The story behind droppz.com:
Some time ago i was fed up with my Rss reader and that way of checking music, everybody has dozens if not hundreds of music blogs he is following and after a while it was simply too much information to scroll through. There were other popular solutions at that time like elbows, which i absolutely dislike, and the hypemachine which i liked a lot, but the loading times were driving me crazy as well as the way you had to click yourself through single pages.
So the idea for droppz was created – an online music search engine that wouldnt have any waiting times and that would display the songs like a regular media player, and also have the original article on the artist if wanted. Including a voting system to let the people determine what music is “hot” right now and the ability to see what your friends are listening to were also part of the plan. The name was a spare domain i had, and since it was about “dropping” the tunes you like we decided to call it droppz, short and simple. The “z” as plural makes it somwhat urban… Not (lol). I dont know what i was thinking, lol. Anyways….
I hooked up with some friends and that whole thing came to life in a somewhat “longer than anticipated” process. But everybody who is busy on the webs knows that dilemma. Graph designer and creator of “Virtual Skyscraper” Mr Wong came on board and did the arty and colorful design. The man behinde the entire programming, wunderkind Ray, did it entirely in flash, which is unusual these days but the graphic potental is there. We recently put it online and will start spreading the word these days. It still has some flaws, and a few functions are yet to come but everything in life is a process and a we are on our way.
So let me introduce you to droppz:
When you go on droppz.com you have to wait ONCE and thats that, no more waiting times on the site ever after.
1. HOME: When you get to the Index Page you will see this (this will in a short time be your personalized homepage). So far its simply the Landing page. You can now listen to the music provided by the blogs and read the articles, but to get all the functions of the media player and your personal stream, you have to register with droppz (you will soon be able to login via you google account, twitter and facebook connect).
2. Droppz Media Player: The Media Player is the central tool on droppz, its always found on top of the screen and you have the options to dropp the track (vote it) share, comment, go to detail, read the article on the blog, buy the tune online, set the volume etc, follow the blog on droppz etc … Also all songs are passed on in the same quality they are posted on the blogs, so no cheap 128 kbit internet streams.
3. THE TRACK SECTION: This is where all the music is to be found and there are two different views available:
3.a) Lets call this one the “BLOG VIEW”
3.b) And the more popular “TRACK VIEW“- which is like an online media player.
4. Once you have registered you have access to some interesting features.
4.a) SHARING: You can now share tracks with your people via email (the system will soon remember addresses), via twitter, via google buzz and via facebook.
(News: You will soon get a seperate url for every song, so that you can post it to other walls and pages on facebook, for now you are limited to your wall only. We are also planing a facebook app/widget or a player so that you can access the shared songs directly without having to wait for all of droppz to load)
4.b) DROPP (Vote) a Tune: You can “dropp tunes” by clicking on the dropp symbol next to every song.
4.c) MOST POPULAR: Located in your left sidebar – here you get an overview which songs are the most popular ones by the amount of droppz they received. You can display the last 24h, last 3 days, last week, last 2 weeks and last month.
4.c) MY TRACKS: When you dropp a tune it will appear in your personal stream,which we call “My Tracks”. Its located in the left navigation, you have a personal stream for all the tracks you have “dropped” or voted, all tracks you have listened to and commented on. And you also have a personalized stream for all the blogs you like in your “Favourite Sources” stream.
4.d) FAVOURITE SOURCES : Thats is what we call your favourite blogs, it is also a personalized stream, where only the blogs you like appear, found in your left navigation.
ADD TO FAVOURITE SOURCES: When you find a blog appealing, you can add it to your Favourite Sources by hovering over the blogs name. You get 3 options (Follow the blog, go to blog or show blogs info)
5. SOURCES VIEW: Here you can add certain blogs via checkbox. This is where you will find all the blogs aggregated on droppz. (If you have any suggestions for other blogs or would like to see yours linked to – click the yellow “help us” button and drop us line. After short reviewing it, and seeing if its a serious music blog and not some pirate blog, we will add your blog or suggestion instantly.)
6. FRIENDS on DROPPZ: Its more like following on twitter actually. After you have set up an account you can add friends. (Soon you will be able to invite people and look for them in detail, we are currently working on this section). Once you are friends with someone you get to see their stream in your left navigation. You get to see all the music they have listened to, dropped, commented and their Favourite Sources, just like your own “My Tracks”.
Right now, there are plenty of more features on droppz available but these are the core ones and the other ones you better discover by yourself. There are plenty of plans and things we still have to work on, some mentioned before, a lot of optimization but its a all a process and its coming. So for now i hope you understand the core functions of droppz and what ou can use it for. The slogan for me became Nadjas words: “A new favourite song, every single day“. Enjoy
PS Let me know what you think and we are very thankful for feedback.