Some websites die, progress for the worse, or benefit for recreation. Ideas get recycled, reinvented, abused, and improved. So it goes with web-based audio technology. If you need a replacement site or are just looking for new ways to listen to free music without trouble, then read on.

Albumbase is Dead

There once was a site called albumbase.com that pointed to complete albums uploaded on Rapidshare and other download sites. It has been down for some time, but more and more smaller communities are returning in their place.

Album Hunt is a similar service that offers full album archives to registered users. After signing up, searching is as simple as typing the album name or the artist. The only problem is the downloads no longer work after a while or if someone uploads a copyrighted album and it violates the hosting terms of service.

Musire is another free album downloads source, but it doesn’t require registration. Places like these thrive on confirming broken links and fresh uploads. The more users, the more chance of a growing selection.

Online Media

SeeqPod is an interactive search that functions like a web music player.
Features in-browser controls for instant listening, as well as playlist management to add, rearrange, and delete your queue of song files. This is not made for downloading, since it gives no option to save mp3s- only to sample them.

Radio.blog.club is a search tool that lets you preview each result (it actually lets you play the entire song) to the right of your search. When you are ready to share it or post it, copy the code to embed the mini flash player to your blog, email, or other internet destination.

Pandora

If pandora is giving you the same old recommendations with the same songs, try finetune which offers basically the same thing.

Happy musical adventures to you all! If you haven’t already, be sure to check my original 11 search engines for finding mp3s.

Since the beginning of January, Alexa Redirect links have been deprecated and no longer function. They work as a prevention to get to your site.

It used to be possible to inject your link with a forced redirect from alexa: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://liquidparallax.com would tell Alexa someone is going to my homepage. It was debated whether this would send info to your rank. In any case it could harm your Google Page Rank and make links inaccessible when the redirect is down or is broken, which has happened.

There is plenty of talk on how to increase your score. And along with it all is bad advice or misinformed instruction. Another myth: installing the website widget has no standing on your numbers unless one of your site visitors decides to use the toolbar as a result of being curios about your widget.

There is no way to increase your Alexa Rank beyond what your site is capable of performing. You can boost your site’s traffic rank for Alexa if you actually have traffic. A rank of 1 means you have the most traffic that has been monitored by Alexa (right now it’s Yahoo.com). Each number is a position, and you can’t get any higher without having Alexa users visit your site more often than those ahead of you. There are probably billions of domains out there, and it will only get harder to maintain low numbers as the internet expands. And if you just start getting involved you can get noticed by Alexa.

What to really do

1. Install Alexa status for your browser. A non-invasive solution would be to install firefox add-on SearchStatus, which takes up less space than a tab, and can rest in your status bar. For Internet Explorer or for Alexa’s very own browser display, download it from the source. This is the only way to contribute to Alexa’s traffic directly- by being a user.
2. Make sure visitors of your site are users of Alexa by following the above download.
3. Have quality pages; don’t just focus on your main page. Instead of having one page get a ton of hits, make all of your pages worthy of being popular. Unique pages count as part of your rank. So instead of Visitor A going your homepage, Visitor A could visit all of your pages, which would be more helpful with your rank. Refreshing pages does nothing, so don’t give your bandwidth a workout by having your readers boost your traffic hits. Visits are read on a daily basis, so there is a potential for 365 views by the same person of the same page. In addition to Page Views, Reach is counted as part of the formula for your rank. So your best bet is to have a wide audience instead of a few close friends go to your website.

These facts are all you need, and they are what count. Don’t believe anything else except what comes from the source.

A technical way of utilizing all this knowledge would be to set up an automated browser script to visit random pages of a domain within a day [Not that I want to do this for this purpose, but does anyone know of a freeware program that could easily cycle through pages within a domain]. Having multiple Alexa-persons using the script on your domain would yield good results on an emerging site or an unadvertised site. Better yet would be to have legitimate content and quality material that would bring repeated visits from actual readers.

