A megamix is a medley remix containing multiple songs in rapid succession. There may be only one verse or even just a brief chorus of each song used, sometimes in addition to samples of the same or other songs. There may also be some elements of bastard pop in some, though not as much as a mashup.

To unify the songs together smoothly, a single backing beat may be added as background throughout the megamix -although this is not a must-. This backing beat is kept basic so as to simplify mixing and to not compete with the music. These mixes are usually several minutes long at minimum, going up to a half-hour or even more sometimes. Ultimix is known for "flashback medleys" producing at least one or two every year based on popular songs of the year. Each is about 15 minutes long, usually with at least that many songs if not more.

"Album megamixes" feature all tracks from a particular album edited and compiled into one continuous medley. The "artist megamix" is also popular, including songs spanning a musician's career, with prolific artists such as Michael Jackson having more than one, usually from different remixers. Duran Duran created a megamix single from their own hits for the 1990 greatest-hits album Decade: Greatest Hits. Subsequently artists such as Madonna, Britney Spears, and Janet Jackson have also released megamixes as singles in order to promote their greatest hits albums or in the latter's case studio album. Many megamixes are bootlegs.



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(CNN) -- Pandora, the music-streaming service that's a soundtrack for many a desk-bound music lover, rolled out a slate of changes Wednesday, even as a host of up-and-comers are emerging in the online music space.

"New Pandora," according to a post on the music service's blog, is "more responsive, easier to use, and better integrated with the friends and music lovers in your life."

"For the last two months we've been gradually rolling a preview of the new site out to our listeners, taking their feedback, fixing bugs and making improvements here and there," Tom Conrad, Pandora's founder, said in the post. "With all those little fixes and refinements in place, today we're rolling out the new site for everyone."

Among the new features on the site, which uses what creators call the "Music Genome Project" to predict users' tastes based on the songs they've already liked, are:

-- Simplified station creation

-- A bigger focus on social interaction. Enhanced user profiles let friends "like" or comment on what they've been listening to and share songs or stations with friends on Pandora as well as on Facebook, Twitter and other networking sites.

-- More information about the song that's playing and its artist -- including lyrics and detailed biographies.

-- Removing the 40-hour per month listening cap to let users listen for as long as they want for free. (An "abuse prevention limit" of 320 hours a month still exists, so if you plan to listen for more than 13 entire days, watch out).

The social changes will roll out to users over the next few days, according to the blog post. Users may edit what others can see using Pandora's privacy settings page.

The changes also place ads more prominently on Pandora's pages. As of July, Pandora had 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users.

Eric Mac of PCWorld gave the Pandora overhaul high marks.

"The new design certainly feels a lot less 2005," he wrote. "It has a clearer, more intuitive user interface that includes a large control bar at the top of the screen with the familiar play, next track, thumbs up, and thumbs down buttons. Loading times do seem faster, although not always instantaneous as promised."

The overhaul comes as sites like Spotify and turntable.fm have emerged as hot new commodities in the increasingly crowded online music space.

And Facebook is expected to unveil a free music service as early as Thursday -- potentially leveraging its massive user base as an audience.

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