Whyd London: Launching September 3

Amidst the rows of brick houses bending like waves out from the winding Thames; under the drizzling clouds that mist a population clad in peacoats; a sound resonates. From the east side squatters to Bond street chauffeurs, from the Camden tunnels to the heights of the Shard, music can be heard, in all its glorious forms. For there are few cities in the world more steeped in the brew of music than London. 

So it is with nothing but excitement that we announce our next innovative city community page in the UK’s capitol, launching officially on September 3rd featuring the best of the Whyd community in London: curators, influencers, music lovers, and the music that’s making London move. 

Are you in London? Get in touch so you can be one of the official contributors! 

Share the teaser page on Facebook! http://www.whyd.com/london

Paris: We Want Your Music — Whyd Paris Live Today

This post, written by our co-founder Gilles, explains everything you need to know about what Whyd is trying to do. 

Two years ago, I remember having a discussion around a coffee with fellow music diggers in Paris about the way we are used to discover and share songs today: music is everywhere but fragmented on many platforms like Youtube, SoundCloud, MP3 blogs etc…We didn’t have a place to gather and share all of our discoveries.

Our team of 5 music lovers — Including a DJ, pianist and epic drummer- started working on a simple and straightforward bookmarking tool to collect tracks from the different music platforms.

The prototype initially launched for a small group of 25 music diggers gained adoption in the vibrant Paris electronic community. 1,000 people joined the beta during the summer, while we were improving the tool. The amount of quality music shared everyday was amazing.

We started understanding how the power of community was going to revolutionize the way we discover music in the streaming era.

The launch of the Paris City Stream is a strong step forward in our mission: Empowering music communities to bring amazing music discovery to the world.

It’s not only a symbol but a tribute to the local Paris community who started the movement: bloggers, DJs, singers, concert venues, magazines, labels and all of the music lovers who come to Whyd everyday to share the tracks and playlists that move them. These guys are shaping the present and future of the Paris music scene. We want to amplify their voices.

For music listeners it also offers a fantastic new way to discover new songs and playlists. Push the “Start Listening” button and enjoy an endless stream of good music.

Whyd is now a growing community of 50 000 music lovers finding the best of the newest music everyday in 100+ countries around the world.

Paris is the starting point of our action. World, we want to hear your music.

Never stop jamming

What Summer Blues?

With the Whyd team scattered around Europe and the Middle East, from partying in Ibiza to surfing in southwest France to exploring islands in Croatia, this year’s vacation season has been pretty good to us. But surprisingly, even as most web services see dips in traffic and activity, we have actually seen a flurry of new music lovers and our power faithful adding increasing numbers of tracks and sharing some excellent summer jams. We have to admit, it’s a great time to be using Whyd to discover new music — really, this is what we were trying to do when we created Whyd and built it with your help. There is no better feeling than coming back from a relaxing vacation and seeing the community thriving. You guys are seriously awesome. 

So as you soak up the last sunny rays of your vacations, as you pack up your beach towels until next year, as you lazily load up the car or head to the airport to return to reality, take a quick stop to check out what’s happening on Whyd, it’ll cheer you up, we guarantee it. 

And to help everyone get back in the swing of things, don’t forget about #AperoMusicTech #3 Fête de la Rentrée, happening at Point FMR on Wednesday, September 4th. If you’re back in Paris, we will see you there! 

Interview with Johan: Music Miner at Soundigger

1. What are the different faces of your personality?

One could define my personality as very open in a number of different domains. Clearly music is at the forefront, but I am interested in everything that is around me on a daily basis. From cinema to reading passing ads to traveling. I love to discover, learn, and share the little things I find everyday. Very involved in everything that I come across, I like to go as deep as I can. Always unsatisfied with my work, I try to do more, take detours, and improve what it could be. I’m currently working on the rebuilding of my blog, modification of design, a new logo and making stickers. 

2. When did you first have the idea to launch a music blog?

First off, I was definitely fed up listening to my friends listen to Maître Gims, Pitbull, David Guetta and other Zaz during road trips or happy hours. I wanted to make them discover music with a capital M. Just the guts and those that rise the charts. I bummed around for a while on friends’ music tweets (@ilovezistrack, @absolutebass, @musiquechic, @bordwood among others…) The idea to launch my own blog came a long little by little as a result of following them, and they were the ones who really gave me the desire so I have to say thanks! We arrive at the start of 2013, and I decided to launch the site. I was alone at first, then a friend came and joined me to cover Hip Hop on the blog. So we are two. 

3. Where do you find your music?

I use 2.0 web tools a lot to discover new tracks. Principally Soundcloud, but also Whyd, Shufflr, YouTube, ExFM… Certain artists send me their links directly and I thank them graciously. I try more and more to find music blogs from other continents to enlarge the range of musical styles and get a way from European artists who are already widely covered by the French blogosphere. 

4. What are your goals for Soundigger? Who should read your blog?

By creating Soundigger.com, the primary goal was to break as many people as possible out of their commercial shackles, freed from peroxodized clips which can be endlessly consumed on national radio and TV channels. We want to make people discover, and bring forward, lesser-known talent, creating connections with them and other bloggers to carry out various projects, and to create a small community. To do interviews, live reports from festivals… that’s what I had in mind when I created the blog. 

At Soundigger, we love diversity, as much musical as human, that’s why our publications are not reserved exclusively for specific types of people, snobby preps or other hipsters, but just as many people as possible. If Jacky the farmer on the corner discovers, appreciates, and shares the latest releases of Bit Funk, Fakear, or Apollo Brown on our blog, that would mean that wouldn’t probably couldn’t get any bigger. 

5. What other blogs do you recommend?

Among the following blogs, a good portion come from friends with whom we discuss and share a lot of music and advice. It’s the magic of web 2.0 that we know these people thanks to the same love of music 

- http://www.ilovethistrack.com/

- http://absolutebassline.tumblr.com/

http://unclesound.fr/

http://lecoledumicroenbois.com/

http://www.spreadtheword96.com/

http://moosetache.over-blog.fr/

http://www.radiovnl.fr/

http://bordwood.com/

http://davycroket.com/

http://www.musique-chic.com/

http://sodwee.com/blog/

And many more! 


Thanks Johan! Make sure you like the Soundigger Facebook page, and of course subscribe to Soundigger on Whyd

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