Fuzz.com, a website for music lovers and creators, launched Blip sometime this week, a service that is basically a Twitter for music listeners and asks “What are you listening to?”. The site has been spreading virally among Twitter users with its integration capabilities, which is what lead me to it.
The service presents itself as being strikingly similar to Twitter’s interface. In the same fashion, you have your archives, replies, favourites, and listeners (as opposed to followers.) Insteading of posting a 140-char message, however, you search for a song or artist, “Blip” it, and attach an optional message.
Here’s where the service gets cooler and adds on to Twitter’s basic concept. Unlike Twitter where you can only read the message, your “listeners” can actually play your songs (and vice-versa). If it’s something that strikes, they can click on “Buy this MP3″ and buy it from Amazon. In this way, it’s similar to Muxtape, a simple virtual mixtapes service, but with a more real-time and connected structure.
Blip is a great example of an appopriate and innovative product from a startup for its specific area. Fuzz’s main bread and butter is going to remain its main musical content site, Fuzz.com, but by experimenting a product and idea like Blip, they can go to new places without changing the whole company’s direction or work on only one idea. Additionally, it’s practical and a super-helpful add on for Twitter users — I’m glad that they chose to see themselves as a Twitter latch-on as opposed to a Twitter competitor.
