Check back tomorrow for RAIN's analysis of events at last week's NAB convention in San Francisco. (Read our initial news report excerpts by clicking here.)

BY PAUL MALONEY
Sliding down my chair on a rainy afternoon in the RAIN Test Labs, I needed some music to fit my mood -- and recent Microsoft acquisition MongoMusic.com is a music destination that supposedly offers a unique kind of "customization" that I thought might be just what I needed.

They call it the "Sounds Like" function. It's billed as an intuitive way to discover new music, based on the music you already enjoy. Pick a genre, mood, artist, song, or album as a starting point -- and the "Sounds Like" function takes over, steering you in the direction of more and more new music that's along the same lines as your original pick.

The site has multiple functions as music sampler, CD retailer, and home for your own RadioMongo. To give the site and its music-finding functions a test spin, we decided to create our own station and call it "Rainy Day Music."

The first step is to read through the "Create A Station Tutorial." We were first shown what each step in creating our new station involved: naming it, selecting music, and listening to it. Then the actual creation process began.

After filling in our new station's name, we went to the "Help Me Find Music" page. Here's where you can hunt down your musical "starting point" using any of a variety of different criteria. Since we were going for a "rainy" mood, we selected the custom search feature for music with a slow tempo and a somber feel, regardless of artist or genre.

The site generated a list of the most popular songs that fit my "rainy" profile. We selected the one or two that sounded interesting to us and clicked the "Add to Station" button to include them in our playlist. Then we clicked the "Similar Songs" link under each one. Each time it took us to another extensive list of songs from which to choose, all similar to the song from which we linked, but less similar to our original "sad, slow" collection. We continued to add songs to our ever-increasingly eclectic playlist.

Now it was time to listen. A very nice customized version of Microsoft's WindowsMedia Player (surprise!) popped open. The player also displayed the artist that was coming up next, had a "Skip" function if you just couldn't wait to get the next track and featured a "playlist" button which leads the visitor straight to list of up to the last 10 songs played.

Plus there's the button labeled "custom," where you can choose the tempo and "weight" (how "heavy" or light the intensity of the music is) of the streams. And if one finds the customization a little too work-intensive, it's easy enough to simply click a genre (or mood) and just let the music stream.

Probably due to the involved customization features, RadioMongo had a few problems from time to time. When we designed our "Rainy Day" station, songs repeated often. And the "Sounds-like" feature, at least in our somewhat limited experience with it, seems to stay within musical genres, even if none is specified (remember our Rainy Day music, looking only for down-tempo songs? Our first "starting point" selections were R&B/Urban songs. RadioMongo only gave us R&B/Urban from there on out. Adding Alternative "starting point" songs added Alternative selections to the stream, but no other genre).

Larger problems: More than once, we would hear a fragment of a song, then it would advance to the next song automatically (could something be invoking the "skip" feature?). And one last suggestion would be to improve the quality of the stream -- it was in the "AM radio-ish" realm of fidelity.

MongoMusic has a great idea, that with some tweaking, might really be as useful a tool to discovering new music as it's touted to be. And then you can chalk up another victory for Microsoft.

Microsoft bought MongoMusic in an all-stock deal supposedly valued at $65 million two weeks ago. (See CNET stories here (newer) and here (more detailed).)

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From Radio Ink: "Everstream announced that R. Steven Hicks, the former vice chairman of AMFM Inc. and a principal in Capstar Partners, has joined the Everstream board of directors.

"Hicks' Capstar Partners was among the investors in Everstream's $8.54 million funding round announced earlier this week." (See RAIN story here.) "Everstream provides locally branded versions of its digital network of music, news, entertainment and advertising to owners of Internet sites, principally newspaper websites."

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"Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes The Blues" Read the story from the Onion's news archives here, or visit The Onion's current home page here.

Sept. 29-Oct. 1	MOBE/Internet & Technology, Chicago
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills
October 10-12	Streaming Media Europe 2000, London
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
November 12-14	Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) "Broadcasting 2000: On-air / On-line," Calgary (NEW!)
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA, featuring a brand-new national study on Internet radio usage presented by Eric Rhoads & Kurt Hanson