Many of us will have fond memories of music from when we were young. A favorite pastime was to make mix-tapes by recording songs from a friend’s cassette or straight off the radio. Sometimes a personalized playlist for a friend or loved one was considered more special than just a bought album, each song chosen carefully and for a reason. While those days are long gone, Korean startup Muzalive wants to revive the sharing of music collections by creating an online platform which makes music more social.
Muzalive was founded in mid-2011 by entrepreneur Sungkyu Lee after feeling that while already there were many music sites which offered a number of functions, a lot of them didn’t focus on playlists.
“There isn’t much focus on playlists, sharing and producing itself. That’s because the services aren’t specifically designed for that.”
Muzalive is currently developing its platform Muzrang, which will allow users to create and share playlists with other users. Late last month a draft of the platform was finally released which shows interaction around various playlists and feed functions to view the playlists of your friends. The company has focused largely on the UI to create a user friendly and fun environment.
The company recently opened a part of the site named Muzrang Chart which uses its “Alive-rank” algorithm to curate a playlist of Korean artists using real time statistics from 30 sources including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Me2day. The system does not simply calculate views but also the amount of likes and times a certain artist is mentioned in Facebook posts and YouTube comments. With a simple interface, users are able to view video clips within the site as well as statistics of the clips themselves.
While many other music charts use sales numbers and new songs, in Asia sometimes they are criticized as ‘idol charts’. Using these real statistics and as listeners express their interest in certain groups, it means that indie bands — which are rarely considered in mainstream music charts and often seen as “underground” in Korea have a chance to showcase their music.
Muzrang Chart has been launched at the same time as CD sales in stores
continue to decrease and people in English speaking countries turn to
similar sites such as MTV musicmeter and Wearehunted. Taking into
consideration the rising interest in K-POP overseas, Muzrang has
initially been launched in English.
Muzalive also has plans this year to begin a mobile location based service project which would connect musicians and venues to help create a new ecosystem in which musicians can find easier ways to share their music, and network with potential partners or producers. Other plans include innovative social data analytics involving opinion mining, to analyze not just music, but also expand to other areas such as entertainment and live shows.
Check out the latest news on their website and listen to the latest popular songs on Muzrang.
You can follow Muzalive on Twitter or like there Facebook page.