Dizzler – A Desktop Entertainment Hub With Free Music, Videos, Radio & Games

A free downloadable application that suspiciously looks like an iPhone lying on its flank…that’s Dizzler. But the resemblance ends there because Dizzler is not a communication tool and the look is just the starting skin. It’s a desktop entertainment device. Or more simply let’s call it a media player.
Just like the flavors of music, we have different flavors of playing them. From desktop apps to music streaming internet players, the choices are ours to pick. Sandwiched in between these two are players which are desktop entertainment interfaces but which search and source music online.
Dizzler is one such app. Though Dizzler has a vanilla plain online player, it is the desktop app which might draw your eye.

Playable on your desktop or your mobile, Dizzler is a desktop entertainment hub. The software lets you search the web for free music, videos, games, and radio stations and then plays them through its media player.
Just to remove any confusion – the Dizzler Media Player does not download any music, videos or video games but instead streams it over the web. The About Us page also answers the question as to how Dizzler sources all the media content :

When you make a search, Dizzler only returns publicly available content from the Internet. Dizzler’s technology indexes and then encrypts in-line links to 3rd party websites that publicly host media using the same standards and practices as the major search engines (Google, Yahoo). This encryption prevents Dizzler users from accessing the actual paths to content in order to thwart inappropriate downloading, copying or sharing of files.

Using Dizzler is as simple as it gets.

Search & Play Music

Search for a song, artist or band. For instance, I searched for Fleetwood Mac and Dizzler gave me 226 results. Click on your choice and the song stream starts playing. You can also listen to any random song using the Browse Randomly feature.

Dizzler gives us a few features which aren’t any different from any media player – like creating playlists and marking favorites.
You can also share any song via a Dizzler link with a friend that appears as an embedded player on a Dizzler page.

Music also being a social experience, you can see who else is online and peek into their playlists. Popular Searches is also a shortcut to what’s hot and in.

Search & Play Video

Dizzler searches YouTube and brings you the video you want to watch in its nice little window. You can press CTRL+Enter to watch it in a larger size (though not full screen). Again, you can create Playlists and watch them in a bunch. The video player is nothing fancy but a simple YouTube interface.

Search & Play Radio

Tap the airwaves by listening in to a variety of online radio stations from around the world. Search according to your taste by browsing by genre, listen to U.S specific state radio stations or go across the oceans by browsing for available stations in other countries. If you are confused, then the easiest way is to do a search by keyword in the search bar. A little Internet Explorer window pops up and starts streaming from the station.

Search & Play Games

Browse Flash based free games in a variety of genres and get to play them in the pop-up IE window. The Flash games are sourced from Bigassgames, so the single site selections are a bit limited for some genres. For instance, in racing, I found only two games.

A User’s Opinion

If you want a simple desktop entertainment app which lets you entertain yourself with music, videos, radio, and games then Dizzler doesn’t give any complaints. Streaming is pretty fast and the interface is a breeze to handle. An occasional irritant is the IE window which opens up.
Dizzler is more music centric because the video section is limited to YouTube while games are also sourced from a single site. More wide ranging choices would have helped. The player gives you a large gallery of skins to decorate your player (some really cool ones!).
The online website gives you a lyrics search too which is missing in the desktop app. Another noteworthy feature is that you can also access Dizzler from your Smart Phone or iPhone. If you want to stay on the web, use the embed codes to bring the online player into a host of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. The Dizzler website also lets you promote your own music using a tool called WebDominator and the Dizzler embeddable player.
For serious listening, I can always come back to my Winamp or iPod but Dizzler does give me some casual moments of fun while I am browsing the web.
Dizzler (Beta) is totally free and runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista.