Squirrels and Cupcakes and Toast, Oh My!

Loudcrowd: where music meets play, gaming meets people, people play with people, and encounter squirrels, cupcakes, and toast that like music.

My experience with social networking sites started with Gaia Online when I was about 11 years old.  It introduced me to a close-knit, forum-based online community of elite role-players, general discussion debaters, and otaku. B ut I’ve since moved on (really my account was hax0red and I figured it was time to quit anyway);  I’m a different person with a different life and I’m not necessarily part of the niche that Gaia appeals to anymore.

Although I doubt I’ll ever get as involved in an online community again, one social networking site that appeals to a demographic more relevant to myself today is LoudCrowd.  It aims to combine music, social networking, and on-line game play into a listening experience that is more collective and engaging, combining a club atmosphere with listening parties.

I’m not an avid user of a lot of their social-networking features, but the music aspect around which the site is based has had me quite intrigued.  Each day there is a “DJ”, which plays a setlist throughout the day.  These playlists feature selections from over 50 “indie” artists, including Justice, Phoenix, and The Raveonettes, and selections from partner indie labels, such as Beggars Group, Domino, and Modular, which have offered exclusive music content to users. Most of the games available on the site are rhythm-based, and so users world-wide who are all listening to the same song at the same time play along to the same beat.

It’s a really innovative approach to engage listeners, and WIRED speaks to that here in more detail and with more eloquence than I can.

So if you’re at all into the indie ‘scene’, give it a try and let me know what you think.