mflow

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/7513904/Music-matters-especially-online.html

“Daniel Ek says that the new version of Spotify, which is due for release some time in the next few months, will make sharing much more integral to the experience. Next month a new service, mflow, will be launched that puts sharing at the heart of the service.

Without its community element mflow is just like the iTunes music store. You can search for tracks, listen to 30-second snippets and then pay to download them. However, the service has a Twitter-like element that allows you to follow people and for them to follow you back. You can "flow" music to your followers, which allows them to hear the entire song – not just the 30-second snippet. If they buy it you get 20 per cent of the price, which you can use to buy more music.

Once you begin following a few people on mflow your in-box soon fills up with shared tracks, each accompanied by a short message – of 140 characters, like Twitter – from the person who shared it. Pretty soon you have your own personal radio station, programmed by your friends. It’s the first internet music service I’ve come across that has no real offline equivalent. The key will be getting enough people on board to make it work.

Legal online music services are now clearly better than their illicit competitors. However, many in the industry are concerned that streaming services cannot attract the numbers of listeners required to replace lost revenue from retail. Most people would agree that 'music matters’. The industry is about to find out just how much.

Reader offer

:: The Telegraph has 1,000 invites for mFlow. Go to www.mflow.com and enter the invite code SHANER99 to download the player.”

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