
1. Tell us about the minds behind Underground Playlist, where does your inspiration come from?
I started the Underground Playlist in January of 2010 realizing that there were many worthy up-and-coming artists out there not getting enough recognition. Newer artists were also greatly affected by the challenges the music industry were facing during the recession so it seemed especially appropriate considering the circumstances. I decided every week to post 5 new songs by new artists. I felt where many blogs were posting about popular artists this was a chance to offer unique content where the majority of the artists we feature are relatively unknown yet deserve as much recognition as the popular artists do.

2. What type of music do you present in your playlists?
Underground Playlist features new music by new artists. Whether it’s Indie, Electronic, Pop, Hip Hop, Rock, or any other genre, if it sounds compelling and it’s from a new artist we’re all about it.
In the past we’ve been lucky enough to feature eventual hit songs months before they reached top status. Some in particular come to mind like B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars “Nothin’ On You”, Havana Brown “We Run The Night”, Cher Lloyd “Want U Back”, Kirko Bangz “Drank In My Cup” among others. Every now and then we come into songs of this stature and it is really cool to follow these artists as they reach newer heights in their career.
The way music and social media have mesh together it has allowed blogs and everyday music fans more access to discovery. If you look in the right places you’ll find a goldmine of undiscovered talent. Whether its looking under certain Twitter hashtags, searching extensively on YouTube and now Whyd, the process of discovery has given us plenty of choices to select music for our playlists.
An important aspect of our selection is that we make sure not to focus on necessarily being the first person to discover an artist but rather focus on featuring a quality playlist of music by new artists even if it’s a month or two young. Like we’ve seen with Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” in some cases it can take up to a year for a hit song to gain recognition but if the song has potential that new artists deserves to have their work featured at any point as whatever ounce of press they receive can only help them in their journey as an artist.
Another driving force is realizing in some cases it’s the first or second time an artist has been featured in their career and they’ll tweet or email us to send a thank you and that feedback makes us feel like we are making a difference whether big or small for these artists which just adds to the fuel of discovery for us.

4. The design of your site is very unique, where did you get the idea?
We feel it’s important to have a simple yet unique design to allow our visitors to navigate easily and most importantly keep their focus on the artist and their music. Being able to allow our visitors to listen and easily purchase the music we select is also another aspect to our site that is equally important to us.
We’ve also implemented a shared calendar powered by SpinGo that allows fans to easily search through a wide database of concerts and music events submitted by people from all around the world. Brand new to our site is the Whyd subscribe badge located at the footer of each page where you can access an exclusive monthly version of our playlist that we’ll update periodically during the month.
In all, our design is geared to give the artists we feature as much visibility as possible and fans the availability to purchase their music and tickets to theirs shows.
A big thank you to Whyd and be sure to subscribe to us!
Thank you guys! Follow Underground Playlist on Twitter and make sure to Like their Facebook page too!