Startup Conduit Labs has launched Loudcrowd, a online community that integrates a virtual world with social gaming and music. Loudcrowd users can create their own virtual world with avatars and access music playlists while playing a series of music-themed games with friends. Loudcrowd is launching with 50 artists and over 250 songs featured on the platform, including music from the Indie rock bands Justice, Phoenix, Santigold, and Friendly Fires.
Loudcrowd wants to create the feel of an online concert or dance club for users. The site will feature social games that will be played simultaneously with music tracks as well as daily playlists from guest DJs. Loudcrowd’s feature Dance game is similar to the popular game Dance, Dance Revolution and is pretty innovative. Loudcrowd says that the dance game has been played more than one million times since they entered private beta, with over 25 percent of users visiting the site more than 100 times a month. The games are all built on Flash and the animation is disarmingly good.
Loudcrowd has partnered with Indie rock record labels including the Beggars Group, DFA, Domino, Downtown Records, and Modular to provide exclusive music to users. In an attempt to monetize the site through a music-related virtual goods model, Loudcrowd charges users for music tracks and extra gaming and avatar features. Prices will range from micropayments for certain features to rare music tracks that could be in the triple digits. We reported on Conduit Lab’s $5.5 million Series A funding round from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks for Loudcrowd back in 2007 but the plan didn’t seem to include an online music community at that point.
While imeem and Last.fm also build social networks around music, Loudcrowd seems to be doing something unique by combining gaming and music all within a virtual world. While Loudcrowd is trying to be part social network, it certainly doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel, says Conduit CEO and co-founder Nabeel Hyatt. Conduit will be using Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to bring in users from Facebook and other social networking sites like Last.Fm, MySpace and others. Hyatt says that Loudcrowd could actually sit inside a social network but he’s hoping to be able to integrate the standalone unique experience of the site with larger social networks at the moment.
Whoopee! Another music community. Blah, blah, blah.
Another website that doesn’t monetize on access to artists. Seriously. There’s this website, http://www.mybandstock.com, that allows bands to raise money from their fan base, and in return, fans get a copy of the album and exclusive perks. Now there’s a niche community…
or, artist can sell direct to fans on umakeitcool.com and when someone buys a file, they get to “share the wealth” by giving a commissions friends; real fck’n money.
or… u can use our p2p network to distribute files for artist and get paid a commission; oh, but please don’t mention this to apple; cause we goin g right at itunes.
the “gaming” aspect of communities is really catching on and a very interesting way to get users involved. I think the best implementation of this so far is stackoverflow, probably because their scoring is linked to true usefulness.
This sentence ‘Loudcrowd has close 50 artists and over 250 songs on the platform’ doesn’t make sense.
Site seems to be down.
At least for a chrome user.
I like this idea. It should be interesting to see how they engage the users to create and distribute their music.
Hopefully their funding allows them to get a few big names in, to boost up the initial following.
Looks pretty cool! I’m curious to see what exactly the site offers and how it stands out from the rest of the crowd.
I tried it and was surprised that it was fun AND the music didn’t suck.
nice concept,
good way to use community power along
with cool music,
…but…
the name Conduit Labs sounds as if its some kind of physics or chemestry experiment.
probably a more apt name could have been choosan,
anjali sen
The name of the community is called “Loudcrowd” which I think is apt. Conduit Labs are the creators, and they do have chemistry / experiment type imagery on their website.
… as usual, spamming TC with her harebrained “authoritative” opinions, full of ignorance.
As usual, waaaaaay off – Go away silly spammer…
good idea, I’m sure its something that will catch on, I believe its a way to give the artists some exposure?
I agree. I hope this gives up-and-coming artists a chance to get their music out to the public. This site seems like a great idea. Users can interact with other music lovers and I’m interested in knowing if this site is going to be a success.
It’s Santogold, not Santigold
You are right. . . and wrong. Looks like her name changed?
http://en.wikip...wiki/Santo_gold
great concept, another place for artists to get more exposure.
It’s a very funking good idea ^^