I think we all have those moments. At least I hope you all do, otherwise I may be a helplessly sensitive person. I sat at my desk, doing my usual pixel playfulness and occasionally hitting skip on my blip account when this song came on. I’d heard of Adele and been told by several friends that I needed to listen to her. My blip station is pretty good at predicting what I’d like as well (or rather the “djs” I’ve picked are). It was fairly easy to predict that “Someone Like You” would cross my ears at some point. I never would have predicted my reaction. My eyes filled with tears almost at the first break in her voice as she sang, “I’ve heard that your dreams came true.” I wasn’t able to continue working; I put my hands in my lap and listened to the song, feeling the words in a place I hadn’t realized I’d kept in me.

My heart hasn’t been broken in the way she is describing. I am not pining for a lost love and I can’t imagine being with anyone but EHGf. But what it touched in me was a feeling of deep regret and the heartbreak of good friends lost and opportunities thrown away. I loved the song for expressing that for me.

I sent it on to Kelly on Blip.fm.

Cause that’s how I use Blip.fm. Blip is sold as tweeting for music. You have a screen name, a limit of 140 characters, a community of people you follow (djs). The difference is that attached to each “tweet” is a link to some music living somewhere on the web. When go to blip you input the song you want into a search box and it comes back with listings from youtube,  and mysterious other cloud entities. The @ sends it to your friends. You receive email notices when someone has blipped you. It contains a link to the blip wich looks like the above: the blipper, the blippee, your small blurb, a listing on the song, a play button and then info on the blip, the song and how to buy it.Your own blip feed is playable (something that at this point can both get me through a whole day and tell the story of my whole year). You can listen to a rotation of songs your friends are blipping.  Are you can put it a song and listen to what other people who blipped that are listening to. It’s a robust community that mainly succeeds at what it sells. Of it’s several flaws, the largest is that it is dependent on the cloud for it’s content. Is it legal? Blip seems to leave that question and their responsibility for it at the door, making up for it by showing people where to buy the song they’re enjoying.

Blip’s aesthetic is best described as neutral with shades of Facebook. Gray blue background, dark gray-blue frames, light gray-blue highlights. The gold of the unimaginative sound-button/rss-feed logo is mirrored in the various badges and awards you can receive and store in a right column well. There is no customizing of your blip page, it’s blue all around. Blip does not want to become the MySpace of this decade; giving up passion for polish in the process. They main impression it gives is usability. Weird for a music site, but I’ll take it.

Kelly responded to my blip by giving me a thumbs up “prop,” an accolade that is counted on your main page. I didn’t notice, I was too busy mining my new favorite song for further entertainment. I tried to click on it’s genius button in iTunes but, strangely, no magic playlist appeared in response, even after update. Frustrated, I clicked on the “Ping button next to it. Registering was easy and completely in sync with my usual Mac experience. It asked me if I wanted to mine my contacts for friends on ping and I synced it to my twitter follow list, gaining 15 new contacts. I thought that perhaps ping would work like blip, or genius. I could ping my song and find other people with my music tastes, or other songs that I would similarly love.

I pinged my song with a little message to my new followers:

And then I went on with my work, checking in once in a while with google reader, and twitter.

I was surprised to notice that, unbeknownst to me, I had sent out a tweet.

In letting Ping use my twitter account to find friends, it had also been set up to send out tweets of my posts. This is a feature I likely would have utilized, but I was dismayed that it would be done with no notification or consent from me. I wouldn’t have sent that particular message out to the world on twitter, a site I primarily use as a part of design life, not to share emotions. I was also upset that my attempt to craft a brand for myself through my feed had been disrupted without my knowledge.

I was however curious to see what sort of format Ping used when it exported (is that the word?) to Twitter. I was hoping it would be something that would play easily in the Twitter interface. If that feature had appeared, I probably would have forgiven all.

My tweet sent people to iTunes. If I clicked a link on someone else’s tweet, I’d just be annoyed to be brought out of my browser or app, not excited about music. Also, the music isn’t really shared, it’s just an opportunity to buy music, which I can assume most people following my tweets would not be inspired to do.

Blip.fm is not a beautiful interface. I haven’t yet connected with anyone personally through. But I have found songs shared by other people on it that wouldn’t have othewise heard. I daily listen to the song that my friends who were already on it share. And I almost never tire of introspectively listening to my feed of songs. Sadly though many of the songs no longer exist at the links it try to embed. It is the fly in the ointment. Again, is it legal?

Overall, using Ping is easy and intuitive. You don’t have to search for your particular song through the various covers that are myriad in youtube. If you are using iTunes to listen to music, it is a natural part of your work flow. But there are few people using it. It tries to make itself more social by dishonestly hijacking your other networks. More however than my distrust of it is my disbelief that it will remain an option. I believe that eventually Apple will retire it as unused.

Meanwhile people will continue to be touched music. I can’t be the only person who is touched by a song and moved to share it. Music moves us to tears and moves us to share. But I don’t think the perfect way to share is yet a part of our toolset. I’d really love to hear how other people use social media to listen to and share music.