03-10-2005

Tricks to Weed Through the 2005 SXSW MP3s

I downloaded the 2005 crop of MP3s from the SXSW music festival. Since the festival begins soon, I used an old WinAmp plugin called Winamp Intro Player Plugin to skip to the middle of tracks and listen to 25 seconds (or less) of each, while going about my usual business. I used a hotkey program called HoeKey to skip between tracks when I couldn’t stand the full 25 seconds of a song.

Based on the preview, I collected the 65 songs I thought were worth listening to again. Listening to such a short clip isn’t a foolproof method, but it did root out some good stuff. I’m still making my way through the full version of the songs, but I can recommend both The Ditty Bops and Bedouin Soundclash pretty highly.

In case anyone’s interested, I also made a winamp playlist of my (admittedly subjective) favorites. The playlist links directly to the files on the SXSW site, so you don’t have to download the tracks ahead of time, just queue the playlist and listen away.

While I’m on the subject, if anyone knows of a better Winamp plugin for playing snippits of tracks (ie, one that’s more up-to-date and easier to switch on and off), I’d be interested in it.

Posted by Matt in music | RSS 2.0

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