Fancy being a DJ? Try new iPhone app Soundtrckr

You find that most people who listen to music also love to share their music. A new iPhone app called Soundtrcker is combining playlists, location and social networking to allow users to “broadcast” radio stations to one another.

How does it work?

First and foremost, Soundtrckr makes a lot of use of the phrase “fully licensed”. If you’re giving people the ability to freely broadcast music to one another, you want to make sure that the labels have no reason to assault you.

Soundtrckr is a music discovery service. Users can create their own FULLY LICENSED radio stations (playlists, really), access the stations of other users and geo-tag songs. I like the geo-tagging aspect there. Let’s say you’re on top of the Rockefeller building, and that vista of New York inspires you to listen to a particular track? Tag that location with your song and other people can enjoy the same experience as you. The social networking aspect is based around a ranking scheme - broadcasters who provide the best content and have the most followers will have a higher Soundtrckr ranking.

A lot of apps like this blow past in the iTunes catalogue, but Soundtrckr has some pretty serious backing/ While the app does allow independent artists to upload their own music, the bulk of the content comes from a partnership with MediaNet - this alone provides millions of songs, and Soundtrckr is attempting to nail down contracts with other music publishers. It has received several rounds of funding in Europe and America, and while it is currently only available for web and iPhone there are Android, Blackberry, and WinMo apps en route.

Soundtrckr CEO Daniele Calabrese said that “music is a shared experience, a way to communicate and connect. It’s intimately tied to the people and places in our daily lives, and soundtrckr is the first application that recognizes and facilitates this connection in a concrete way. Soundtrckr makes our cities and friends active participants in the way we experience music.”

What we think?

There are a lot of music streaming apps around at the moment, frankly, and it takes a bit of an effort to look different. I do think Soundtrckr has accomplished that though. The curiosity value of wondering what other people listened to when they were hanging around here will attract users, and having reliable “anchor” users who rise through the rankings could be enough to convince people to stay.