Invitez tes potes: Whyd Paris Launch - 24 Avril

This blog post we will break with tradition in order to put out some important information to all the French speakers in Paris: 

La semaine prochaine on va fêter le lancement de la nouvelle page Whyd Paris, un radio proposé par les music lovers parisiens qui partagent toujours des bons sons. 

Ça represent aussi une nouvelle manière de la presentation des contenus chez Whyd, pour toucher un audience plus large. 

Donc on compte sur vous de inviter tes amis à la fête la semaine prochaine, et aussi de les proposer à rejoindre la communauté parisien si c’est intéressante pour eux. 

Il faut que tous les gens de Paris sachent que Whyd Paris existe, et c’est pour ça qu’on invite tout le monde à notre fête le 24. 

À très bientôt, et never stop jamming! 

April Fools Day Joke: A Chance To Reaffirm Our Mission

Yesterday’s post nailed it: we pranked the community and said that starting today Whyd would be a $20/month subscription. We scared some people, which means that the April Fools joke totally worked. 

Of course, those who know us saw immediately that we were playing around, Whyd is not going to become some expensive platform for the rich, Whyd is about sharing music, no matter which platform you use, no matter where you are in the world. Music is universal, and so is Whyd. 

As we’ve said over and over again, Whyd is a community, brought together by our common love. Our mission is to create a world wide soundsystem featuring the best of the newest music and the coolest music lovers around. We’re thankful that we’ve already come so far, and we can’t wait to see where we will all go next. 

Never stop jamming

Track of the Weekend #55: Darkside - “Paper Trails”

Be seduced by the unusually simple sounds of a new group that has been sitting comfortably atop the Whyd Hot Tracks this week. “Paper Trails" by Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington) is captivatingly clear, gliding along to the beat that is sophisticated in its level of plucking complexity. Add in the throaty lust of lyrics that hover deeply above, and you have nothing short of an addictive track that feels like it should sound. Thanks to Milou for sharing it with us, Darkside's album “Psychic” is out next month. 

Shuffle ==> hfSfleu ==> Shuffle

It was the number 2 most requested feature (narrowly beat out by the mobile app which is coming!) and now it is live on Whyd. The ability to shuffle the tracks in your playlists, your profile, and your stream. Listening to music on Whyd just got a whole lot better. 

Some of you may be wondering, why the hell are you talking about adding a shuffle feature to a music service? Shouldn’t that have been there from the beginning? Sure, you’re probably right, but it’s important to remember why Whyd was created. Whyd was not created to be a full service listening destination. It was created to be the place where the trendiest music lovers share the coolest tracks of the moment. So your incoming stream is already shuffled because people are adding their coups de coeur from all over the place. 

But as the service and platform grew, and people have posted more and more music, with certain all stars having added more than 2,000 tracks, it’s a pain to scroll down and search for music that you’ve already added. The experience demanded a shuffle option. Now it’s here. 

Never stop jamming! 

Make Your Own Playlist Contest On Whyd

If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that we have had a number of different playlist contests, from the end of the year 2012 contest to the One One Six contest to the most recent Do You Like That Song? contest. Playlist contests are a great way to engage the Whyd community, introducing your musical project to 25,000 strong music lovers and getting them excited about sharing the music that is connected to you. 

Playlist contests are free to create and organize, and provides your current audience a new level of communication, while snagging more page views from the Whyd faithful who are constantly seeking out awesome new places to discovery their next favorite tracks. 

So if you are a DJ, blogger, artist, curator, magazine, concert venue, festival, or just a plain old music lover, check out the Playlist Contest page to see how it works, and then get in touch with us to get it set up (tony@whyd.com) If you know someone who might like to do something like this, please share this with them too! 

Never stop jamming!

Some Awesome Whyd Taglines

Since the new profiles launched a while ago, we have seen some incredibly creative design with the ways that people present their images. But there are also music lovers adding inspiring, funny, and thought-provoking tag lines in their bios. We snapped up a quick selection of some of the best, check out the profiles to see who is responsible for bringing it to Whyd:

"You’re alive, do something" 

"Water. Air. Sex. Music"

"Think big, start small"

Press play don’t press pause”

"I used to be jean-luc, then I stopped"

"Fondue & jazz the ultimate combo”

"I have a very nice profile."

"Music is a serious thing whatever the style or the fuck you’re doing with it!"

"Who can define good music? I’ll buy him a beer."

“‘Hope will never be silent.’ Harvey Milk”

Never stop jamming! 

Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest Starts Today!

Wondering what to add on Whyd? Need some inspiration to share your favorite tracks? Check this out!

The team at Do You Like That Song? is happy to announce that their playlist contest begins today! They have created a tracklist based on interesting situations like Chilling on a Rooftop or Partying at 5 AM (sometimes at the same time!!) The contest starts right now and will last two weeks, ending on Friday, June 28, 2013.

The winner of the competition will be selected from the three finalists by an all-star jury of music tastemakers and lovers: The prize is where things get fun! Instead of selecting something that might only be cool for certain people, we are announcing an open prize of your choosing. As soon as you finish your playlist, send the URL and the prize that you want to tony@whyd.com. What are we talking about here? Well, are you an artist? Want us to introduce you to a record label? Are you a DJ and want to promote your tracks across our entire community? Are you a blogger looking to get featured? Just a music lover? How about some new headphones? Are you just hungry? We’ll buy your dinner! The prize is whatever we can do to help you get the most out of the music you make, talk about, or just love. 
Read the official rules here, and use the link on that page to go directly to creating your playlist. May the most original music lover win! 

