Amazon has just launched a new site called Sound Unwound which is pretty much a Wikipedia for anything that has to do with music. Users have the freedom to edit any and all the info about a particular band, song, label, artisit or album. The site is still in beta and thus you may find a lot of incomplete or missing information. For example I tried doing a search for “Deep Purple” (please tell me you know this band) and “Jethro Tull” only to be met with a message that reads as follows:
Can’t find the jethro tull you’re looking for? You can add a SoundUnwound entry for them in edit mode!”
However when you do a search for a particular band you are still able to see the albums that the band produced, and you may also purchase songs/albums directly through amazon. How convenient hmm?
A neat feature that Wired Magazine pointed out is that you can drill down from the discography level all the way to the artist/band member level. The example that Wired uses is for a band called “The Fall.”
“Using The Fall as an example again, to the right is the section of their timeline where guitarist Craig Scanlon, bassist Stephen Hanley and drummer Simon Wolsencraft left the band. By mashing up the band member information with its discography, SoundUnwound lets users draw conclusions about how a band’s sound changed as a result of personnel shakeups.”
It’s an interesting concept for Amazon to go after and I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I know there are a lot of music lovers out there who would love to get their hands on this site.
What do you think about Amazon’s new venture? Would you use Sound Unwound?
Well i’s about time!
Sorry, I mean, thanks Amazon.
I would *love* a good music based Wiki. Wikipedia is ok for a lot of stuff, but when you really need the details there’s a huge gap there.
If this will work as they’re suggesting, where you could search by personnel of The Fall for instance, then this is what I’ve been waiting for. Apparently even Mark E Smith (the only constant in The Fall) doesn’t even know their exact line-up changes and discography – perhaps he could find this useful too.