Scopetech

Fairtilizer is a new music site which wants to allow its users to be able to discover new music, create their own playlists, download free tracks, subscribe to artists and labels and “connect with artists, labels and people that care about music”. Anyone can submit a track into the system and according to the site, submitted tracks will go into a “buffer zone” where the songs can either be approved or dismissed depending on if the uploader has actual rights to the song. The site’s screening process should deal with any songs that may be uploaded illegally. What’s good about the site is that users can get free tracks provided labels offer them for free download but it seems only smaller labels would do such a thing. There is also the option to have songs as stream-only.

Playing with the site I am trying to figure out why people would use it instead of Myspace. One reason might be because of the nice flash player that allows you to take tracks and embed them on a site or blog. With Myspace, tracks are usually stream-only from major labels and users typically cannot embed the songs anywhere outside Myspace, if at all. Myspace users also have the option to sell tracks, something I have not seen with Fairtilizer, though tracks that are available for download will not have any sort of DRM. Sadly, I found the site to be very confusing.

Submitted tracks go to the “Upcoming” section where tracks with the most support go into the “Charting” section. What is unclear is what “support” for a track means, number of listens or the number of “votes” as denoted by a heart button to the right of the “Upcoming” and “Charting” sections of the site? Fairtilizer almost seems like it could be a competitor to Contrastream with the digg-like interface it has but instead of simply underground artists, Fairtilizer wants to involve big record labels which might be able to work provided they get the kinks out and explain why people wouldn’t just use Myspace instead.

The ability to make playlists from music on the site, embed them on a blog and pop out the player is a very nice feature though. The site is still not open to the public so we can assume many changes need to take place but for me it was not as appealing to look at as was the case with Contrastream. Both sites have aspects that could go well together. We will be sure to look out for any updates to Fairtilizer and we have 5 invites to the site. Leave a comment and we’ll hook you up.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Web Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.