Pandora launched an Adobe AIR powered desktop version of their web application yesterday. As with the web version, this version only works for visitors from the United States (as you can see in the message below). The new application is nearly the same as their web based version - with the main advantage being you can click on a desktop icon to launch the app, rather than having to start your browser. Right clicking on the desktop icon will also give you a menu of options, allowing you to pause the music or switch stations easily.

TechCrunch doesn't give it a glowing review, saying

Unfortunately, the AIR version of Pandora doesn’t do much to actually improve the user experience. See that screenshot above? You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a screenshot of the regular Pandora homepage. It’s actually a screenshot of the AIR application itself. ...

If Pandora is going to make this work, it’ll need to find a way around the advertising conundrum. But even if it does, it won’t be the only one. I imagine that lots of web services will have to wrestle with how to provide maximum functionality through AIR without sacrificing too much ad revenue. The problem is only exacerbated with a service like Pandora that’s so simple to operate.

I totally agree. The problem here is Pandora's revenue model, which is advertising based. That constraint doesn't allow them to provide the functionality that users want - namely to minimize the player in the corner of the screen, like you can do with iTunes. They either need to think of other ways to advertise in the application (text ads in the menu you get from the dock icon?), or come up with a paid subscription model. Personally, I think the latter is the way to go, but there have been very few companies that make it work. The user experience has to be so good that people are willing to pay extra for it - so far that's been a tough sell for rich Internet applications.

Ryan Stewart has some more information as well, as does Download Squad.

TechCrunch posted yesterday about Grooveshark, a Flex based online music search engine and player. The online player allows you to easily search for music by title, artist or album, and has most (if not all) of my favourite bands on it (your mileage may vary, obviously).

Like many of the commenters at TechCrunch, I really don't understand how this is legal. The site does allow users to purchase the songs in the library DRM free. Users can also upload and share their music with their friends, and if a friend purchases a song that you uploaded, you'll get a cut of the sale.

Regardless of the legal issue, the application is really well done, with a simple UI that works really well.

This would work really well as an AIR application.

Synchronicity Live is a super cool web and desktop application that allows bands to record and stream live performances. The web application is written in Flex, while the desktop portion uses the freely available Adobe Flash Media Encoder application. Bands can sign up and then stream live concerts to fans, and record them to be viewed at a later date. Fans of bands can watch live streams of their favourite bands, or recorded versions of previous concerts.

The concert pages show information about the band, fans who attended the event, statistics on the show recording, and an online chat. The developers have implemented deep linking into the site, so you can easily link directly to bands or concerts, even though its a Flex application.

For those of you interested in the technical details, the company has a detailed page up on how bands can publish their concerts.

Take a look at SyncLive. Its definitely one of the top Flex sites I've seen - the custom skins hide the Flex components well, the combination of desktop software and web software is innovative, and technically the deep linking support makes the site easy to use.

Seeqpod is a Flex based application that allows people to search for music and then play that music right in their browser. The initial webpage is done with a combination of Flash and HTML, but the playlist applications are created with a Flex application. They are on TechCrunch this morning in a story about the legality of searching for and playing music.

The site is built with Flex, so they can also integrate music videos into the application easily. Each search result has a corresponding TV icon next to it, and you can load up the video for that song and play it on the right hand side of the application. If you're only interested in the audio portion, there's an Audio Player tab that allows you create your own custom playlists and queue music for playing.

This is the first time I've heard of Seeqpod, but its definitely one that I'm going to watch closely over the next little while. If you want to track what they're doing, you can check out their blog.

TechCrunch is running an article on an online music application called Ezmo that is written with Adobe Flex. Unfortunately, I'm at Adobe MAX in Barcelona this week, so I don't have time to write a lengthy post about it, but hopefully I'll have some time next week. In the meantime, check it out. Its a really nice looking app. It will be great to have this as an AIR application.

Anywhere.fm is a Flex based music application that allows you to easily share your music collection with friends and people from all over the world. Once you've uploaded your music to their servers, you can connect to it from any web browser, and share the music easily with others. You get a personal URL for your music, and can easily invite friends, and listen to or share music with them. Think of it as Facebook with a music player.

In fact, there is a Facebook group for Anywhere.fm that you can join - there are over 700 members currently in the group (which is more than the official Flex facebook group).

The Anywhere.fm team is based in San Francisco. The company was founded by MIT and uPenn grads who've worked for some big companies: Amazon, Microsoft and XBox. The company is funded by YCombinator.

After you've installed Apollo, the first application that you should install is the Finetune Desktop, available from the Adobe Apollo Showcase page. Finetune is a social music application that is miles ahead of Pandora. I've had it running all morning, and the music that its suggested so far has been great, similar to the experience I've had with Pandora. However, Finetune Desktop shines because it will also read in my iTunes library, and provide links to playlists for those artists.

Finetune uses Flash Media Server for streaming music, and PHP as the backend for the server. The application makes a series of REST calls back to the server, which returns XML that is read by the client application. This architecture allows them to create versions for the web, desktop (using Apollo) and even the Nintendo Wii (Flash is everywhere!).

Ryan Stewart has more information about Finetune. This is definitely one of the early Apollo applications that you should check out.