Swarm.fm Turns Facebook, Web Into Virtual Jukebox

This guest post comes from Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

TechCrunch calls it “amazing” and “wonderful.” Swarm.fm’s +Music, available for Google’s Chrome web browser, does a lot to justify those claims. This Chrome extension — meaning that if you have Google Chrome, it installs in your taskbar — supercharges Facebook and the web with instant, full-track music. It doesn’t have absolutely everything, but most bands bring up decent selection of full tracks. Among other things, +Music:

• puts a play button next to artist names on their Facebook pages:

• streams a mix of music for nearly any artist through a browser-taskbar-accessible search box (streaming its music from MP3 blogs or Rdio):

• allows you to share tracks in your Facebook feed that your friends can stream in full, which can be easier and faster than pasting a YouTube link; or you can send it just to specific Facebook users:

• lets you highlight any band name in order to start an instant mix of their music (we confirmed this but don’t have a screenshot — see the video below);
• pause, skip, and share tracks within the normal Facebook web interface — it’s almost as if Facebook had built this itself:

• and adds a “similar bands” list to the left column when you view a Facebook band page:

On the left, the +Music Chrome extension is disabled; on the right, it's enabled.

Available in the Chrome web store, +Music was built by Peter Watts in only 20 days as part of an ongoing contest from Evolver.fm publisher The Echo Nest to build the best social music app using its API and Facebook’s API.

Here’s a demonstration video: