Tagworld's new music recommendation engine just went live , and it's pretty darned good. Like Pandora, it streams music and can recommend new choices based on some pre-programmed criteria. What's more, it has Last.fm-style social recommendations. I haven't had time to fully grok the tech, but I can tell you that the music rocks - without any customization whatsoever, it's already spewing out some excellent tracks.
My Tagworld insider (thanks, Fred!) tells me they're still tweaking the recommendation system, and so the service won't be released to non-Tagworlders for a few more weeks. Still, it's worth signing up for a Tagworld account to give it a spin. The music plays in a pop-up window (no download!) and the streaming is flawless.
Tagworld has also partnered with Universal Music to serve up music videos from 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Kanye West, Nelly, The Killers, Jack Johnson, U2, Fall Out Boy, Snoop Dog, The Bravery and Daddy Yankee. That's an impressive list, and a bonus for mainstream music fans (geez, that sounds insincere!). Nonetheless, it'll be hard to market this to anyone outside of the Tagworld demographic. For that simple reason, I don't think this is a rival to Last.fm and Pandora; although comparisons are inevitable, the target audience is completely different. MySpace, meanwhile, might be a bit uneasy about its rival's blistering feature development. The question is: can you really win this battle with features? We're told it's a fickle market, but what would it take to make them switch?
You can try out the music recommendation engine by logging in to Tagworld (or signing up) and clicking the music tab.
Update: Hmm...these music choices are pretty diverse. Maybe there's more crossover with Last.fm than I first thought. Looks like the streaming music space is getting kinda cosy. I should also add that you can place the Tagworld player widget on your own blog or MySpace page - this is smart, because it gives Tagworld some hooks into MySpace, whether or not the users switch.
Attention Tagworld Users!
Mashable's Tagworld account is at tagworld.com/mashable - if you're a Tagworld user, feel free to add Mashable to your friends list!