Music Discovery: Whyd, Seevl, YouTube MoodWall

This music discovery roundup is a first for me. I've never been disappointed by three products all in one evening. To Whyd's credit, the only disappointment is that it doesn't really seem that new but it works as stated and is a fairly simple product which is a great starting point. Seevl may interest some people but you have to go elsewhere to figure out what's happening. YouTube's MoodWall experiment is simply underwhelming.

Whyd: Build a Free Music Collection

Whyd launches out of beta on Thursday. It's a social music network that draws on such free music resources as YouTube, SoundCloud and Vimeo. It comes across as a stripped down version of Musicplayr which has been steadily developing since I first covered it back in January.

Like Musicplayer, Whyd allows you to develop a collection of music from free web music sources by entering an url or using their bookmarklet to add music as you're browsing the web. You can also follow other users, add their music to your collection or just listen to the stream of music from users to which you've subscribed.

At this point its main differentiator from Musicplayr is the ability to search for tracks on music sites from Whyd. In retrospect that seems like an obvious feature but it certainly makes it easier to build a collection and discover available music which is key for new users to get involved.

Seevl: Browser Plugin for YouTube Music Discovery

Seevl is a browser plugin for YouTube music video discovery. As CEO and founder Alexandre Passant notes:

"One thing we’ve figured out is that browser extensions are difficult to market, even though I believe that ‘Hacking the Web’ or ‘The Web as a platform’ is a super exciting and powerful concept. I wish it was more popular!"

Nevertheless they've gotten great response from users that have checked it out and so they're planning to "extend the concept to other services."

Right now they need to do a better job of bringing people onboard. From the site itself you can't really tell how it works. You add the browser-extension but it's not till you are actually looking at a YouTube video that you discover that Seevl appears in a sidebar with related video recommendations and artist information plus an ad, in this case, for additional videos. You also have the option of getting personalized recommendations by linking to your Facebook account.

If I hadn't read the above linked article on The Next Web I wouldn't really know what to expect but I certainly wouldn't have downloaded the extension. In fact, there's no explanation available on the site cause their blog is having problems and not loading. There is a slideshow on the homepage but it only makes sense if you already know what you're looking at.

Honestly, marketing browser extensions would be difficult for anyone under these conditions.

YouTube MoodWall: Discovery Side Project

YouTube's MoodWall is an experimental project that got a lot of attention when discovered back in August but hasn't gotten a mention on Hypebot.

It's basically a series of playlists organized around such "vibes" as "adorable", "clever", "gross." It's not music-specific as are the above products but given the importance of YouTube for music and the interesting work being done by Stereomood it's worth a look.

The most interesting aspect of MoodWall is that once you pick a mood it then also offers you that mood combined with others. Beyond that it's just more playlists.

More:

• Share Free Music With Midemlab Entrant Musicplayr
• Stereomood Relaunches Mood-Based Music Streaming Service

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.