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! 

The Very First In-Page Whyd Button: Check Out Museekly

Some of you might know Thomas Vimare from the heavy beats that he drops on the Whyd community. Others might know him from the slick design he uses on his Whyd page. But you might not yet know about his project Museekly, which just launched this week, as a new way to bring forward the art and design of music, while sharing the cool favorites that he finds across the web. Take one look and you will be hooked. 

But the coolest part (for us definitely) is the sharing options that he has programmed into the site. Alongside each track is the Facebook, Twitter, and now Whyd button for people to share the music from Museekly directly to their Whyd page. 

It is an amazing development that we are very excited about and look forward to seeing more in the future!

Make sure you follow Museekly on Twitter, Like it on Facebook, and of course subscribe to Museekly on Whyd

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! 

#AperoMusicTech #3: The Afro-Electro Waves of Mawimbi

One week to go until the Fête de la Rentrée #AperoMusicTech #3 happening on September 4th at the venerable Point Éphémère. As usual, music is the focus, and we are very excited about the collective of DJs that will be playing for all of us. 

You all know SSCK, the artist collaborating with Whyd buddies Sweet Electronic Music Lovers, since it was his track “Eyelids" that served as the music for our introductory video. You all also know ALT, the winner of the One One Six playlist contest, and music editor of good friends Beware! They’ve recently partnered with a third duo - Pouvoir Magique - to create the Mawimbi Collective, a tribal afro-electro movement based here in Paris. 

The three of them will be spinning all night, starting at 19:30. Judging from how they brought down the house at their last performance at Wanderlust, we cant wait to listen to their sea of waves. And we’re working on something fun to go along with it that we will announce tomorrow. 

Take a listen to some of the music on the Mawimbi Whyd stream including their two “Round-ups” in a series that they just started.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!  

At the End of May, You Will Not Believe Your Eyes

You might have noticed that there haven’t been as many updates to Whyd as usual. You might think that our team has been on vacation for the past few weeks. You might think that we are a bunch of lazy slackers with nothing better to do than Tweet about playlists (we know you do that too, so it’s cool). If that’s the case, you would be dead wrong. 

An announcement is coming, whose tremors are already making waves in the water glass like the T Rex approaching the Jeep in Jurassic Park. It is supercharged like sucking the voltage directly from a nuclear power plant. It is like 100 botox injections at the same time: in a word, face-numbing. What the hell could it possibly be? You will just have to wait and see…

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: 

image

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!

image

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

Never stop sizzling! 

New Feature: MP3 Integration

Whyd is rapidly opening up the world of internet music to aggregation, to make it easier for music lovers to keep, play, and share all of the cool tracks they find all over the web in one simple place. Keeping true to that mission, last week we finalized Vimeo integration, and this week we have been rolling out our MP3 integration, enabling our music lovers to share great MP3 tracks that are hosted on music blogs and other sites with our community. It’s like the foam at a dance party! 

Now when you see a great track on the venerable Hype Machine, you can find it and add it to Whyd! Other sites with lots of quality MP3s: Stereogum, Jazzwax, MP3Hugger

If you’re not already using Whyd, here’s an invite for direct access