SoundFriend
What’s your favorite song right now? Simple question, right? Ask your friends this question, and you’ll likely get a handful of solid recommendations.
Now imagine a place where friends gather from all around the world to answer this single question. These friends come from all parts of the music spectrum: a German public radio broadcaster, a Danish festival organizer, a Brazilian magazine editor, a K-pop blogger from Jersey and many more. Each are accomplished music leaders in their own right.
This place is called Soundfriend (sound-friend.net), where global tastemakers share their favorite songs of the moment with the masses. No algorithms involved, just straightforward, first-hand recommendations sourced from a culturally and regionally diverse group of people in the music industry.
Which means when you arrive at Soundfriend’s website, you encounter every style of music out there. Upon my first visit, I was treated to an incredible tune called The Magic Danzonete by Dafnis Prieto Proverb Trio. I had never heard of them before, but now I can’t stop listening to them, thanks to a recommendation from a Latin music radio show host in Chicago.
If you’re like me, you often find yourself in a musical rut. I get so caught up in what I’m digging at the moment that I forget there are all these other pockets of amazing music out there.
The premise of Soundfriend isn’t to be the next trendy way to discover new music. It’s not based on hype, or number of plays, or relevance to your personal music tastes. What it asserts to be, as its website states, is “a new, fun and honest music discovery feed.”
Soundfriend explains: “Our mission is to change the way people discover and share new music. With weekly recommendations from our expert contributors, we are building a stream of global music favorites for the whole world to listen, share, follow, explore and learn.” (The nice thing is it’s not just another Facebook group page where unwelcome posts pile up in your notifications. This feels more like a thoughtful repository that’s there whenever you need to tap into it). It’s an ambitious project, but one that is founded on a simple premise we all understand.
That’s what makes Soundfriend resonate in a time when technology inundates our lives with millions of ways of doing things every day — Soundfriend strips the music discovery process to its most human element: sharing.
For more from Roger, check out his blog at alohagotsoul.com.
