Soundflavor has relaunched as a consumer-friendly database of song information that will provide users with a one-stop-shop for song information, videos, and recommendations.
The site sports a clean interface and offers a slew of search options that make it easy to find a particular song or artist. Users can browse and filter their searches by genre, decade, or even by the subject of the lyrics. After choosing a song, the user is presented with a mashup of related information, including artist bios from Wikipedia, recent news headlines, store links to purchase the song, and flickr photos. Some independent songs are available for free, while the rest can be purchased on iTunes or Amazon.
Each page also features a “One-Click Playlist” that generates a list of 25 songs based on a song’s “flavors” (which are basically pre-defined tags). The system seemed to work well – a quick test didn’t give me any songs that seemed obviously out of place. The site also allows users to compile playlists of music videos that can be embedded on social media sites or blogs (see below). One neat feature of these widgets is the “Any Requests?” button which lets users generate their own playlist while they’re browsing your site.
Unfortunately, there do seem to be a few hiccups. The site uses YouTube for its music videos, and some songs don’t appear to be correctly matched with their corresponding videos. For example, after entering AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”, I was treated to a man playing the song… with his hands. Update:Soundflavor has pushed a database update and the song works properly now.
Over the last five years Soundflavor has compiled a comprehensive database of metadata on over one million songs, but up until this point the information was primarily used by other companies that license music. The company brought on Dave Pell, who was previously just an investor, as its VP of Product Design to make the site more accessible to the consumer audience. Pell is known for his past work on sites including Rollyo and Addictomatic. Soundflavor has raised a total of $5.8 million since it was founded in 2003.
There are a number of other players in the music space, including Last.fm, allmusic, and PluggedIn.
http://swf.cdn.soundflavor.com/flash/sfPlayer.swf?tid=5086&uid=71388&loop=false
