There’s no shortage of websites that enable you to tune into electronic music streams (Digitally Imported leaps to mind), but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to better the offering. Just take a look at Play.fm for example, which we covered favorably earlier this year when they launched their public beta.
A new serious contender that is making its debut today is Mugasha (from ‘music-gather-share’), and its strategy is to focus on the top DJs in the world primarily rather than having the largest collection of sets.
The upstart positions Mugasha as the ‘Hulu for electronic music rather than YouTube’, indicating that it focuses on quality rather than quantity. If you’re into dance music, you’ll dig the DJs the fledgling company has managed to persuade into collaborating: Tiësto, Markus Schulz, Andy Moor, Matt Darey and Menno de Jong are some of the names it’s launching with.
As a recovering electronic music addict, I enjoyed testing the service a lot and the content – which includes both DJ sets and music podcasts – really is high level. Mugashan, which started as a small project at Startup Weekend in Portland, sports a very intuitive interface and a couple of nice features. For instance, you don’t need to register for the service to stream music, only if you want to express your opinion on sets or even individual tracks by ‘liking’ or commenting on them.
You can subscribe to shows and the artist profile pages include links to their other social networking presences, to allow you to dig deeper into specific artists’ work and personal life. When you click through to a specific set – e.g. Francesco Pico’s Magnitude – you’ll notice that you can jump from track to track using the playlist or by sliding the bar on the timeline on top. You can easily share a set or individual tracks on a variety of social networks, and you can also head straight to iTunes or Amazon to buy the music you’re listening to. It’s very slick, and the only thing I thought it lacks is a decent search box on the homepage.
Mugasha aims to make money, apart from running advertising on the site, by collecting affiliate fees on digital music sales originating from their website. It’s notably hard to generate any serious revenue that way, as countless online music startups before them have already proven, but at least the project is entirely bootstrapped by founders Akshay Dodeja and Justin Thiele which means they don’t need to worry about investors breathing down their necks as they make their way. As the title reads: if you’re into electronic music, you’ll be loving this.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Tiësto sets to go listen intensely to.
It looks really cool!
My newly-developed dyslexia led me to think that this article was about Meshuggah, who pretty far removed from the category of “electronic music.”
Haha! I wonder how much crossover there is between TechCrunch readers and Meshuggah fans…
Had to look up Meshuggah. Wish I hadn’t now
very nice.
what happened to that site that said it would be possible to listen to any song provided you watched a few ads before?
Jango.com sir, check it out
cool!It looks really cool!
People who like electronic music download podcasts. They don’t listen to music in web players
Not a bad point, but Mugasha is going to come out with a bunch of mobile applications soon, which is interesting for electronic music lovers on the go.
I agree; no one likes me to stream at work (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) so I need to find podcasts I can download. Looks cool, but not for me.
I like electronic music and I stream it all the time. I guess everyone isn’t exactly the same after all.
This site is killer!
I do both, stream at work and home from soma.fm and di.fm. (and Dance Factory Radio when it’s on, Chicago station)
Then have other dj’s I download the podcasts of for in the car.
Both are great to have.
*sigh*
Love u man.
Was looking for such a service.
i was lost in Play.fm and other , too many selections.
Going straight to to Tiësto
doesnt really offer anything new, apart from a nice logo!
Having the set list listed in front of you being able to jump to that part of the song is a great feature I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Lol, Tiesto. I assume you’re only starting to listen to electronic music?
Wrong assumption my man
I doubt thats the case. There is not a single person ive met that has been listening to trance or house for a while and still listens to tiesto. He is pretty much one of the worst djs around and that is not even a matter of opinion. Him and armin have pretty much destroyed trance and made it the laughing stock of electronic music community.
Electronic Music! The aural nectar of the Gods! From Karlheinz Stockhausen to Klaus Schulze by way of Tangerine Dream! Love that stuff.
Ties-what? Never heard of him. Oh — you guys are talking about Dance Music. Never mind. I’ll shuffle off now and chug down my Geritol.
Different people have different tastes. STFU and enjoy your music, let us enjoy ours.
I don’t listen to Tiesto either but that’s so not the point.
See you can’t be a jackass about Electronic music like this, unlike other genres. There are many technical issue involved with DJing. Tiesto can’t even beat match properly, he train wrecks half of his transitions and doesn’t have any technical skills as a DJ. This is a fact, not an opinion. So if you want to spit this “people have their taste” propaganda, then go do it elsewhere.
It’s only because Tiesto is Dutch.
200 kbps streaming? Stone ages.
Great site, both the UI and the content, thanks for sharing!
Agree about missing the search box on the homepage, but going to ‘Artist’ first and then search I did not find Tom Harding either…
Now it is waiting for the iPhone app.
There isn’t a single drum-n-bass or jungle artist in their entire collection.
-1,000
Fail
Boooo
Not cool
(Can you tell I’m not happy?)