Small disclaimer for the prizes: if it doesn’t cost money, we’ll do everything we can to deliver the prize you want. If it costs money, we can go up to 30 euro plus delivery.

Interview with 10 Tracks Per Week

1. Where does the spirit of 10 Tracks Per Week come from?

If we must discuss from where the spirit of the blog comes, I pay homage to the boss of Darker Than Wax, whose simple phrase explains everything. “Music is meant to be shared.” Essentially, the objective of 10TPW is not to have millions of fans from around the world (as amazing as that would be) it is just to share songs and musical gems that are relatively — or completely — unknown. We are four on the team, huge music lovers, all with, I think, the desire to share new discoveries of the music we love. The 10TPW spirit also comes form the desire to work with artists to learn about what their 10 ultimate tracks are. 

2. When was the idea born, where?

Render unto César that which is César’s: the original idea came from Vikius, he spent, and continues to spend, his days digging through all of the sites where one finds sound. And instead of spamming himself with Facebook posts or filling up our inboxes with links, he had the idea of starting a Tumblr to organize all of his discoveries. I remember making a pretty good amount of discoveries there. RIP little Tumblr! 

Anyway, I met Vikius via a complex history of social networks and friends in common. At the time I worked at a radio station, and I thought, me too, look at all the time I spend preparing for the next show!!  When we started to exchange music, we realized very quickly that we have roughly the same taste, and the day he told me about the project, I immediately send him an email demanding to be in. We got started rapidly on something more consistent, with a selection of 10 tracks every two weeks and eventually every week. A little bit after we started to see the project in another way, I had an abandoned blog and I sent the codes to Vikius to see what we could do with a more powerful platform. He worked on it by himself for a while, and one evening we saw each other at a party, and it was there where it was really born. I brought my touch to the blog with my selections of artists and DJ friends to make, little by little, selections that became more and more followed. In this way, we started to gain a broader audience. 

Once the concept was established, all we had to do was come up with an innovative marketing strategy like we see all the time from boutique shops, fringe brands, and indie labels. The blog was ready and we already had a good amount of content, but instead of launching, we waited for New Year’s Day to have a cooler anniversary. As Vikius said, it started off really well, but we had a little trouble managing everything between our studies and the radio for me. So we decided to take a different route, to get a third person on board who could bring us artists and his own style. That’s how Asiku came to the team. A few months after our fourth member arrived: Johan. 

If we must say where 10TPW was born, I would say in space, at the center of the galaxy, give or take two or three hundred meters. 

3. Who makes up your team? Why did you start to work together? 

We are four. Vikius is the founding father who created it to share his music discoveries. Pieral gave a boost with the name and the highly-researched baseline that the blog enjoys today. A little after, he joined the editing team at The Chemistry Magazine, which is where he met Asiku, the third member, a vendor of dreams filled with Japanese beats and sounds. And finally Johan, who, while he doesn’t produce himself, scours the web looking for the soundtrack that he needs when he is flirting with the stars. 

4. Who should listen to your selections?

The selections are made for everyone. They are there to let our followers discover and rediscover music, and even for the artists that we are proud to count among our followers. We are happy to see that artists who made selections for us often come and check out other artists’ selections. 

If we had to explain exactly who our selections are made for, I would say that they are there so that people can stop listening to the shit of the radio and so they can find new music without spraining something! You band of slackers!! No, seriously, we are just here to share our love for music, and maybe our future deafness. 

Thanks guys! Make sure to like the 10TPW Facebook page, and of course subscribe to them on Whyd

One One Six Eclectic Playlist Contest Starts Today!

Are you a music lover? Do you always have the best track at the ready for any moment in any situation? Do you get bored when your friends share their “new” music with you? Do you roll your eyes, press STOP, and put on something that will really make people think? Do you have trouble putting a label on the style of music you like? If so, then have we got something for you! 

You might recall the folks at One One Six from their massive 116 track Playlist of the Year 2012 entry that was shared over 500 times and easily won the honors as the best Whyd Playlist of the Year. You might also know them from the events they host around France, or even from the release of their artist DLSM’s new album two weeks ago. If you don’t know them: they are a group of rad dudes who love to mix all types of music into what can only be labelled as “specifically eclectic.” 

And so, with no further distraction, Whyd and One One Six are proud to announce the first ever partner-led playlist contest on Whyd. For the next two weeks, everyone in the world will be able to check out One One Six’s site, see the rules for the contest, and create an eclectic playlist of the best 7 tracks that satisfy the requirements in order to win the prize of being featured on both One One Six and Whyd and claim their rightful position as an acclaimed music lover. 

Click this link to get started, and remember, the playlists with the most shares will be the finalists, so as soon as you have 7 tracks get sharing!!

Feel free to contact us with any specific questions: tony(at)whyd(dot)com

And BOOM! Hot Tracks Have Arrived!

Unless you are one of the lucky souls living in the southern hemisphere or the tropics, your fingertips were probably a little cold as you made your way to work or school today. It’s the middle of the winter, and heavy snowflakes tapped like rain on the roofs and eaves of Paris last night. We have been keeping warm with our Heated Chords Playlist Competition (enter to win massive exposure on the Whyd platform!) but now there is something much, much hotter: 

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Say hello to the Hot Tracks Page on Whyd! Now you can see the most popular of what our community of music lovers is blasting out of their speakers at any given time, so check back regularly to find the hottest tracks the world has to offer!

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Top track right now: Asaf Avidan - One Day (Wanklemut Remix)

Never stop sizzling!