Conor Clarke, one of Wavo.me’s cofounders, took a stab today at the iTunes player, and most of the iTunes clones for its bland design.
That was a very ballsy comment, in a world where most designers have granted God status to Apple and its design sense.
In lieu of the boring grey and “swedish-style” design, Conor Clarke suggests a drag and drop interface, where users can find in a few seconds a music clip from youtube, play it, and then add it to your playlist. The music video will play on the right sidebar, and they can also “follow” the artist from more updates.
The founder says this reflects better users’ need, when everyone these days are sharing music over Twitter or Facebook. Their back-end engine can apparently crawl your timeline and save your music playlist.
On the distribution side, wavo.me provides a free wordpress plugin that will show site visitors a playlist. For artists, wavo.me plans to bet on a “360 monetization” with planned ticket sales, merchandise sales, fan engagement, and many other fancy features.
For those in the startups community, wavo.me was at the International Startup Festival back then, with an early version working on the iPhone and iPad — although not without bugs. It was heavily focused on the product back then, and neither Conor or Gabriel Lespérance mentionned back then monetization plans.
You can join now wavo.me for an early beta. Let me know what you think in comments!
