Rhapsody Slow Rolls Community

I'm a fan of iterative development practices, but often times I find that the trend leaves me in th dark about new features that I would have like to been notified about. Smaller companies are great about having a prominent product blog that lets you know what's going on... but that doesn't yet seem to be the case with Rhapsody, Napster, iTunes and others.

The latest development that took me by (delightful) surprise was the long awaited introduction of user profiles and community features in Rhapsody. I logged on for the first time in a couple of week - I use a lot of different services, and bounce around between them. I was surprised to see a new module on an artist page of "Fans". A little nosing around and I saw that "My Profile" was now featured in the header. Pretty standard process for setting up a profile, although the optional fields are far too static for my taste to be useful. Check me out at:

http://www.rhapsody.com/member/musick_in_the_head



Just the fact that I finally have a public profile and can find (and be influenced) by others is a *very* welcome addition. In my opinion, this was always one of the most powerful and compelling aspects of my dearly beloved/departed MusicNow.

They have a couple of interesing treatments in the user profiles as well. They visually treat artists (and the amount you listen to them) as a tag cloud. I like it. They also give visitors your page a quick "meter" of your affinity to different genres (I'm 63% Alternative/Punk ad 27% Rock/Pop). Pretty cool, but I'd like to see more granularity here - down to subgenres/styles.

I'm assuming this launched really recently because the number of "Top Fans" on Artist pages(another good cue taken from MusicNow) is still pretty thin. This also needs to be rolled out to member profile pages.... call it ego, but I want to know what other users I am musically influencing.

If you guys are in Rhapsody - come check it out, and let me know where I can find you.

UPDATE: The Rhapsody community still has a long way to go - in terms of finding other members, enabling them to influence your recommendations/instant playlists, and baseline usability - but I'm glad they are finally getting into the game.

Rolling Stone's Community Play

Sounds like Rolling Stone wants to be in the music community space...

Rolling Stone to Jump on MySpace Bandwagon | We Want Media: "Rolling Stone is the 'authority figure' for judging music (just check out all their Wikipedia links), which doesn't reflect this generation's obsession with consumer-generated content. Blanchard plans to launch a separate site that will be a social network for music fans, complete with profiles and the ability to have a say in their 'Best of' lists. Blanchard called it the 'American Idol version of lists.' Let's hope Sanjaya doesn't make it on any of those."

I'm not sure how this will fly... I haven't read Rolling Stone in a long time, and those I know that do don't belong to any social networks. Are the audiences mutually exclusive? Not sure, but RollingStone.com does benefit from a relationship with Rhapsody (where all readers can benefit from Rhapsody's 25 free streams/month). Actually, from what I hear, RollingStone.com is actually developed and maintained by Real Networks, with Rolling Stone editors just providing the content. Could the same type of relationship be in store for this new site? If Real was indeed working on social features, I hope they roll it out on Rhapsody.com first... I'd like some more there.

Virb - Yet Another Music Network

Mashable has a story on Virb...

Coming from the makers of PureVolume, there’s also a strong musical element: a download called Virbtunes works like MOG or Last.fm, tracking the music you listen to in iTunes and making recommendations. And just like on MySpace, bands also have special pages from which you can grab tracks to populate a player on your own profile.

It's hard to fathom yet another network, but the folks at Unborn Media have done some really nice things with PureVolume (particularly with their design and UI). So, while it may have a hard time convincing anyone to switch (or create yet another profile) - I'm sure it will at least be one of the better looking ones.

Pandora Gets Profiled

Pandora is ramping up their community - as they and Last.fm continue on their paths towards each other's feature sets (or, if you can't wait then check out the Pandora/Last.fm Mashup from Real-ity). Specifically, they have now included:

Listener Profiles: Now you can use Pandora to maintain a complete description of your musical preferences, a kind of musical biography, and share it with the world. Just click the "Pandora Community" button above the player, select "View Your Profile," and tell the world a little about yourself and the music you love.

Listener Search: Find other Pandora listeners that share your musical tastes, hometown, school, or place of work. Explore their favorites songs and artists, listen to their stations, and leave them comments. Even bookmark them so you can check what they're into later. Just click the "Pandora Community" button and select "Find other Listeners" to get started.

Artist "Fans": Browse profiles for other folks that are listening to each band we play. Just click the "more about the music" button above the player, search for a favorite artist or song page, and start exploring. Or once you've made a station, find other people listening to similar stations by clicking the little triangle next to your station's name in the player and selecting "Find Other Fans of this Artist".

Station Search: Search a universe of listener-created stations... looking for "Electro Goth"? no problem. "Romantic music"? yep. You name it, someone out there has probably built a station around it. Build a 'station page' for each of your stations to ensure that your own creations show up in the search results. When you find a station you love, leave the stations creator a comment on their station page.

They are actually also, like Finetune, coming at personal broadcasting from the angle of.... "you tell us what you like, we create the station, you embed/syndicate it". I can only think that the Labels are watching this very closely as the definition of "interactivity" of the DMCA gets tested.