BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
Take the growing number of approaches to music streaming that continue to pop up, and you'll find that most systems have pros and cons, unique features that draw you back and the things about them that you could live with out.

Synthesis of these approaches seems to be the goal of the new FineTune online music service, and it's not hard to figure out why: FineTune's creators come from a variety of digital music  backgrounds (the service's FAQ page says that creators include former employees of Napster, Gigabeat, and others.)

The idea is simple: Use any one of FineTune's song selection tools to make a customized playlist. FineTune employs the increasingly popular "tag" system whereby  the site designers and users alike classify certain artists as "classic rock", "jazz", etc. Once a substantial selection of artists exists for a certain tag, that tag becomes a directory for users to browse through, enabling exploration within particular genres without having to wade through all of FineTune's purportedly 2 million songs to find your style.

A minimum of 45 songs is required to build a playlist, which might turn some users off who are simply looking for a "click and listen", low-maintenence  experience. Pick a few songs, however, and you can choose to have the site's recommendation engine build the rest of your playlist for you.

The system does a good job of balancing user-empowerment while remaining within the confines of the law (try and pick more than three songs by the same artist and you get an error message, compliant with DMCA ruling). A toolbar on the right hand column encourages users to "share this" and embed a stream of their customized playlist on their blog, MySpace page, or anywhere else on the Web.

The sound quality is fine, and the song selection was adequately (although not astonishingly) deep for this reviewer's tastes. The interface is a bit clumsy at times, and some users may have a hard time navigating to and from their playlists and the rest of the site. Overall, though, its a good start for a site still in Beta release. No doubt that the minds behind this beast will offer up tweaks and changes in the coming weeks that make Fine Tune a site to watch.

From Stereophile: "Sirius Satellite Radio announced the availability of the $350 Stiletto 100, 'the company's first live portable radio, featuring WiFi, Yahoo music purchasing software, and the ability to save music... for playback later.'

"The 4.7" by 2" by 1" Stiletto can store up to 100 hours of 'live Sirius Satellite Radio programming,' albeit in segments of programming lasting no longer than six hours. Users can also save up to 10 hours of favorite songs they designate with the 'love' button. The Stiletto 100 can connect to Sirius' Internet radio services via WiFi. It also sports a buffer that allows users to pause, rewind, and play 60 minutes of live radio...

"After accepting pre-orders for the Stiletto 100, Sirius requested that retailers stop accepting pre-release orders. According to Engadget, the cause was a delayed FCC approval, which came through with a grant of equipment authorization on September 19. That doesn't mean that Sirius is immune from RIAA lawsuits, however. After all, XM's Inno had FCC approval, too, and the RIAA slapped it with multiple suits."

Read the entire article at Stereophile.

To watch a brief video showing basic functionality of the new Sirius device, click the "Play" button in the video window below.

From the O'Reilly Radar blog: "If you want to know when Men At Work is playing in Boston RadioSherpa is a fun way to  find out...

"It has a unique way of visualizing what is playing on Boston radio right now... [T]here is a bar representing the radio stations. As the slider moves left and right on the bar the album art for the current songs shows up. If you click on an album cover you can buy the song on iTunes, learn more about the artist and sometimes listen to the online stream.

"RadioSherpa  also provides ways to filter the stations by format, genre, and AM/FM...

"Though they are just in Boston right now, RadioSherp says that they will be expanding to other cities. You can follow their progress on their blog."

Read the entire post at O'Reilly Radar.