Just when Last FM, Bebo, Shazam and were getting a bit lonely, along comes another UK company doing some extremely clever things in the social music and music discovery space.
The People’s Music Store, launched last year, received a big vote of market confidence today when the company announced it has received a second round of funding from serial media entrepreneur Paul Higgins (founder of respected UK film distributors Optimum Releasing) which will be used to aid in the enhancement and expansion of the service.
The company has also formed a partnership with legendary British record label, Beggars Group. which will add tracks from imprints such as 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade and XL to create a total catalogue of over 250,000 tracks. Existing People’s Music label partners include Warp, ZTT, Chemikal Underground, Vagrant, Ninja Tune and Southern Fried Records.
The People Music Store combines social music, e-commerce and viral marketing to enable music fans to create and promote their own ‘personal music store’. For every product sold from their store, fans earn 10% in the form of reward points, which can then be use to purchase more music. Fan ‘Storekeepers’ can skin their pages and either promote it directly to their friends or use widgets to exploit their presence on social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace.
The company was started by Ged Day, founder of pioneering music store Bleep.com and co-founder of award-winning Warp Films. Day’s 20-year music career has included time at Network Records, Ideal Distribution, Rough Trade Shops and Warp Records.
Day commented; “I believe the collective knowledge of serious music fans is more compelling and can scale more effectively than any company can do on its own. That’s the idea behind People’s Music Store – giving fans the power to curate their own online stores, promote their favorite artists, and write about the music they love. We think this will create an authentic, new way for people to discover and purchase music online.”
The Music Void has site reviews and interviews with the People Music Store pending.
Watch this space.
