Guitarati unveiled its dramatically different method for organizing music Tuesday and it turns out to be ... color.
We've had our eye on the music site since February, when its operators promised to "unfold a different way of music discovery that will blow the audience off their feet." Now that the first iteration of the concept is online, we're impressed by the freshness of the approach, but we're still on our feet, so to speak.
Guitarati, which launched its public beta Tuesday, assigns one of a set number of hues to each MP3 uploaded to the site. Tofind music that suits your current mood, you first decide which color bestrepresents it. Clicking on the color ostensibly brings up music thatfits your state of mind. While browsing any color, you can switch ashade lighter or darker, narrow your focus by genre or change to anentirely new color.
Listeners can hear free samples, pay 1 cent to hear a full songstream or download MP3s for whatever price was set by the artists whohave been uploading their MP3s to the site since then.
The verdict, for now, is that this concept might work better in the streaming radio medium. I'd ratherlisten to colors by switching between free streaming stations than use color to bring up yetanother list of tracks to preview or purchase. As things stand now, users must hunt and peckfor songs and can't listen to full versions for free.
It's an intriguing concept nonetheless. Music can be so hard to pigeonhole – perhaps colors will work betterthan these holes, which were, of course, originally designed for birds.
(via Mashable)
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