A lot of new music services continue to pop up each year, despite most consumer’s unwillingness to financially support artists directly. This is why most music services practice the balancing act of end user visibility and technical improvements to existing ideas, in order to generate both buzz and money. The music apps and services listed below won’t necessarily revolutionize the industry, but they are some of the most interesting to debut in 2013 and worth a first, or second, look.
Bop.fm
As different streaming services pile up, Bop.fm is trying to connect the dots between them. Instead of alienating your Rdio friends with Spotify links and vice versa, Bop.fm will generate a universal link that connects paid streaming services as well as SoundCloud and YouTube for your freeloader friends.
Sharing music has always had a high barrier to entry, including the analog method of writing recommendations down on paper. Content resolution is probably a back-end issue long-term, but in the interim, it’s exciting to see some more easy-to-use movement in the area.
Announced today, Bop.fm will be partnering with the streaming service Deezer. Until the music service eventually comes to the U.S., Bop.fm will allow its users to share tracks from the service that resolve to different music outlets for U.S. users.
Also see Tomahawk–an open source alternative that’s been around for a while.
Mindie
At first glance, Mindie looks like a Vine competitor, but with music tacked on. The humble app is a way to create an instant soundtrack and set the mood for the video’s viewer. But from a big picture perspective it’s also conceivable that Mindie is a chance for artists and fans to redefine the modern-day music video. Instead of needing to share the whole song, sharing the song’s hook along with some visuals may be all an attention-starved generation needs to discover new artists.
Mindie is in the process of making it over the user adoption hump as public figures like Aston Kutcher, Michael Arrington, and even Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have all been sharing clips through the service.
