Finetune Launches Personal Desktop Music Player, Built with Adobe Apollo

April 11, 2007; 09:58 AM

inetune, the ultimate digital music service, is now bringing the music to users' desktops. Today, Finetune released a preview version of Finetune Desktop, one of the first applications built on the alpha release of Apollo, the code name for a new application runtime from Adobe. With Apollo, people can launch web applications directly from their desktops. The desktop edition of Finetune gives music fans across the world the opportunity to rock to their favorite major label and indie tunes without opening a browser.

Finetune lets users create their own playlists and discover new music through one of the largest licensed online music catalogs. While users can already experience Finetune on the Web and even take their personal player with them to their own blogs, websites and favorite social networking sites, Finetune is now extending the music experience by offering hours of uninterrupted streaming music right on users' desktops. The Finetune web application was built using Adobe Flex, a framework for building rich Internet applications (RIAs). Using the alpha version of Apollo, Finetune has built an RIA to extend the reach of its music service to the desktop. As a result, users can quickly access, listen to and share a variety of playlists -- custom and/or artist- and tag-generated -- without sacrificing the rich Internet experience offered at Finetune.com. Finetune Desktop also taps into users' iTunes (R) libraries and can automatically generate playlists based on the library contents.

"Using Apollo from Adobe, we're able to meet and even exceed our goal of providing music enthusiasts with the best experience possible -- the music they like, the way they like it. And, it takes us one step closer to providing our free, personalized music to users anytime, anywhere," said Martin Kay, CEO of Finetune.

Finetune has created a licensed music catalog that's unprecedented in the industry -- two million tracks from major and indie labels -- and has captured the personal "tastes" of many with its discovery engine. This one-of-a-kind engine combines expert-guided editorial recommendations with community-driven suggestions to give users the best possible music experience driven by their personal tastes. The Finetune discovery engine incorporates almost 100 million listener hours and over 100,000 user-created playlists.

About Finetune

Finetune is the ultimate digital music service -- two parts personal player, one part social network. Create your own playlists and discover new music through one of the largest online catalogs of licensed major and indie labels. Music you didn't know you love is just seconds away through Finetune's expert- and community-driven discovery engine. Never complicated and always free, Finetune comes with no strings attached. No downloads. No questionnaires. Lean back and listen, or sit up, spin and share. Just type in an artist and the experience begins -- on your browser, on your desktop, on your blog, and beyond. What music do you love? http://www.finetune.com/.