We’ve seen plenty of “instant”-themed web apps since Google provided the catalyst for the concept with its Google Instant Search back in early September. Many of those instant apps that I’ve covered were developed for us by Jonathan Bouman. Proving that he’s not taking his accomplishments laying down, he’s back with another great instant web app. This one, called TV.ListAndPlay promises to let us create our own MTV. While that might make you think “why would I want a bunch of crappy reality TV shows?”, try to recall the MTV of yesteryear that was more about discovering music and sharing new talent. TV.ListAndPlay allows you to do just that using a mashup of YouTube, Last.fm, and Facebook APIs.
TV.ListAndPlay.com works like MTV by taking a single song from you and returning 150 suggestions for songs you should like from Last.fm and adding them to a playlist. It then goes to YouTube and grabs music videos for each song. Finally, it makes the whole experience social by allowing you to share songs or playlists through Facebook. To begin, you just enter an artist that you like into the search box and select one of the songs that are suggested in the drop-down that appears.
Once you find a match, you’ll get your playlist started and the song will start playing. This starts in full-screen mode and will just progress from one song to the next. I prefer to exit full-screen mode by clicking the ‘X’ in the top-right corner. This will show you a layout like that pictured below. The current music video will play in the center of the screen, which you can pause just by clicking it. You can also see the upcoming songs tiling horizontally across the bottom of the window. If you hover over the different album covers, you can get the song and artist info of which specific song coming up. You can also skip ahead in the list by clicking on an upcoming album.
Similar to the original ListAndPlay interface, you can also make playlists by adding the current song with the green plus button. You can then share that playlist through many different social networks. There is probably more to discover but that should cover the basics for playing with TV.ListAndPlay. It could be useful for your background music while working or playing the music videos and the role of VJ during a party. Check it out and let Jonathan Bouman know what you think, he seems to be on a roll for making fun yet useful web apps lately.