Via GigaOM, an interesting feature on a couple of startups, Jango and Seeqpod, that are seeking to tap into their belief that music is a social network in and of itself. Interesting perspective. Maybe its me, but I always thought of my music as being a solitary and very personal activity. Now, I might share a moving song with my significant other or close friend, but I don't see myself sharing everything I listen to with a network of people. I suppose that statement ages me (I am 31). Thus, I imagine I am not the aforementioned companies' target market. I haven't quite gotten into the Facebook thing either .
Having said that, though, I think this sort of service would be a big hit with teenagers given the inherent teenage need to express him/herself. I can see teenagers defining their networks based on the persona they embody in real life. I am thinking back to my high school days and envision networks along the lines of the "hip-hop kids", "alternative kids", "classic rock kids", etc. In that light, I decided to sign up for both services and give them a shot.
Jango was extremely easy to sign up for and the idea that I could just enter an artist name and the music would start playing was very appealing. The ability to browse through other songs by the same artist and look for similar music was cool, I suppose, but nothing that hasn't been done before. The real, appeal, though is the ability to set up and customize "stations" based on your searches. Others have the ability to listen to your stations and as such you are creating a social relationship.
It seems as if the revenue model calls for targeted advertising based on network interests and music tastes. I guess this can be appealing to teenagers. I also assume something like this can be done via Facebook or Myspace. It will be interesting to see how Jango makes this work.
Seeqpod is a little different in that it is more of a search engine. Even when I signed up, there seemed to be no ability to create a profile or start a network. Thus, it seems that the revenue model is based more on sidebar advertisements a la Google search.
Of the two, I definitely preferred Seeqpod and can see myself using it. It had more of an adult feel and again, I might not be Jango's target audience. It will be interesting to see where these two end up in a very competitive field.
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