Alright, we're talking to Neil Hyatt from Loud Crowd. How's it going?
It's going pretty good.
Alright, you are like a man, like a ping-pong ball. You were bouncing around this place.
You guys just launched last night, right? Last night, midnight, this thing went live.
Tell us all about Loud Crowd. Like, what is it?
So, Loud Crowd is a social music site very much along the lines of Last FM or Pandora,
except that, whereas most social music sites are about just listening to music,
we're really about people who want to do, for people who want to do more than just listen.
And what we mean by that is, we interact through gameplay with the music.
So, we built a series of music games, and about every month to two months,
we build new music games to release for the site.
So, let me show you the site right here.
So, coming onto the site, we have guest DJs that program music for you to listen to,
and there's a really awesome selection of music.
It's what people constantly talk about.
They come to the site for the music games, and they end up coming back,
because it's a great way to discover new music.
So, right now, there's a, you know, we have a cut copy in Juan McClain,
or some of the people that are being played.
We'll have, you see down at the bottom, you can see a schedule of actually the types of music
that they'll be playing for the rest of the month.
So, on Thursdays this month, we'll have a guest DJ.
Steve from Soul Axe will be featuring some music.
But, we should just get past the music right now and show you exactly what you can do.
So, let me jump in here.
I jump into an environment.
I can play our first game, which is the dance game.
The dance game is a rhythm-matching game.
So, there's a song playing right now by Cut Copy,
and I can press the up-down, left-to-right arrows in time with the beat.
If you can hear the music at all.
If you can hear the music at all.
And if I win, then I'm actually dancing for another user on the site to try and get their attention.
So, here I was dancing for Adeline, who was right here.
Oh, and someone just danced for me as well, who's dressed in a really strange garb.
Looks slightly like a zombie.
We did an event for Halloween where, with you danced well,
you could actually win a little zombie mask that you put on.
And you can see right now that that person is very attached to that zombie mask.
So, I'll ignore that person for now.
You can, from there, you can earn, you can dance and play other types of games to earn loot.
You can win pants and skirts for your character.
You can also win music tracks.
Oh, there's another person, he's trying to really get my attention.
It ends up being a very kind of natural social...
Looks very thriller going on.
It is, and we actually have a remix of a thriller track that one of our DJs did.
And so, it's like a really fun pastime to watch as the thriller track comes on.
Everyone in the community starts to try and dance.
We actually have a little thriller dance that's in there that they all suddenly start doing.
It's a great little moment in the site.
So, from here I can browse people and chat with people.
I can then talk to them about the music.
Oh, there's another person that's popping in.
And it ends up being a very dynamic community.
Kind of like, I'll dance back to this person.
A dynamic community, not unlike being in a really happening club
where it's not just about the music that you're hearing.
You're learning about new music.
You're also listening to some of your favorite bands.
But you're also interacting with the people that are there.
So, we're launching, as I mentioned today, we have over 150 tracks in the music game right now.
We're launching new music tracks every month.
So, it's a great music discovery tool.
But as I mentioned, we'll also be doing new games regularly.
So, it's supposed to be this, you know, I really consider ourselves the most engaging thing
that you can possibly do with music online.
That's what we think about every day.
How do we build new, engaging, fun things for you to do with music?
Cool.
And so, is there any, there's no monthly fee for this?
It's all free.
How is it supported?
It's supported through virtual goods.
So, it's entirely free to play.
It's in a browser.
All you do is go to loudcrout.com and you can play it.
We're using Flash.
So, as long as you have Flash and a fairly modern browser, you'll be fine.
The way we make money is as you collect music tracks over time
and build a music collection inside of Loudcrout,
we charge for certain enhancements to your experience.
You can throw your own party and have a selection of music tracks in it
about your friends you might pay.
If you want to be able to continue to play certain levels or parts of the game
then you could pay, but it's always opt-in.
And I think that, you know, it basically aligns us with our users.
We don't have advertising.
We're not trying to figure out how to make the site appeal to Coca-Cola
so they'll advertise.
Our job is to make the site interesting enough
and the game playing interesting enough that you want to pay for it.
And there's good precedence for this, you know.
In rock band and guitar hero, people will pay for music games
if you provide a unique and interesting experience.
So that's really what we're trying to do.
Totally great time waster.
Great, thanks.
