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August 27, 2007

ContraStream To Join Social Music Sites

Michael Arrington

13 comments »

If you are into the social music scene, bookmark ContraStream, a new music discovery engine, and go back to it on September 3 when they launch.

The site promises to help users find good music quickly. Artists upload indie music and others vote on it Digg-fashion to push the good stuff to the top of the site. It is at least somewhat similar to iJigg, which also lets users vote, Digg-like, on music.

ContraStream will leverage the user-generated voting data to create let users search/browse popular music. Each artist and album also gets its own dedicated page on the site.

In an effort to “keep the music indie,” users are encouraged to flag music that is “too mainstream.”

See more at Scopetech.

  • Sphere It

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  1. Steve Spalding

    August 27th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

    Letting people decide what’s too mainstream seems like a good way to open yourself up to a world of trouble. Take, for example, the Decemberists. About three years ago there were few people outside of the deepest, darkest corners of the indie sub-culture that would have heard of them. Now they have been signed by a major label and they’ve made their way through the MTV circuit. Would their old stuff be considered indie and their new stuff mainstream?

    Otherwise, it sounds like a good idea. The only problem I can find is that musical tastes are so subjective it seems difficult for you to decide, with any degree of accuracy, what the “best” song is. Of course, like most social voting sites, the user base will stratify into fairly concrete “voting blocks” but because of that I can only see this having a very niche appeal.

    Maybe that is what they are going for, we’ll see.

  2. Evan

    August 27th, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    Techcrunch, you could have given us a little link love! Come on Mikey! :D http://www.scopetech.net/2007/.....trastream/

  3. dMix

    August 27th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    The idea of flagging sites for being too mainstream or on a major label is to ensure albums that are getting the promotion are the ones that deserve it. It doesn’t affect the quality status on the site (through vote counts, comments etc).

    Whats more subjective a hundred aggregated opinions or one well educated journalist?

  4. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 27th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    Why write about a site before it actually launches? This doesn’t allow the site to benefit from the traffic boost as most people will not return after an initial look.

    Furthermore, this site is banal. There’s not something that unique about it. It’s just another me-too that claims that one tiny feature makes all the difference. Yawn.

  5. Steve Spalding

    August 27th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    Music is just such an odd industry. It feels that you’ll get the last.fm affect, where you might get an idea of what one particular niche of the indie culture finds to be good, but that will be about it.

    That might be plenty, but it also might not be the -best- way.

  6. PublisherZilla

    August 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    Flagging songs/artists that are “too mainstream”. I like that feature a lot. Then again, how big can their site get if they’re deliberately keeping out the artists/songs that would surely bring in exponentially more users? This should be fun to watch. I think they can do it.

  7. Michael Arrington

    August 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    Evan - I’ll add a link. Don’t assume that we knew about your post.

  8. Ian

    August 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    So is “too mainstream” the equivalent of “bury”?

    Wouldn’t the equivalent of front page status on contrastream make a band “too mainstream”? It just seems like a contra-diction when the sites whole purpose is to promote something and then once it succeeds in promoting it to deride it.

    Although it would seem that striking that balance is what will make “or break” contrastream.

  9. Zaid

    August 27th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

    This looks exciting.

    We at iJigg are as excited as anyone to see what you folks have cooking. Good luck with the launch!

    –Zaid

  10. anthropocentric

    August 27th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    Reminds me of Epitaph’s “Demo-lition” site:
    http://www.epitaph.com/demolition/

  11. Evan

    August 27th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Michael, I know you didn’t see it, but much love for the link!

  12. Jeff the Great

    August 27th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    Very, very interesting. Thanks for the heads up, though I am bumbed I can’t check out the full site yet!

    Is it built on Pligg?

  13. dMix

    August 28th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    The site was built from the ground up.

    The voting system was influenced by digg but its not a digg ‘clone’ like pligg sites. Music is different in many ways from news / tech sites.

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