I recently beta-tested Goombah, a music discovery program, and for my brief efforts I was awarded a $10 gift certificate for the iTunes Music Store. Even though I have a playlist set up for songs that I want to buy, I didn’t really feel like buying anything off that list. It’s made up of songs that I know, but I was kind of looking for new music. Alice picked a couple of songs (“Hash Pipe” and “Buddy Holly” by Weezer, and “Heaven Is A Halfpipe” by OPM) and I picked a couple that I already knew (“And If Venice Is Sinking” by Spirit Of The West, and “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer). I couldn’t think of anything else to buy…
…so I went to my favourite music discovery service, last.fm. It said that the kids are listening to Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab For Cutie, and The Postal Service, so I went to the iTMS and downloaded the top tracks from them — “Take Me Out”, “Soul Meets Body”, and “Such Great Heights”, respectively. I didn’t realize that I’d already heard “Such Great Heights” before, but it’ll always be the Kaiser Permanente “Thrive” song to me. And “Take Me Out” really sounds like The Who‘s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at the beginning, which I’m sure has been said many times before.
I feel so hip and with it now. Now if only someone would give me a gift certificate for bleep…
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#1 by Geof F. Morris on March 16th, 2006
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I used Goombah for a while and found that I didn’t like it much. Of course, I was using it on Windows boxen [this is prior to me buying either Mac that I have]. That could explain my bad experience.
#2 by Brad on March 16th, 2006
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I was fairly underwhelmed. It was slow and the user interface wasn’t all that. I much prefer Pandora for that sort of thing, even if it is a web app.
#3 by Allen on March 23rd, 2006
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Hi There,
I also was invited to beta test the new Goombah, which I did… I also filled out the survey form and they have still not sent me my $10 iTMS card… do you know of any way I can contact them other than their web forum? How did they send you the gift card?
Please let me know. Thanks.
#4 by Gary Robinson on April 13th, 2006
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Hi, I tried to find an email addr for you but didn’t see one on the site. I’m a founder of the company that makes Goombah. I’d like some more feedback from you. Two things I’ll mention here — we’re well aware of slowness issues during this beta period and we’re working hard on them. I’d like to know which performance issue bothered you the most to help us set priorities. Also, if you were getting recommendations for artists you knew, did you a) check Hide My Artists, and b) try setting Adventurousness higher?
To Geof: if you used it a while ago, Goombah is a completely different app now. Sort of like the dif between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.