大象传媒

seeq and you will find..?

• By Paul Crichton
• 9 Aug 07, 11:10 AM

So what is the best way to find music online?

Of all the things that don鈥檛 work on the web with screen reader software, I imagine audio sites must be amongst the most frustrating. There are those that do work, being a good example. But what if you just want to hear one specific track? Is this the best place to go, or would you rather take advantage of one of several music search engines?

As if to underline how old and old-fashioned I am, a few nights ago I was browsing Amazon looking to buy myself a CD. Yes, I still prefer a disc to downloading MP3鈥檚 online. I found one by a band called Fluke that looked like it might be interesting, but it had no samples. So I looked up the band using , a music search engine, and found a number of tracks in the results.

It鈥檚 really quite a cool beastie. You can search for a band or track. From the results, you select what you want to hear, and transfer it to the built-in player. More than that, you can build playlists of tracks that you find, play songs on a loop, shuffle your tunes, or watch videos where they are available. It is all done with Flash, and sadly, when I tried it with my screen reader all I got was the message, 鈥渦nnamed object.鈥� There was no chance of selecting a track and playing it, or ever registering with the website. How annoying is that when Flash can be accessible?

There are alternatives to seeqpod. , in its mission to index everything en route to world domination, also lets you search for music. But searching for Fluke with Google just produced for where to buy their albums, not listen to them.

may be a better bet. Like seeqpod, it鈥檚 more of a specialist music search engine than Google. It relies on JavaScript to play songs, and I did manage to make it work with my screen reader. It has a simple interface, with just a play button for each track. That this works with a screen reader is, I suspect, more by accident than design. You can鈥檛, for instance, register, as the path to do so is blocked by a visual verification image that is invisible to screen readers. And that is something you need to do if you want to build a playlist.

So the question remains. Where do you look for music online?

Are music search engines even needed, or do sites like Last FM make them redundant? Is the idea of me even buying a CD so very 20th century and alien to you? If you were gonna help Granddad Crichton pick himself a CD, what website would you suggest he check out?

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