The year is about through and I’d like to scan through the past of liquidparallax.com. I’m usually the person who scolds other site for doing “This Month’s Best Posts Roundup,” but this is slightly different. In over a year of doing this blog, I’ve never put myself in an egocentric position and said “Internet users can’t get enough of me. Instead of being more useful I’ll just repeat myself.” Au contraire my friends. It is my hope that you do not have to suffer through recycled material. Nobody cares for used underwear, and that’s where I don’t come in… There does come a time, though, when things get overlooked especially when I first started this site and nobody really saw it. I’m not a fan of number crunching accounting type stuff, so I like to keep non-fun math out of things. That’s why I’ll skim through some of the pages that get a lot of traffic without getting statistical, and I’ll jump into some pages that haven’t received any recognition and give some background to my madness.

Most Popular

Arbitrarily choosing the first 6 with the most hits this month.
/2007/07/11/ultimate-list-of-free-legal-mp3-music-downloads/
This is my most popular page, offering a treasure trove of days of music listening, with hours spent on finding something for everybody. I still update this, but tend to add good finds in new separate posts. This should be your first stop if you want to expand your collection without googling through useless garbage.

/2007/04/12/ten-best-places-to-search-free-music/
Oddly enough, this lists 11 search engines or searchable music-file-crawling sites. The better ones are listed at the bottom, and a few that I already knew of but forgot have been posted in comments. G2P, for example is a pretty good choice similar to my #10 selection. I made this because my old favorite music search engine died.

/2006/12/11/347-exercises-you-can-do-without-equipment/
OK, so it’s a little over a year since this came to be, but this is a lifespan recap. I’m glad people are searching for this and finding it. People are not always lazy! If you have a room that won’t fit sports equipment or exercise machines, or you just don’t want to pay a gym to use sweaty equipment- Try a few of these exercises. I try to do these on occasion. Since then, I’ve got an exercise ball that is both good for light to moderate exercise and strengthens core muscles for those with back problems. I wrote this to consolidate exercises I knew of. I knew if I didn’t do this, I’d forget to. And I needed some self-inspiration to stay active more often.

/2006/11/26/threadless-clothing/
A short and pointless post expressing my liking for the designs made for some of these shirts. It beats me why of all pages this had to be popular. Blame Google for making this rank the 5th domain spot on a search for “threadless clothing.”

/2006/10/16/how-to-get-rid-of-acne-forever/
A guide of advice for acne sufferers of all ages. Just clean your face at least once a day (preferable twice a day), apply Benzoyl Peroxide to affected or potentially affected areas and leave it on to dry. Then apply acne-safe (not pore clogging) lotion to keep skin in shape. When I was younger, I did a bunch of research on treatments, and this came on top.

/2007/06/09/windows-itunes-scripts-downloads/
The XP/2000/Vista version of Applescripts. Basic, but effective javascript-based tools to create playlists, adjust data that would otherwise be impossible without hacking iTunes. Makes iTunes do a few more things. I created this post as a test to explore scripting that I wasn’t familiar with; Plus I use iTunes.

Personal Faves:

Seven more that didn’t make the list that I find are just as enjoyable, if not as helpful to me.

/2007/10/19/mp3tag-actions-empower-your-digital-collection/
This one is getting popular, but doesn’t make a top spot. A handful of great mini-tools for keeping music tags in line. Works for iTunes or any other player that’ll read id3 or tags from mp4 or any other filetype. I use these for my own use often and figured they would benefit others.

2007/12/09/funny-answering-machine-voice-messages/
If you’re a jokester like me, you like fooling people or pulling a leg or two. Humor is medicine for the frowney clowney. It’s the next best thing next to exercising. Use my recordings, or develop your own hilarious greetings on your telephone machine. Also includes the funniest prank call ever. This one was a quick idea I had when recording a personal message for my cellphone. Maybe others will contribute their creations.

/2007/07/16/how-to-manage-your-digital-music-library/
The full 5 step solution for starting a collection of mp3s or lossless whatevers. Doing a little research will fine-tune a perfect collection. Find out where to listen to samples, get recommendations, and figure out most favored albums or popular songs. Even get tips on how to shop wisely, use amazon to sort buried deals, split secret tracks, tweak volume levels, powertagging options, and final personalization.

