A TON of fresh, new, independent music: Welcome Jamendo!

Ladies and Gentlemen music lovers of Whyd, we have a big announcement for you! Today we’re proud to welcome another platform that is a treasure chest of independent music from all over the world. 

Having been around since 2004, Jamendo has been a home for independent musicians who are seeking alternatives to the traditional structure of music distribution. Jamendo helps artists reach new fans, license their music, and synchronize their tracks with advertisements, corporate videos, or even cinema. Jamendo’s emerging, innovative artists are exactly the type of musicians that Whyd music lovers will be happy to discover, scratching that remote itch in the back of the ear that comes from having unequaled music appetites. 

Now you can add any track you want from Jamendo, either with the [+ Add Track] button on the site or with the bookmarklet. We’re counting on you to help share these artists get their music out to the world! 

We encourage you to go and start exploring Jamendo now, as we will be launching a playlist contest next week featuring music from the platform. To get you started, here’s a Whyd playlist put together by the audiophiles on the Jamendo team! 

Never stop jamendoing! 

Next week, get your iPhones ready

Nearly every single music lover on Whyd has asked for it, and what a long project it has been: expertly managed by our lead dev Adrien, beautifully crafted and polished by our lead design Loick, and meticulously constructed and optimized by our tireless mobile dev Damien all the way out in San Francisco, we are proud to announce to you, our faithful community, that the Whyd iOS app will be out next week!

The significance might be lost on some people, who just assume that everything should also come in app form. But music is social at its core, and it is inseparable from our favorite life experiences. Music accompanies us through the difficult times, through the laughs and joys, through the stress and anxiety, always there, always helping, always enriching. 

To bring the Whyd experience to mobile is to help you get the most from your moments in life, by making sure that you always have the right soundtrack. If you’re in Paris come to our launch party and Play Off on Sunday afternoon, June 22nd to celebrate with us! 

Never stop jamming!

PS: Yes, Android users out there, we know iPhones get all the cool apps first. But we are already developing the Whyd Android app, so have no fear!

PPS: Windows phone users might have to wait a little bit longer…. 

Whyd Inc. The Next Chapter Begins

After being selected to head to SxSW by Ubifrance a few weeks ago, our two co-founders continued their westward trajectory, making it all the way to the graceful Pacific ocean and the hippy sounds of San Francisco. 

It is here that the Whyd story divides and conquers, and we are very excited to announce that Whyd Inc. has been officially created in the United States! 

Part of the dream of any international tech entrepreneur is to end up rubbing soldiers with the Silicon elite — bumping into icons and sharing enthusiastic midnight conversations with the other people who are trying to change the world — and we look forward to meeting everyone we can as our journey continues forward.

It is an honor that we are able to represent you, our wonderful community, not just from our humble Paris incubator but from sea to shining sea. Thank you as always to everyone who supports us, contributes to our jamming, and gives us a reason to keep doing what we do. 

Always jamming, now across the world. 

The Next Level: Comments, Mentions, and So Much More

2014 is nearly upon us, and the future waits for no one. The Whyd community has been growing rapidly, but so has it’s depth and density. More and more Whyd music lovers are meeting offline, coming to events, and connecting to share amazing music across the world. Now, just released today, we take the social element of Whyd to the next level. 

First, you will see a new, denser stream, with smaller track boxes that expand to reveal what we’ve all been waiting for: comments. We replaced the track page with this box to better integrate it into the listening experience. Now you can have conversations with other music lovers based on the tracks that you both enjoy. Want to add another friend to that conversation? Use the @ to mention people and bring them in, enhancing the experience making sure that people don’t miss out. 

This type of communication is badly needed in a place where people are emotionally connected by the excellent music they share. We’ve had many examples of people getting in touch with us because they wanted to contact other Whyd music lovers, something that Whyd was definitely created to encourage! 

