The Next Web

Guitarati: find your music mood with colors

Written on May 8, 2008 – 3:58 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

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A brand new music service has just launched an open beta version: Guitarati. Yes, yet another new music service, but wait, this one has a totally different approach then existing music start-ups. Founder Sonal Pandey explained me in an email that the world of music discovery is dominated by tag clouds and rating systems, yet they don’t have anything to do with ‘feelings’ about music. According to Pandey, Chicago-based and self funded Guitarati has found an intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation. And it looks like this:

Guitarati

Click on the color that you feel it represents your mood and Guitarati offers you a list of songs. Within this screen, you can either choose a lighter or darker tone. When it gets too new-age for you, just pick a familiar genre.

The business model is more down to earth, as users can listen to a high quality full-length song stream for a cent, and these cents get deducted from the download price - which is determined by the artist - when they download the song. 75% of the earnings go to the musicians and their label.

So the barrier for uploading your own music is pretty low, though I’m not sure people can get used to this new way of picking music. What does a yellow song mean? And what’s the difference with pink? Moreover, I believe every culture has different associations with colors. When western people are in a love mood, they might go for red. But will Asians as well? I wonder how this will develop. One thing is for sure, it’s really interesting to see how the lists of songs for a color will change when more people from all over the world will rate the music.

The biggest challenge for the Guitarati team will be to prove its users they’re not just a gimmick, but a serious way of finding music. Maybe they could get a music star to write a testimonial?

guitarati, music, music industry, recommendations, Start-ups

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Swedish File-Sharer convicted but judge blames music industry!

Written on May 6, 2008 – 12:47 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

A Swedish court has convicted a 31 year old file-sharer for uploading 4,500 music tracks and 30 movies with the filesharing application Direct Connect. He was fined to 10000 kronor ($1650) and will have to pay the cost of the trial which will be another 44670 kronor ($7360).

Interestingly enough the court blames the industry for a part of the mess they created. That is also why the 31-year-old was not sent to prison but instead given a suspended sentence and a fine.

According to Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (APB) this is an important case because it will set an example and general a matter of principle for other file-sharers. “It’s clear that the court takes seriously the extensive infringement of which the man is guilty. The huge amount of illegal file sharing which takes place in Sweden causes creators tremendous harm,” said APB’s lawyer Sara Lindbäck.

But I can’t imagine that the open accusation from this court that they have themselves to blame is the result they were hoping for. My guess is that most File-sharers will use this verdict more as an excuse to share and download content more than before. After all, even a judge agrees that the current situation is a mess.

More background information in this post at TorrentFreak.com.