/2007/02/13/the-most-memorable-voices/
Voices are awesome. They have a vocal quality about them as well as a musical one. Unique voices are common, but a few stand out. This list is a good one, with audio clips or video for most of the contestants. I took a while to remember some of the people’s names here, but I got it done.

/2007/10/27/easy-batch-download-for-mp3s-betterpropaganda/
A compiled list of mainly indie (but recognizable) mp3s from betterpropaganda.com and it is only available here in this quick and simple format. Be sure to visit betterPropaganda to check out legel downloads that get updated about once every week.

/2006/12/08/itune-up-free-itunes-fixes-and-tools/
Freeware addons and complimentary programs that strenthen iTunes. Many people dislike iTunes (it seems like the most popular music player though) and these fixes might bring haters back. I’m not an Apple fanboy, but iTunes does the most of what I want while other players lack minor features that outdo the benefits.

2007/04/14/listen-to-25-million-tracks-students-only/
This is not popular, but it should be. You can listen to a million songs, but they are DRMed (wmv). You can unDRM them yourself risking violating the Terms, but even having a huge library to listen to on WMP or the Ruckus Player anytime you want is fantastic. The catalog is extensive going back to blues and oldies like the eMusic catalog, but also includes big, BIG name artists. Think of all the iTunes artists, that’s close to what Ruckus has.

The U.S. has laws and the laws enforce and prohibit certain activities and protect certain rights. It gets tricky, even if you are a lawyer because some instances and cases have not been settled in court or defined explicitly in an Act or law.

For instance, did you know that each recording device sold requires the company to pay a royalty fee to the Copyright Office four times a year per item? Yes. The Audio Home Recording Act mandates royalties and does “other stuff.” The issue here though is infringement, meaning you are violating copyright by copying digital audio in certain cases. XM got in trouble for “distributing” music with XM+MP3 devices. The problem was that they did not have a license to produce permanent copies of mp3s from XM songs.

Along the same lines is the VCR: Are they illegal then? No. No recording device is really illegal unless you are a company selling it without the right license. As a consumer of the product, you can’t get arrested for owning a cassette recorder. The key issue to remember is that fair use entitles you to limited rights to handle copyrighted material. You can’t do just anything even if the purpose is private and non-commercial. Depending on the nature of the item and your intentions, your mileage will vary. Fair use is not strongly defined and stretching it may get you in trouble. That’s why Creative Commons was set up to enhance rights and clearly allow specific activities.

What you can legally do is postpone your listening experience if you TiVo your primetime TV show, or record it on your VCR, or make a cassette of your favorite local radio show for later viewing. What you aren’t supposed to do is keep an archive of the material as part of a permanent library. If you intend to keep a permanent recording of it, you are technically breaking the law. Copyfutures has an excellent explanation of the legalities of copyrighted recording:

It might be OK to record the Internet broadcast of a favorite opera, so you can listen to it next week. But once the fat lady sings, you’re legally obliged to press the delete button. How can the music industry possibly enforce this law? The difference between recording Internet radio and recording and sharing MP3’s is that the former is done in the privacy of your own home, and no one needs to know what or how much music you’re recording.

If this is new to you, all the sudden ripping streaming online radio is not the legal alternative to P2P software. Easier? Yes. Safer? Probably. But it still isn’t legitimate in the eyes of the government (there is still legal haze as to how long you can legally acquire a temporary version). If you are looking to get free music without getting caught, this is your best option. If you wanting to legitimize your collection, just pick up the CDs or look for mp3s stores without DRM.

In comes Grandpaboy and Paul Westerberg doing the old one-two. Unless you’ve heard of Westerberg or know of the Replacements, you may be oblivious to the underrated CDs known as Mono and Stereo. It was my first ever purchase from the Paul catalog. It’s been one of my favorite discs and certainly one of the best multi-disc sets to ever grace the world. Think of this as an updated Basement Tapes without the overdubs that hinder its rawness.

There is plenty of praise of the album, and I’m here confirming the unheard goodness. Talk about cohesion. Mono is a rocker borrowing all that is good from the Stones. Nevermind the demo sound. Some call it lo-fi, but I call it phenomenal. The guitar work is very “mono,” or tonic, or drone-like singularity (not in a Middle-Eastern way). In any way, it comes off as brilliance while retaining mostly elementary guitar work, with smokin’ bluesy rhythms that keep everything in line.

