Tadasu Naito Embodies The Whyd Spirit

The Whyd family is getting quite large, and as we saw from yesterday’s post, very global. There are people that have joined our community from nearly every country in the world. Today, we take a look at one of those people: Tadasu Naito

Tadasu has been with Whyd for a while, diligently sharing some awesome music (you have to check out his unique playlists). He is up to almost 750 tracks added, putting him in the top 5% of curators on Whyd. But more amazingly, he has amassed 928 subscribers, a truly impressive accomplishment and a warm reminder that this whole social network thing is starting to take effect!

Tadasu lives in Kawasaki, Japan, between Tokyo and Yokohama. He works in the IT department of a logistics company, and jams out to great music. His current favorites include: Tycho - “Awake" (a former Whyd track of the weekend); RC & Cohen - “Move" (ft. Madeon, Matthew Koma, Miriam Bryant & Zedd); Tei Shi - "Nevermind the End;” Fickle Friends - “Swim;” and Avec Sans - “Shiver.”

Looking forward to many, many more excellent tracks, thanks Tadasu!  

Interview with FROM KID: Two Voices, One Melody

1. You’re the band FROM KID. How long have you been playing music together and what was the initial spark?

We two started playing together about one year ago. For a small charity concert in our hometown we got together to write a few songs. While we were playing for this purpose, we both realized we really like that kind of sound. Our music that was growing back then was really simple. Based on a warm organ sound, two voices and some guitar we played a few concerts in our area. At this time we more and more liked what we were doing. After these concerts we decided to hide from the world to work on new songs. We added more different sounds and tried to refine our music. The result of all that, was the birth of FROM KID

2. How did you find your unique sound?

Our songs develop in a natural way. We let our songs decide how they’re supposed to sound. And that’s changing from one song to another. What all songs may have in common is our love for melodies in two voices. Many things in our music change from song to song. SOme are supposed to be played softly, others can be loud. 

3. Who are your influences and how do their styles show up in your music?

The most important influences for us are people, their way of life and the collision between them. If you ask us for any artist we like, we probably would say, Fink, Sophie Hunger, Björk, Tom Odell, Empire of the Sun, C2C, and about a hundred more. Our best concert so far was a concert of Fink. We were obsessed by this incredibly good live performance. Back to the question; everything is influenced by everything. FROM KID could be a mix of everything. 

4. Tell us about the new single “Sun.” Who should listen to it?

"Sun" is our new single. It’s also our first single. This is supposed to be our "Hello you all, we are FROM KID track." We recommend "Sun" to everyone who is curious. And everyone who is on the run to explore, to dream, to live. 

Sun" also climbed the ranks of the Hot Tracks, briefly resting in the top three of all tracks shared on Whyd. If you needed any more convincing to listen to this amazing track, there you go!

Like their Facebook page, and of course subscribe to them on Whyd

Whyd’s New Logo: First Ideas Are In!

Since we announced that we were seeking inspiration yesterday for our new logo, we’ve got some cool feedback and a couple of interesting sketches that capture how people view Whyd

The first one come from dub producer duckii, who whipped up this design: 

And music and other shit who submitted this design: 

And finally, there is this awesome GIF from wijtze, it doesn’t automatically loop so you have to refresh, but we love the direction! 

Send us your ideas! hello@whyd.com 

Whyd’s New Logo: We Need Your Help!

If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that Whyd is a community led project to create an awesome place for us music lovers to collect and share the tracks we love, no matter where the music comes from. We’re gearing up for some big things this fall and winter, and one of those things is the branding of Whyd. While the current Whyd logo has served us well, it is rather uninspiring and bland — a relic of the past, and considering that Yahoo! just shat the bed with their new logo, we want to make sure that the face we will be presenting to the world is something that captures Whyd’s attitude, that is in itself an ambassador for all of us and the music we share. 

Since building our platform according to your wishes and desires has led us in a good direction so far, we wanted to reach out to you to ask if any of you have any ideas, inspiration, or designs that you’d like to send us. In a way, we are crowd-sourcing our logo inspiration. We will take everyone’s suggestions into consideration, and if someone manages to come up with a logo that is perfect in itself, or nearly perfect, we will pay you for it as if we had hired you as our creative agency.

There are only a few criteria that need to be mentioned:

  1. It should have the name “Whyd” spelled out, since our name is not immediately simple to pronounce, it helps if people can see the whole thing.
  2. It should be urban, edgy, not the washed-down Silicon Valley “apps for your mom” style that tries to appeal to everyone but just ends up making everyone yawn.
  3. The fewer colors the better, and please none of this green/red/blue/yellow Google/Microsoft/Ebay shit. Choose a strong color and go with it.
  4. Try to incorporate something to do with music. That’s the juice of this whole thing, after all.

Send them to us, or suggestions, ideas, questions! hello@whyd.com

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! 

Interview with Noiseness: Your Choice For Noise

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1. You created the music site noiseness.com. Where did the idea come from?

Noiseness was born out of our love for sharing great music with people who appreciate it. For me (Jeppe aka. Jeppebm), the idea came after a lot of traveling. I play my favorite music out loud every chance I get, and I often end up bonding with complete strangers because of it. Nikolas (aka. Nikodaddy) and I were sharing music in some of the same places, primarily in Facebook groups, and we always liked and shared each other’s posts. Lucky for us, others did too. Noiseness was simply a way for us to team up and centralize the sharing of the music that WE love, and make it accessible to as many as possible.
Sharing a great song is nothing like sharing a drink or a laugh. A song can last forever, reach and intrigue new people, and touch them emotionally in a million different ways. We’re always surprised to see who actually like the things we share, and it’s the positive reactions from unexpected people that really makes sharing worth while.

