Jango Jukebox: Custom Internet Radio Inside A Widget

We first covered Jango in late October. We published a brief review of the startup, in which we essentially laid out an admiring conclusion overall. How to sum it up? Basically, we found it to be an appealing play on the Pandora concept, one with a rather unique approach. Its feature set could also be said to harbor a few touches new to the market.

And in addition to its initial launch setup, we also received a few words about its plans for future releases. Pleasantly enough, the company followed through on one such promise just yesterday.

Now, it is certainly true that Jango has provided a promising solution for Internet radio buffs at its main webspace. Yet its creators had good enough grasp on the market to recognized from the start the need to branch out and enable users to venture elsewhere and still remain connected to its servers. So it proceeded to develop a widget, dubbed Jango Jukebox, which it launched earlier this week. The resounding answer from the blogosphere appears to be very positive.

That is due to Jango’s eminent ease of use. Whether one taps its musical powers with a visit to ground zero or triggers some tunes on the basic-but-effective widget, Jango is now positioned to give you what you want (if it’s in the catalogue, of course) when you want. Which is commonsensical, of course, and no doubt crucial to its success.

There isn’t much else to harp on about when it comes to the independent Jango Jukebox application. It’s a nifty piece of kit, for sure. It’s an invention I see as a possible power driver to get the company from its current usership of several hundred-thousand to one that perhaps eventually pushes past the one-million mark (where Last.FM and Pandora now reside). Yet we can only really wait and see if the widget is what helps Jango truly hit its stride. We predicted a strong run to be a possibility a couple of months ago. But as with many creations assembled at the moment, if it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all.