Stereo is just as good. This one’s a lay-back-and-chill recording that fits any occasion. Feeling lowdown and ready to rue the day–this is your album. Is everything going just right–Stereo is at your service to consolidate everything. I find that this one is touched with melancholy, but it can look at itself without falling into clinical depression. Deep songs that capture a healthy dose of sorrow in which you feel the intensity. What makes this different from an “emo” album is honest reflection, and bittersweet lyrics that bring unspoken hope and joy.

I know it’s kinda low, but to me it’s high time.

This line is from Mono and it only gets better. I’ll save the lines of masterpiece for your listening experience or you can comment with your favorites by posting them below.

Like all of the Westerberg catalog, this stands out and there is something to be had by anyone who engulfs its presence. This one is a forgotten treasure and not a bad album to introduce yourself to. It warrants repeated listens. It has that golden irresistibility.

Chances are that you have a voicemail. A landline or a cellphone usually comes standard with the option for a personal greeting. Below are some original and humorous recordings of voice messages for your mobile or immobile phone. There are plenty of other funny ideas, but we’ve seen them or heard them before. For instance, the “Hello” and pause effect- the prank is more amusing for the listener because you don’t get to hear them throughout their confusion until after the beep. A rarer one was a philosophical answering machine that I found rather witty:

If a telephone rings in an empty room and no one is there to answer it, was there really a phone call? Help me investigate this phenomenon by leaving your name and number after the tone.

Other jokes and witty lines can be recorded for your callers that may bewilder a silence after the tone, or you might get to hear laughs that started before the beep, or you might throw someone off into the old routine of “What?…Hello?…Are you–Is this?…Am I leaving a message?” But you want fresh ideas. You can borrow mine to entertain your callers. Let me know their reactions.

Here are a few originals that I have made:

operators-are-busy.mp3
This one sounds like you are a corporation that has several operators who are busy with a large volume of calls. Includes elevator muzak and sound effects.

Welcome. Due to a large volume of calls, all of our operators are busy. Please hold for the next available operator. (Music)
Our operators are still busy. Please stay on the line while your call is being transferred to the Voice recording database. (connection)
For your safety, this message will be recorded.

phonomercial.mp3
Infomercial that sells your messages in a rushed and enthusiastic manner. Borrowed the “complicated payment” from Mitch Hedburg.

Are you ready to talk to the answering machine? Now you can with MY voice message. It listens, records, and even has a beep! Unlike other voicemails, every word is heard. This is a huge value, all for just 2 easy payments and one complicated payment. If you leave a message within the next 10 seconds, I will return your call free of charge. This offer is not available in stores, so leave a message now.

you-are-calling-now-jane-barbe-mash.mp3
Self-evident Jane Barbe (not a real recording, her real voice mashup) makes sure that you know…

You are calling now. Please make a note of it. You may stay on the line.

calling-number-and-deposit-jane-bar.mp3
Captain Obvious Mashup Vol. 2, with greedy ending.

Please dial the number you are calling. You are calling the number you have dialed. I’m sorry, you have 40 cents. Please deposit more money.

intense-instructions-jane-barbe-mas.mp3
This is not a simple phone call.

Please hang up, and check the number, and dial again, and your card number, and check the number again, and ask information operator for assistance for fifteen minutes, and deposit 40 cents.

Unrecorded Messages:

I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is in working order. If you were expecting an error, please hang up and try another number.

This is an audio test. Please listen carefully. Raise your hand when you hear the tone and state which ear it comes from.

Elsewhere

I’ve been fond of Jane Barbe’s voice since it is familiar to anyone who has experienced a telephone problem. The mashups came from actual recordings.

Two other parodies of telephone messages have been made from the telephone company by Ghtrout.

You Must Dial (Binary confusion, 1 + 0 + 1)

I’m Sorry, We’re Sorry (They are all very sorry). Reminds me of Brion Gysin (Try track 3, 4, and 5).

And lastly a terribly funny telemarketing prank:

Thanks Tom Mabe!

