Norway’s Soundrop has gone through a few pivots since it released it’s first product back in 2011. At the time it won Startup Weekend Oslo and was riding on the Turntable.fm craze of social listening rooms – which it plugged into Spotify. After pivoting its listening rooms in October of 2012, it then started expanding to mobile, Facebook, and Deezer. With their listening rooms in place, in early 2013 Soundrop realized that putting musicians in their chat rooms and driving the playlist created a fun social experience for artists to connect with their fans.
Riding on that wave, they’ve now launched Show.co, which feels like an about.me minisite dedicated to a song with plenty of links and sharing options.
Once a visitor lands on a band’s show.co site they see a nice background and big call-to-action to click the play button on the track. Once that track is clicked, a user is then given plenty of share options, or an option to put in their email to start building up a mailing list. As a marketing platform, Show.co is happy to get you clicking links to download sites like iTunes, Amazon and Beatport, or stream music from sources like Spotify, Deezer or Beats Music.
I’m not really plugged into what the needs of indie bands are (the ArcticStartup Family Band sadly is still struggling through creative differences) but this seems to have only slightly better sharing options than SoundCloud or Bandcamp, which is the main promotion place that indie bands seem to be focusing.
“Soundrop has always been about helping artists and fans connect,” said Jørn Haanæs, CEO, Soundrop in a written statement. “Today we’re taking that to a new level with Show.co. We looked at the pain points artists and labels face when trying to promote a new track, expand existing fan bases or strengthen the fan relationships that ultimately lead to revenue. Then we built a tool to solve those problems. We want to help artists and labels achieve results that deliver real value and create a positive impact.”
