Twones music service launched into beta

Twones, a Dutch start-up funded by concert giant Live Nation, is now heading into beta with a new service for tracking, storing, and sharing music across multiple Web sites.

The new Twones service tracks people's music usage both online and elsewhere on their PCs. In exchange, users are able to store their musical files with Twones, share them with friends, and receive "collectively filtered" music recommendations.

Online services that can already be used in conjunction with Twones include MySpace, YouTube, HypeMachine, and Last.fm, for example.

"The basics of Twones are quite simple," according to a blog posting on the Twones site. "Where do you store, organize and share music you play and love online? Just like you would organize your digital music files in iTunes, Twones helps!"

Unlike services such as iTunes, though, Twones works across multiple music sites, with others slated to be added in the future.

Since the alpha stage, Twones has redesigned the offering, according to the blog. But the service is now working on more enhancements, including a new personal home page for individual users; new artist pages; a "player/remote control for the music Web;" the ability to track music across more online services;' blogs and sites via Twones' "web-play" API, and public release of the API.

Twones plans to publish a more detailed roadmap later this month, and users will be able to "give your feedback or request a feature," according to the posting. Although the beta is private, invitations to take part free of charge are available from the team's Web site.