Last.fm serves up free mp3s, and I’ve said so before on other pages. When it first came out there was no search feature and you only knew if you landed on their page or crafted a special heavy google search with advanced operators. Ashlee Simpson’s album was up for a week a long time ago. Since then, they have a free download section featuring popular tracks of the week with subsections for popular tags. The downside is you can’t search tags other than ones listed, and there is no telling which bands offer downloads. Of the current listing, there’s only a small handful that I recognize and smaller of what I’m interested in. I can’t sort free R&B tracks because the tag doesn’t exist. I can’t sort by a decade tag like “90s” or unpopular “Ragtime.” Nor can I get my fix of bebop or freejazz without going to every artist hoping their page shows the FREE button.

I am personally grateful for group efforts for the good of all… or individual hard or tedious work like this fantasmo user-generated list of bands and albums split up into genres. This fixes some functions lacking in the limited weekly display provided by last.fm. Thanks to meyde and I’m here passing on the effort to you all.

Before I get criticized for using the word hallucination, I’d like to point out that illusion and hallucination are different, but they share a bit in common. The first (illusion) meaning you perceive something the wrong way, and the latter meaning you have a vision of something without any sightly cause to promote it (a green ghost from a blank white wall). I’ll also point out that a hallucination will probably have some visual stimulus that may influence what exactly you hallucinate. Even when eyes are closed they still perceive darkness. If outside on a sunny day with your eyes shut, you can still see light reflecting on your eyelids, making a lesser darkness than eyes closed in the dark. It is my opinion that illusions are subtle differences that come from undecipherable stimuli, and more imaginative illusions are deemed hallucinations in the presence of more subtle things or atmosphere.

Foreword: None of these require 3D glasses (the Red/Blue shades for Anaglyph images)

Begin the Tripping

Autostereograms are the common single picture optical illusions where you start close up and cross-eyed and move back and start to see depth. A name often associated with this is “Magic Eye” although they don’t own this technique. Wikipedia has a nifty animated autostereogram that you need to try. The canvas moves as well as the 3-D image. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I was able to capture the illusion in under 10 seconds. If you are having trouble, give the still picture a try. If you are struggling, take a break so you don’t hurt your eyes or get a headache.

The next eye-bender was common in older times with the use of a stereoscope, but is possible with the naked eye. It’s 3D-inverted Stereoscopic vision that takes two separate images that are positioned horizontally. It helps to have some guiding points and to position yourself a little further than normal viewing distance (over 12 inches from the screen). Focus your gaze on a finger about halfway between your line of sight and the image. Slowly shift your finger forward and backwards to align your viewing angle. Some instructions and examples can be found here, but the lesson might be a bit confusing and hard to master. Expect to waste over 10 minutes at the least trying to figure this out. The images don’t pop right at you but they create a single image from the two, and the outer images are a peripheral blur. A nice vivid stereo pair of Lake Palanskoye might be a good combo to start with… (Short directions below picture as well)

Use your finger to look at just below the white dots until the 4 dots start merging into three. Once the center dot becomes sharper try to focus on the surrounding center picture. Very slowly, try to remove your finger. Sometimes you will lose concentration and have to retry, but try to recall your position of your finger and eye distance. This stereoscopy pair is definitely noticeable once you have it with the pinkish brown heights that really pop.

For the same principle, but in motion picture, try this. Try it fullscreen and scoot back a bit more than you did before.

Besides the crosseyed 3D view, there is its opposite, the parallel view which fixates beyond the image instead of crossing over. At least for me, it is a ton easier once you learn the cross-eyed method. It’s similar to autostereograms in that you start close up, but you are trying to look past the actual depth. It then becomes like the inverted stereoscopy as you join the middle image of the three as shown here. It works better without glasses if possible.

Once you’ve mastered the Three-dimensional house in the previous link, try to do so with the normal stereoscopic video. It probably won’t work full screen unless you resort to look cross-eye (hence the wrong eyes see frames the other eyes should be seeing).

Here’s a somewhat lo-fi and strange performance that should be easy enough.

This a bit more active with fast moving cars, but some of the special effects make it harder to stay focused.

This last video is probably the best of the parallel stereogram I could find.