You will also see a sleek new player at the bottom of the screen with a pop up window for the video (if it comes from YouTube or Vimeo) and enhanced controls. Now you can toggle the video on or off. You can go to full screen (you can also still use the F key for that), and if you click on the song title, it brings you back to where the song is playing from if you’ve navigated away from it. 

There are many other small design updates, modernizing Whyd’s look while still retaining the purposeful simplicity that has carried us so well. We’ll let you find those for yourself :)

Of course, we need your feedback to report bugs, tell us what worked and what didn’t, and most of all is your experience on Whyd improving? We’re always here at hello@whyd.com

Never stop jamming! 

Something Big is Coming…

You might have noticed that not very much has changed at Whyd over the past few months, and that there haven’t been any major announcement emails blasted across our community. But that is going to change very, very soon. 

We have been hard at work improving the platform, optimizing the features we have, and of course adding new functionality that will be arriving in the near future. 

For everyone who has stuck with us since the very beginning a year and a half ago, thank you for your support. For everyone who has joined us since then, thank you for your kind works and encouragement. For everyone who sent in feedback, reported bugs, offered suggestions and came to our events to meet us, thank you. None of this would have been possible without you. 

So stay tuned, the ride is about to get a lot more exciting, and we’re glad to have you all with us. 

Never stop jamming! 

The New Face of Whyd: Profiles For A Sharable Web

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It was almost exactly one year ago today that a small group of guys in Paris masquerading as entrepreneurs carried a few wooden tables up to the second floor of the Paris Innovation incubator to start on a quest to create the place for music lovers online.

That fateful day was full of opportunity, optimism, and hope. It seemed crazy, unimaginable, but possible: we were going to make what music lovers needed, a place for ourselves on the internet. Today, those same feelings remain, burning stronger than ever, but to them we can also add a sense of accomplishment, and of course gratitude. While we set out to build a product, we always knew that we are really building a community, and it is you who who have shown us the way to proceed. Now, together, it’s time to take a leap:

Today — with a gracious salute to the minimalist design that has served Whyd so well for the past year — Whyd has launched brand new profiles, including seamless social media integration; gigantic, flexible covers; personalized playlist images; improved and faster UI; and similarity meters for profiles you don’t subscribe to.

We have finally made the Whyd page something to present your personality, to back up the music you share, to intertwine into your social lives like music itself; to become a starting point when the discussion turns to music; and most importantly, to close in on our goal of creating the place for music lovers.

To commemorate the occasion, we are announcing a simple contest: the three best profile cover images will each win special edition vinyls of some of Whyd’s most popular artists including Metronomy, Electric Guest, and Para One (all from Because music!) so update your profile, send the link to tony@whyd.com or tweet it out with @whyd and we will announce the winners this weekend!

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One of these vinyls could be yours!!  

As exciting as all of this is, it’s you that make or break us, so please, make us. Get out there and share your new pages, find new people to join, tweet with the hashtag #neverstopjamming, spam people endlessly, get Whyd tattoos on your faces, share so much music that your ears fall off from the sheer noise and pleasure of it all!!

Seriously, we are relying on this momentum to continue our mission so this year that has just finished will not be year one of one, but year one of many.

Don’t ever even think about stopping the jamming!

 - Your Whyd Brothers

 

The Facebook Invite Goes Live

The Whyd community has been growing rapidly, powered solely by our users and word of mouth. As we reported earlier, hundreds of tracks are shared everyday on Whyd. The range of music shared on Whyd stretches further than can be defined with any combination of languages. Our community has created something that is truly original, and possesses an immense value to music lovers.

Now it’s time to share the wealth. When you go to the Invite Friends page, you have two options to invite friends, the traditional way with email, and now with Facebook. Customize a message to each friend that you invite, and help us to connect music lovers to Whyd. Invitees will receive a message notification on Facebook, and a direct link to enter Whyd to be connected automatically with whoever invited them. 

If you’ve been holding back, stop. If you haven’t joined Whyd yet, get on that. It’s go time.