Streaming music has become a popular method of playing media. There are many services available over the internet that feature music streaming. The exciting thing about music streaming is that you get to listen to songs even if they are not available locally (on your hard drive). This aids in new music discovery and helps the bands to spread their music acros the globe.

There are a number of music services that offer music streaming and features millions of tracks in their respective libraries. Some of these services like Spotify, Mog, Rdio, Last.fm, etc. are available only in specific countries whereas other services like Ex.fm, Soundcloud, YouTube have globally accessible music content. Each of these music libraries have something better than the other, and we would often like to combine these libraries into one big music collection.

Tomahawk is a music player that does just the thing. It is also open-source and is under active development at present. Just search for a song, and Tomahawk looks for it everywhere. It offers free music content across multiple libraries, creating a single gateway to all the world’s music.

 
Play your local music

Tomahawk, like any ordinary music player, can look for music tracks in your local hard drive and  add them to your personal library. You can browse your library and play any song. While a song is being played, artist information is displayed on screen. Album art is also automatically updated from the internet.

 
Access your friends’ music library

Tomahawk is great for offline music playback from the local library but the real fun begins when Tomahawk goes online. Just connect with your Google or Twitter account, invite friends to Tomahawk and you can directly access your friend’s music library once he/she joins your network on Tomahawk.

 
Play anything, anytime

Thanks to the global content resolvers, Tomahawk  can search and play music from just about any source on the internet. Some of the popular resolvers include Soundcloud, Jamendo, Ex.Fm, Dilandao, 4Shared, etc. However, since multiple sources are used, quality of music differs considerably. (For example, Soundcloud mostly hosts a lot of home-recorded songs.)

 
Keep track of latest releases with Music Charts

Tomahawk also displays Music charts from iTunes, Spotify, Billboard, etc that are updated weekly. If suitable sources are found, the new releases can be streamed directly.

 
Extend Tomahawk’s capabilities with the “ecosystem”

Tomahawk features a few simple but powerful tools to make your experience even better:

1. Toma.hk – A music search engine which searches music in streaming websites like Jamendo, Youtube, Ex.fm etc. capable of playing directly inside the webpage.

2. Tomahawklet – A simple “Play Now” bookmark that searches playlist metadata from web pages and lets you play songs directly in the same Page.

3. RDFa browser extension – Adds Spotify and Tomahawk Ply button to pages with RDFa markup.

4. Global Playlist – A universal Playlist Translator that converts playlists from  Rhapsody, Napster, Rdio, Mog, Ex.fm, Soundcloud into Tomahawk readable format(.xspf). You can also import these playlists into Tomahawk.

Check out the complete Tomahawk’s ecosystem.

Tomahawk is available for Windows, Mac and Linux too. Download Now .