Imagine if you could harness all the new music released on networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo under one program. Well that’s the idea behind an innovative new project called Qbox and its Qplayer.
Qplayer brings together all the major social networking sites where bands and fans post music to – especially sites such as MySpace on which it seems every band, big or small, now has a page. It trawls the sites for music and then allows you to search, play and interact with other listeners via the Qplayer interface. It’s especially useful for indie fans hoping to discover the next big thing or find music related to their favourite bands. That said, when I first surfed into the site to download Qplayer, the first band on show was Coldplay so it caters for more mainstream tastes too.
Potentially, it’s a very exciting project. The developers estimate that 75% of MySpace visitors use MySpace to find music and according to one survey, 52% of respondents stream music from social networks such as MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. Currently, it claims to have access to over 21 million songs and the repository is certainly impressive – there are few searches which return without results. The player itself however is very heavy graphically producing album art and pictures of the band you are listening to which makes it rather heavy on RAM and not exactly lightweight.
However, if you can’t be bothered visiting the various networks to discover new music, it’s a great way to get an overview of the latest bands and fan postings being made to them. You can have an instant look at the music that’s currently being shared by going to the Qbox site here.
