at different temperatures. (Incidentally, the speed of sound does not change at different altitudes in any noticeable amount, which I would explain were I not feeling lazy. I think it might be in my book somewhere. Anyway, the good news is, you can calculate temperature’s impact on sound so you can make that delay in the ice cave really, really realistic. Nifty.)

Free, so have fun! Any widgets we missed since our widget roundup?

BigBlueLounge is a forum for audio with a massive number of threads. And unlike CDM, they actually build their own widgets. Any feature requests for a CDM widget?

First vinyl, then 8-track, then tape, then CD, then MP3, now . . . Dashboard widget?

Yes, you heard that right. Sexohol is releasing its album Enjoy as a Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X. It’s free, and includes pictures of the lovely couple in the band plus lyrics. Only downside is you have to be connected to the Internet to listen to the music streaming. “But, Peter!”, you say, “I need to feel the hot loving of Enjoy even when I’m not connected to the Internet!” Sexohol hears you; US$9.99 buys you a Widget you can listen to anywhere. (Music without a live Internet connection? Who wouldathunkit?)

Sounds like the best way to enjoy this band is at their Bacchanalian performances, but if you can feel the love on your Dashboard, more power to you.

The press release is hilarious, so I’ve broken with normal CDM policy and posted it after the jump, along with a picture of bassist Logan for those of you who like young bass-playing boys (Shedonists, Gay/Bi Hedonists, etc.). Just promise you’ll pretend to act surprised when you find out this band is from L.A.

Ever wished you could see the Circle of Fifths (aka Circle of Fourths) displayed on your clock? Well, now you can. And you can even click individual keys to see key signatures, just in case y— hey, wait a minute! Speaking as a sometimes-theory teacher, are you telling me you haven’t learned your keys yet? What are you going to do when your handy Dashboard clock isn’t handy? You’re not going to know your key signature for C# major, that’s what. Or maybe this is a new way of telling time, like, I’ll see you at half past G-flat? I’m confused. Now go get your vaguely new age-looking key signature clock; if nothing else, you’ll look like the music nerd you are:

Circle Clock Beta1 Widget for OS X Tiger [Dashboard Lineup]

Overwhelmed as I am by the absurd number of widgets for Macs and Windows that whizzed through the site over the past days? Me, too. Here’s a look back to keep it all straight:

Part I: For Konfabulator — onetonnemusic roundup, drum pad/pattern machine; For Dashboard: Guitar Chords, Oblique Strategies, Symphonic for iTunes

Part II: For Dashboard — BPM Widget, Audio Calculator, Chord Reference, ittyBittyMidi MIDI monitor, Music Calculator, Create Annoying Bass Grooves

Part III: For Konfabulator – Guitar Tuner, Beat Meter, iSpeak text-to-speech, Scratchpad virtual turntable

Part IV: For Dashboard – CountBPM, Digidesign/M-Audio widget, Piano, SoundVolume, Krispy Kreme (because while you can make music without doughnuts, why would you want to?)

Part V: Last and least, Circle Clock, for those who can’t remember either their key signatures or to wear a watch

Addendum — managing Mac widgets: I’ve found several resources invaluable for keeping my widgets in order on the Mac. First, upgrade to 10.4.2 or later for Apple’s widget management tools. WidgetUpdate tracks your installed widgets for new versions, perfect for keeping ahead of bugs. Dashboard Widgets complements Apple’s site nicely. Don’t forget to download and purchase Amnesty to keep widgets visible at all times.

Fire up all these handy musical tools on your Dashboard (or Konfabulator), and keep them handy.

Final Score: The Mac wins handily — more widgets, even if you don’t count the ability to run both Dashboard and Konfabulator on the Mac. But with Konfabulator part of Yahoo, that could change in round 2. Either way, widgets are here to stay.

So, your appetite for musically-useful widgets to run on Dashboard (OS X Tiger only) and Konfabulator (Mac/Windows) still isn’t satisfied? Fear not: Adrian Anders writes in with four more, all for Konfabulator — so Windows users aren’t left out of the fun. (All these widgets are cross-platform.)

Guitar Tuner: Nice graphics and both standard and drop-D tuning (though no tuning meter — you’re on your own for that)

Beat Meter: Ugly as sin, but you can tap tempo or set a metronome marking

iSpeak: Text-to-speech conversion for when you’re in a Radiohead OK Computer mood.

Scratchpad: Looks like a turntable and makes scratching sounds! Nifty! So, uh, why is there a debate in comments about whether this was “useful”? Guess that’s a matter of opinion. I find my magic 8-ball useful.

See part I and part II of this report.

The musical widget madness continues. powermac99 from iCompositions points out his Dashboard Widgets site. Like Apple’s, it’s beautifully organized and easy to navigate — too bad Konfabulator’s site is overwhelming. (Maybe that’ll change with Yahoo.)

I’ve been hunting around that site finding still more widgets:

CountBPM is my favorite BPM counter yet: click or keyboard input tap tempo, and you can view lots of data to help you accurately guess the tempo.

Digidesign Widget lets you search both Digidesign and M-Audio.com for products and tech info.

Piano isn’t just a keyboard widget. It supports QuickTime synths, QWERTY and mouse input, configurable velocity, and lots more. Useful for plunking on the road.

SoundVolume is a volume widget, and it looks kinda like the faders on my Mackie.

KrispyKreme, while not strictly music-themed, keeps my blood-sugar level safe. Now if it could only tell me when the doughnuts are hot.

Maybe we should create a CDM widget after all. It can’t just search CDM, though: it needs to count BPM, tune your guitar, and check your record sales at the same time.

Be vewy vewy qwiet — I’m hunting Widgets.

Yes, widgets are all the rage these days. Between Apple’s Dashboard, included with Mac OS X Tiger, and Konfabulator, which just became free for Windows and Mac and has morphed into Yahoo! Widgets, nary a desktop shall be without little floating things. The idea isn’t entirely new — look back to the 1984 Mac’s Desk Accessory, or, well, to all the stuff that’s sitting on my real desk. But tools for easily creating your own widges are making these proliferate.

Anything useful for music? Well, yes and no. onetonnemusic has a roundup of music widgets for Konfabulator that are mostly on the side of silly. Funnel found three keyboard widgets (basically useless), and one kind of nifty drum pad/pattern machine. These should at least provide amusement and inspiration for something more practical.

On the OS X side, there are some semi-useful Dashboard widgets. Check out Guitar Chords, which displays fret positions for any chord you enter. (Nifty!) If you’re stuck in a creative rut, I’ve always been a fan of Oblique Strategies, a fabulous fortune cookie-esque set of admonitions to think outside of the box, developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. While it’s geared to music listening more than music making, I also like Symphonic, which lets you type in a song to have iTunes play it for you (especially useful for tuning in Net radio). I’ll pass on many other widgets, just because I don’t like to crowd my Dashboard.

But there have to be other options for Konfabulator — ahem, Yahoo! Widgets and Dashboard. Got favorite widgets? Designed any yourself? Send them here, and I’ll do a roundup; hit comments or drop me a line.

I asked for more truly useful music widgets, and did reader Justin Maxwell ever respond — a huge list of stuff here:

“>Audio Calculator BPM conversion <-> milliseconds (as observed here previously