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2. What type of music do you search out?

We do not have any limitations on the type of music we search out, but obviously we have some preferred genres that get the most attention. All types of electronic dance music; ranging from slow house, to dubstep, to drum n’ bass, is definitely our main focus. Especially remixes have a nice spot in our hearts. For almost all songs we share, we also share one or more related songs. By comparing songs and genres this way, we try to put each song into a bigger context, allowing our listeners to make their own comparisons and opinions. We share music that we think is incredible, and we never (ever!) share music based on hype, or because all other music blogs are sharing it. Like any DJ, we have so much confidence in our choice of music that we dare to share it solely based on how much we like it. If we like it, someone our there must like it too. At least that is what we are hoping for!
 
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JEPPE 
3. Do you have any longterm goals for the site?
 

As long as we’ll be listening to music, Noiseness will remain. Currently we are two bloggers, but we will not rule out the possibility of bringing in more to get more content and better coverage, as long as the quality wont suffer because of it. From a feature perspective we have a lot of plans for the site. The current player is pretty basic, but we’ve added a lot of features that are missing from similar sites, such as auto-saving your playlist, queueing of songs and more. Noiseness should be a place that you come back to, and everything should stay the way you left it - but with new content to explore. In the future we’ll be adding more social features, an improved player and more music sources. We are still rather new, and we need to work on our social presence, as well as our presence on great music sharing and management sites like Whyd. There is a vast jungle of music blogs out there, but luckily there are also millions and millions of listeners. With the feedback we are receiving today, we believe that we can intrigue more people into joining the Noiseness community of music lovers, spreading more great music and even more love. That is our primary motivator and goal for the site.
 
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NIKOLAS
4. What do you think the most exciting trend in music is today?

We are both software developers, and we like to stay up to date with the newest technologies and possibilities of the Internet. One thing that is only going to grow, is the way social integration and big data is going to shape the way we discover music. Music discovery is already made easy by a great number of tools and websites, but the music discovery landscape is still very fragmented and every service is trying for themselves to become the best place to discover new music. You can connect your music sources like Soundcloud and Youtube with social sites like Facebook or Last.fm, which will give you some nice ways to discover new music based on what you and your friends like. But if you want to connect you music sources with each other, you are often out of luck, making it difficult to keep track of all the music you like and favorite around the web. Services like Whyd help bring these great sources of music together, which is great - but there is still so much unexploited potential in bringing them all to one place. Hopefully one day all the services will be interconnected, and liking a song in one place will update your profile in another, creating a more seamless music discovery experience. We’re actually not that far from realizing this potential. So much is happening in the musical landscape these days, and its exciting to see how everything is opening up. Music is basically free from the Internet, which forces everyone to innovate and renew themselves and their services in order to keep up with the rest. It’s a free for all buffet - and we like it!

The Finalists of the Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest Announced!

We’ve been bringing you updates continuously over the past two weeks, and we told you about some of people’s top selections. You listened, and you voted. But now the voting is closed, and it is time to announce the three finalists of the Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest

In no particular order: 

These playlists will now be examined by our international panel of expert judges. The winner will be announced on Friday, July 5! 

Thanks to everyone who participated, who listened, and who voted!

Track of the Weekend #43: Robin Schulz - “Cheating” (Bootleg)

Summertime is definitely here, you can feel it in the way the music grooves these days. And there is nothing brighter right now on Whyd than this shiny groove unearthed by Radar! The Track of the Weekend “Cheating" by Robin Schulz is everything that summer should be: smokey like a rose vine BBQ, hoppy like an ice cold IPA, and smooth as the clear blue sky. 

See you in the sun!

Track of the Weekend #42: Stromae - “Formidable”

Something very unusual happened this week, and we still have not been able to find a satisfactory explanation. The new profiles went live, and people have been adding some excellent style to their music identities, but that was expected. It rained all week in Paris in a depressing delay of summer, but that was no surprise. No, we witnessed something that has never happened before, and it’s making us all feel uncomfortable. 

Our co-founder Gilles — better known for his denim shirts, wild beard, and French underwear (or slip)— added a song to Whyd. He didn’t re-add it. No, he added it all by himself. And that particular track launched to the top of the Hot Tracks and stayed there almost the entire week. 

Formidable" by Stromae, a Belgian hip hop and electro artist whose verlan name comes from ‘Maestro,’ sounds like a call from the Paris suburbs, a cry to the progress of the world and the sorrow of remembrance. With its rising chorus and dirty beat it’s easy to see why the song became so hot, but what we might never know is how it was Gilles that found it…

Track of the Weekend #41: Faul - “Changes” feat. Wad Ad

The winter has still not left Paris, even as we tick away the final days before June. This morning it was 2 degrees Celsius at the sun rose. I think we speak for everyone when we say: we need something that feels a little warmer than this. 

Cue this week’s Track of the Weekend — added by both AlixCLM and Caroline Btrx — which burned atop the Hot Tracks for most of the week. “Changes" by Faul and featuring Wad Ad is a classical, jazzy, sweet electric track that effortlessly combines addictive lyrics and a rip roaring saxophone part that is creative enough to break the chains of a lingering winter. We certainly hope so!