Twitter is an efficient technology for spreading and harvesting concise ideas. Unfortunately, it’s not so great for sharing rich media. Want to broadcast a video? You’ll have to settle for a TinyURL to YouTube, or maybe switch over to Seesmic altogether.
Pownce improves on the Twitter model by supporting file transfers and at least one new data type: the structured event. It also appears to be evolving into a better system for trading music, possibly with a full-featured music player.
But if music is indeed a significant part of Pownce’s future, then Blip is one step ahead. Call it “Twitter for Music” since it’s essentially just that: a way to suggest music and share your thoughts about it with a network of contacts.
The beauty of Blip is that, unlike with Pownce, no file uploads are necessary. Just search for the song you have in mind and Blip will grab it from Seeqpod, Skreemr, or parent company Fuzz’s own database of music. Your followers (”listeners”) can hear full versions of the songs you post using a Songza-like player at the bottom of the page.
Of course, just as people are wary of joining yet another social network, they’re sure to think twice about leaving behind a network of followers for a new micro-blogging platform. So Blip debuts with the ability to push messages out to FriendFeed, Twitter, Pownce, and Tumblr. This may not ensure its survival in the long run, especially if Twitter or Pownce decide to integrate Songza, but it should help with adoption rates.
Fuzz, the company that created Blip, is a self-described “CRM for bands” - a place where indie artists can set up web presences and manage their relationships with fans. It also features a mixtape maker like Mixwit and Muxtape, but with songs contributed directly by artists themselves.
The San Francisco-based company, which launched Fuzz in Spring 2007, is funded by angel investors. Follow me on Blip here.
The is how much o f your social time you’re focusing *just* on blipping music or if twitter will eventually extend their service to include Pownce / blip type features.
Peter
do you follow me on http://twitter.com/peterurban
Hmmm … Twitter can do music now, thanks to the TwittyTunes FF plugin which takes what you are listening to and posts it as a tweet with a link to the relevant Last.Fm page, where you get the usual goodness.
Makes me wonder if this is not a solution to a problem that has already been solved.
twitter.com/ssharwood
This is a fun service, and Fuzz is an awesome community. Thanks for the writeup.
tw3t.com allows for uploading pics.
Watchout Blip your logo has a remarkable similarity with that of RSS icon!!
be careful!!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an enormous music snob, and I probably hate your band. Still, I wonder when music will get web 2.
By that I mean that music still conforms to the MSM/web 1 model where an elite few produce the media and the great many consume it.
If you own a Mac, you can make a song with GarageBand that’s as good as mine. Okay, not close to being as good as mine, but still adequate. Certainly, anybody can produce a song at the level of the “kittens on a treadmill” video I enjoyed some hours ago on YouTube.
When I read the headline of your post, I thought this was finally it — a tool where users created little loops and sent them to their friends.
I’m sure that many users will enjoy and benefit from this service. To me, it’s just more “fancy pants digital jukebox” whatnot. Please wake me when “the mob” starts to produce in this medium.
The site is 0 for 5 on artists I looked up. Yeah…no thanks, I’ll stick with Last.fm thank you!
blip? kind of a lame rip-off of the video service blip.tv, who has been around since 2005.
well this is kinda useless as if i want to share music theres Last.fm & if i want to keep up with friends music iv got friendfeed.com with both off them this is pritty much useless & i majorly hope they dont put it in twitter.
Keep twitter simple i say
there is nothing about seesmic here, isn’t it?
why mention it.
Hmm, that logo could have some infringement issues. It is almost identical to the RSS logo.
Isn’t this essentially the ‘what’s new’ feature on imeem.com?
And while we’re on the subject, calling a collection of songs an online mixtape doesn’t make it any different from an online playlist, like those found on seeqpod, projectplaylist and of course, imeem.com
I like it a lot. Simple, smooth interface. Sweet music player.
Great job on the interface design at least.
Great article, and I hear a lot of good buzz about Fuzz from the musicians I work with - but there’s a presupposition in this article that may not necessarily be true. You say “Pownce improves on the Twitter model by supporting file transfers…” - but I would argue that adding features does not necessarily improve on something which has as its key strength the simplicity of the idea.
This is one of the central problem of many online services: the idea that a Swiss army knife is always better than a pair of scissors.
Facebook also has status updates - and it too ‘improves’ on Twitter by allowing you to be bitten by Zombies, invited to groups you’re not interested in and poked by people you met once upon a time.
I like the guys and gals at Fuzz and think this is a nice lite extension of their hard-core Dekorator mixtape tool. I’m not sure it’ll supplant Twitter by any means, but if it becomes a plug-in that rides along an iTunes library or Last.fm stream and inserts song titles into Twitter posts real-time, sans author, then you’ve got something really exciting.
Music is a social beast and requires gatekeepers. Doesn’t need to be Nick Harcourt, but casually introducing friends and family to new sounds is what grows the pie. This only helps.
I already try to make artists use Twitter (and other things on guide.neomusicstore.com), but this is not easy for non-nerds.
i like the music
thanks
دردشة
too bad you cant navigate away from the page and still listen to the song you’re playing. kinda a dumb feature.
http://www.thesixtyone.com/ seems to have figured it out.
It’s fun, fast and easy. What’s not to love?
this is an okay webstie