Booooonation
We are working on bringing more shows & genres to the site. We know it’s pretty sparse on DnB / Jungle so far. We will be launching a Hardstyle DJ show this week that you might like and have an awesome set up from London Elektricity up right now: http://mugasha....-Mix/November-8
Thanks for the feedback
I love DI.fm and 1Club.FM for electronic music. DI.fm seems to play more current dance songs while 1Club.FM plays a lot of great Old school Dance songs from Freestyle to 90s Dance Hits to a bunch of currents.
I just cannot see a site named Mugasha making a big impact… but will be interesting to watch!
If this is even half as good as Digitally Imported, it will be bookmarked promptly.
another site to check out is resonantvibes.com
Been using this site for a few months now.. really is good and gets better as time has gone on.. they are a little slow with updating new material but have been adding more and more sets..
I’ll stick to residentadvisior and themixingbowl, thanks.
that’s because you have taste.
Understandable. High cholesterol is a serious problem not to be taken lightly.
http://residentadvisor.com/
Love this site. Well done Mugasha!
Congrats on the launch Akshay & Team!
It looks like a good dance music site, not necessarily electronic
I’ll stick with Boomkat
Isn’t the genre “electronica” instead of “electronic”?
Harry “just wondering” Wang
i take offense that all electronic music was inferred into this article title. that’s like putting autechre next to dj am, or musique concrete next to trance.
oh get over yourself…
Sweet, this is great! If you like di.com you’ll LOVE this!
jz
Oh, thanks for this article Robin. I listen to electronic almost exclusively all day while developing. The 3 sites mentioned in here sound awesome, I’ll be checking them out. Previously I’ve mainly just been listening to internet radio for electronic music.
It looks really nice!
So when DJs spin other people’s music in their mix are these sites paying the rights owners their due?
looks promising!
went straight to listen to the latest essential mix and was blown away that they had the full tracklist that included highlighting the currently playing track RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!
damn, im gunna start using this. only wish there was a proper iphone app that would let me stream off 3G so I can use and abuse while I’m at the gym.
I’ve been using Mugasha since beta and it’s phenomenal. I used to torrent all of my favorite dj sets, which was easy, but this is easier… Great layout, easy to use and the bit rate is high enough. If they can keep the music content updated, I’ll continue to use it…
‘Electronic’ music? Hah! I don’t think so. This is ‘ElectronicA’. There is a big difference. One’s german and depressing, the other is dance mania.
This is seriously cool. Thanks for writing about this, I’m a huge electronic music fan and currently have been using Grooveshark and TheSixtyOne to discover new music. This is great!
Loving this Markus Schulz set!
http://mugasha....dcast/August-13
Last.fm support? Boo if not!
I wish it would work right now
Hummm, visual is cool, navigation and social features make the site interesting but the most important thing , which is content, is still missing, or not that diverse at least. For me looks like it’s focused on Trance. I’d love to see more content from non-mainstream artists. However the service is just starting up. Let’s see what they come up with in the near future.
Congrats Akshay!!!!
it’s residentadvisor.net —not .com
No Richie Hawtin yet, nevertheless looks promising. Good luck Mugasha!
The web site only says “502 Bad Gateway” right now, nothing works!! Bah humbug.
I’ve been using this site for the past year or so thanks to a private invite from a DJ friend, and speaking as a DJ/nightclub performer, I’ve yet to find an easier way to both enjoy and discover-to-purchase music online. Mugasha was the first real solution to the issue of finding and purchasing I like without having to waste a whole day wading through crap, and bobbing my head while doing so.
Beatport, in all of its monopolized glory, has failed to provide a passive, casual experience to discover and buy music while at the office, something that most of us DJs do while we are working on becoming the next Tiesto. While I do enjoy podcasts from my favorite jocks, it’s a pain in the ass (and professionally perilous) to have to scan down a tracklist of that podcast, assuming that it’s even correct, identify a song, attempt to locate a purchasable version elsewhere, then transact, vs this click-to-buy model.
Finally, and I think all DJs appreciate this aspect the most, Mugasha allows the listener to hear and evaluate the music as it was meant to be, not as a solitary disparate “track” as one would on iTunes/Beatport/etc, but rather in the tactfully-handled continuum of a dance mix programmed by a professional.
Fantastic job guys, and from me and all the party people who have thrown their hands in the air to tracks I spotted on Mugasha…cheers.
DJAS
Congratulations Akshay =)
Any way to promote electronic music is a good thing considering it’s stifled by most music media.
seems like nobody ever heard of Awdio.com ?!
a bit different as for the moment its 100% or rather “only” realtime Live music streamed from 150 clubs worldwide.
But i was told there were many things such as replay, archives, alerts and tracklisting on the way
check it up !!
just have a glimpse at their topshows on homepage
http://www.awdio.com/