Songbeat is a music application that makes searching for music and is downloading music to your computer simple. It was the first time released as a desktop app for Seeqpod in January 2008. This is the new and upgraded version, Introduced nearly 12 months after that.

It is mostly like Seeqpod and provides an easy way to obtain copyrighted material from the Web.

Up, down, and up again

Songbeat faced some hard times from the music industry. Warner Music first filed a lawsuit against the startup behind Songbeat and forced the company to take the service offline. However, Songbeat has come back with a revived version of the desktop client, renamed as Songbeat 360 .

The app

Songbeat 360 is an Adobe AIR powered desktop music player that comes with a powerful music search engine - unambiguously baptized Songbeat Search. When you search for songs or artists, it will return a list of 50 search results.  Double-click on the tracks to play them in an integrated player or right-click to download songs to your computer. You can also create custom playlists, just by dragging music tracks to the left hand column.

If you want to find out more about an artist, click on the “Discover” button and you’ll find every information about the artist from around the web. You can also find similar artists and similar music by their profile and albums. You can also find when the artists are playing live in an area nearby where you leave by clicking the “Live” button. It has got an integrated twitter button which will allow you to let your friends know what you’re listening to.

The cost

Songbeat has an unusual way of earning money from the service. When the application is launched for the first time, you’ll see 50 credits at the right top of the client. Every time you do a search for an artist or song, a credit comes off your inventory. When you scroll to the bottom of the list and find 50 more results, a credit goes off your account. When you’re left with no credits, you cannot search music using Songbeat Search. In such case, you can purchase additional credits at any time through Paypal, with a rate of €10 or roughly $15 for 1,000 credits. As

You do not have to pay anything for streaming music or downloading music, which is why people would love it.

The problem

There are no deals in place with record labels or artists to make sure the latter get adequate compensation for their work. Songbeat has tries as every trick in the book to prevent having to pay up for that. And

Like Seeqpod , Songbeat also hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by stating they are only search providers offering users access to music that is already available on the Web, and that the company never actually hosts any digital files on its own servers.

However, Songbeat 360 and Songbeat Search fully comply with the DMCA and all major copyright laws internationally.

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