14 DAY TRIAL // FoxyTunes, the music-focused add-on for Firefox, has been adding a great number of features since it was acquired by Yahoo in early 2008. What started out as a way of controlling your media player inside the browser has grown into a full-blown music search and discovery service. The latest version adds another dimension to the music listening, allowing users to share the songs they listen to over a variety of services including Twitter and Last.fm.
“A little over two years ago we embarked on a project called TwittyTunes. This addition to FoxyTunes was an experiment in letting people share what they listen to by posting to Twitter,” the announcement on the FoxyTunes blog reads. “Today we’re excited to announce that TwittyTunes is officially a default feature within FoxyTunes! [...] FoxyTunes is still the easiest way to share what you’re listening to. With one click you can let your friends on multiple social networks know what you’re listening to.”
The new feature, which started out as TwittyTunes, allows users to spread the word on what music they like through social networks Facebook and Twitter, instant messengers Skype and Yahoo's own Messenger, Last.fm and finally on Yahoo Status. Sharing a song is pretty straightforward. FoxyTunes now sports a new “TwittyTunes” button that brings up a small window to select the message users want to send and where to share it. There are a number of preset messages but users can also write their own custom ones. From then on, they can select the services they want to share their message through from the five currently available ones.
For Twitter and Facebook this means posting the message in the users’ stream and for the IMs it means a custom status message. The most interesting application though is the Last.fm integration, as the new functionality could really revolutionize the way most users share their music on the music discovery site. They can now share their listening habits even if they use a player that doesn't have Last.fm integration, though most of those supported by FoxyTunes also have some sort of Last.fm plugin available. But, even more interestingly, they can now upload data from the songs they listen to online on YouTube, Pandora and the variety of online services that the Firefox add-on supports, making solutions like these obsolete.
FoxyTunes for Mozilla Firefox is available for download here.