Qloud Launches Public Beta of Music Search Service

Qloud, first vertical “people powered” music search service, launched its public beta search engine and plug-in to allow tagging inside iTunes™.

WASHINGTON, DC (PRWEB) October 10, 2006 -- Qloud (pronounced “cloud”), the Internet service providing “people powered music search,” launched the public beta of its music search service and iTunes™ plug-in today at www.qloud.com.

“Qloud will do for music discovery what Google™ has done for web discovery,” said Toby Murdock, co-founder of Qloud. “Users prefer the control and immediate gratification that the search experience provides. Qloud now offers that for music, and our unique approach makes the search results accurate and satisfying to music lovers around the world.”

Qloud will do for music discovery what Google™ has done for web discovery

Plug-ins to media players provide the listener data that powers Qloud's search. In the Qloud service users can then search through this information, and can do so in multiple ways: music preference (how much it is played, how highly it is rated), demographics (what the age, gender, location of the listeners is) and category (how the music is tagged). For example, one can do a basic music search by searching for the most played tracks with the tag “workout.” But users can also go further by seeking, for example, tracks most tagged 'workout' and 'hiphop' by women in New York aged 20-30 (for more, see the the demo). This sort of search provides unmatched accuracy in the search for subjective music taste.

The key to the Qloud search are tags—keywords that users place on tracks—which go beyond the single category provided by genres and enable endless categorization of songs. Qloud succeeds in gathering rich tag data through its unique player plug-in software that allows users to submit tags where it benefits them most: inside their own libraries (for more, see the demo).

“Qloud is the first company to build a plug-in like this for iTunes™,” said Mike Lewis, co-founder of Qloud. “Our plug-in is a seamless additional view within the iTunes™ application. Tagging tracks allows users to better organize and control their music libraries, just as tagging has done for bookmarks and photos. Users with very large libraries in particular will find our plug-in extremely useful.”

Veterans of the digital media industry, Murdock and Lewis founded Qloud so that the potential of music on the Internet could finally be realized for listeners.

“So much more music—and so much more great music—is available to listeners now because of the Internet,” said Murdock. “Nevertheless most people are still listening to the same homogenized sliver of industry-promoted music, and there is a lot of dissatisfaction.”

“Qloud will connect listeners with the music out there that they would most enjoy listening to,” added Lewis. “We hope to revitalize listeners' libraries and realize the potential of music and the Internet.”

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