Soundpedia is a legal Singapore based music sharing community offering a music streaming service that provides a decent Pandora substitute to users outside of the United States who can no longer use Pandora, along with the United States itself.
Soundpedia comes with the usual array of Web 2.0 music sharing functions. The site helps users discover new tunes and share them with friends. Soundpedia supports user playlists both interactively or by uploading existing playlist settings from music players. Users can chat with friends, post testimonials, make a comment on an artist, or make their own audio/ video blog.
In a different time it would be easy to dismiss Soundpedia as being yet another music sharing site entering a crowded marketplace. Yet Soundpedia meets an unmet need; it’s more Pandora than Last.fm and the world outside of the United States has been blocked from Pandora for a couple of months. Soundpedia is different to Last.fm. Sure, Last.fm music recommendations can be enjoyable but at other times you just want to listen to a particular artist or album. Soundpedia delivers with a thorough offering that may not be the most aesthetically pleasing service to use, but delivers with music. Music can be played by genre, artist or album and Soundpedia’s library is extensive. I did find the odd album that wasn’t fully included but instead songs were listed in 30 second clips. Co-Founder and NY native Gregory Gumo tells me that Soundpedia is increasing its playlist regularly; most users won’t notice any deficiency.
As non-American I’m missing Pandora’s functionality; Soundpedia just hit my Google Bookmarks list.
