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This article was published on May 29, 2010

ExtensionFM turns Chrome into your personal music library.


ExtensionFM turns Chrome into your personal music library.

I don’t need any more reasons to love Google’s Chrome browser, but I certainly won’t disregard anything that might make my affair with it more passionate.

ExtensionFM is one of those things.

Whether you’re a music junkie of just a casual listener, ExtensionFM is about to become your new best friend.  It’s perfect for those times when you can’t have your own music library with you, but you still need sounds in your ears.

ExtensionFM is a plugin for Google Chrome that will scan any website that you’re visiting for MP3 files.  When it finds them, it gives you the option to import those files into a cloud-based library and play them back on demand.

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Like any good music management software, ExtensionFM reads ID3 tags, enables you to set playlists and even goes a step further with Last.FM integration that allows you to scrobble your tracks.

I’m constantly on the search for new music, whether through blogs or any other type of site.  For me, ExtentionFM is an easy way to snag what’s out there, without having to wait for it to fully download and then get organized.  What’s more, once I have music on my local system, it’s really easy to forget where the track came from, so ExtensionFM’s system solves that issue.

The UI displays in a Chrome tab, and you can view your library in the familiar iTunes-esque format, or in a track-by-track listing.  The extension seems to handle long tracks (I went to my personal site, and it indexed 2 hour long live mixes) just as easily as it does single cuts.  This tells us that what ExtensionFM looks for are mp3 files themselves, and then indexes the file, instead of pre-caching it.  Pretty handy for not constantly clogging up your bandwidth.

Overall, ExtensionFM is a very lightweight browser tool that will keep you in fresh music for as long as your heart desires.  If you don’t have time to read through every new blog post, you can just do a quick click-through to pick up the music and return when it’s convenient.  Better yet, this is perfect for the at-work crowd that wants new music but wouldn’t otherwise have the ability.

Sure, there are other choices out there for new music.  Last.FM, Pandora and others all give you that ability.  But when you want to dig deep, or if you frequent music sites, then there’s nothing out there yet that can do what ExtensionFM has mastered.

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