SingingFish Alternatives: Where to Find Music

With the recent demise of SingingFish, many people have been commenting on what other sites are out there for them to find music. A former employee of SingingFish even commented briefly on the situation.

Below is a list I will be updating with music search alternatives (even the UK AOL audio search that still works just like SingingFish). It will be sorted alphabetically. Feel free to leave a comment if you know of a site not on the list or if you would like to add information to my description of a site. I will keep updating this post as I hear of other sites.

AOL’s Audio Search - Seems to be built from SingingFish technology, with less information displayed. It shows you what quality a file is: Low, Medium, or High. It doesn’t let you refine by file-type, doesn’t display the file-type in search results, and it doesn’t show the size of the file (only the duration/time). Also doesn’t show the bitrate.

AOL Search UK - Audio - AOL Search UK was sold by AOL, and therefore their Audio Search is using the SingingFish technology with all its bells and whistles. They changed the look of the site, but they still had advanced search to filter by file-type. Search results display the bitrate and file-type. How long this will remain operational is anyone’s guess. (via Steve in the comments) (April 12 Update: Advanced search is now gone)

Dogpile Audio Search - Shows you file type, size, and playtime. Many results show as having been found on SingingFish, so this could hurt the site’s results with SingingFish’s demise unless they still have access to the licensed version.

eSpew - Finds lots of music, but only searches for mp3s. It displays file size in search results, and you can use their advanced search to filter your search by a minimum or maximum file size. Also doesn’t show the bitrate, or much valuable information other than what was already mentioned. (Via Katerine in the comments)

Internet Archive: Audio Archive - Collection of audio recordings. Ranges from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry recordings, to original music contributed by users. You won’t find many popular songs here, but you will find remixes and great user-contributed content.

IMEEM

Multiply

Project Playlist - Offers a music search engine. You can add songs you find to a playlist and then play them in that pre-determined order. Very interesting idea, but no information on the files in search results.

Webjay

Singing Fish Is No More, Kind Of

A reader in the comments notes that Singing Fish is gone. This indeed appears to be the case when looking at the domain. SingingFish.com is now being redirected to video.aol.com. This is a loss of a great site that I only recently started using, but you can still get some audio results in AOL Audio Search. You no longer get the ability to tweak the results to the file formats you are looking for, and they no longer display the bitrates of the files. Also, in many cases the results are for files you must buy. SingingFish.com returned links to freely available audio and video files, however legal they may have been.

There no longer seems to be anything on the current AOL site with the complete features of SingingFish. A lot of what they now display is for paid content, especially on AOL Video, and SingingFish didn’t really lend itself to being monetized. The redirection of SingingFish.com to video.aol.com leaves many people not knowing about AOL’s Audio Search. In reading some web buzz some people who used SingingFish didn’t even know it was owned by AOL and they think AOL just bought them. AOL has owned them since 2003. It had a good run, and it will be sorely missed.

Update: FLX in the comments writes that AOL has only redirected the main page of SingingFish and not the sub-directories. I could have sworn I tested this but I guess I didn’t, or I didn’t test the right thing. You can still access SingingFish for the time-being at http://singingfish.com/sfw/home.jsp.

Update 2: They appear to be redirecting the workaround. This may signal the definitive end for SingingFish, unless someone finds another method that works.

Singing Fish is Amazing: Finds MP3s

Singing Fish is a company that AOL bought in 2003. The service lets you search for audio and video online. You can even specify what type of media to search, such as only mp3s. I never tried the site before now, but thanks to a comment on Nathan’s site I plan to use it as much as possible.

It’s great for finding those obscure songs, like the Royksopp song in the Geico commercial I posted about a few days ago. And of course it can find popular music. I was surprised to find a lot of Metallica songs given their track record of helping to shut down Napster.

Update: I thought SingingFish was gone, but FLX in the comments writes that AOL has only redirected the main page of SingingFish and not the sub-directories. You can still access SingingFish for the time-being at http://singingfish.com/sfw/home.jsp. Hopefully it stays up a while, but I will be on the lookout for an alternative to push on this site.

Update 2: They appear to be redirecting the workaround. This may signal the definitive end for SingingFish, unless someone finds another method that works. There are also some interesting posts in the comments that offer up alternatives.

Update 3: I have searched for alternatives to SingingFish and you can find the evolving list here.