Mercora is a very interesting music search company. As I understand it, this is how it works:
First, you download the Mercora Software, then you have two options
- Add music and stream your music for others to listen to, or
- find and listen to music that others are streaming.
I have not added any music yet, but I did listen to some. First, I did a search for one of my new favorte bands (which I found on Pandora) called The Mountain Goats. This band is somewhat obscure so I was expecting a “we couldn’t find anything” message, but instead Mercora returned a pretty complete bio of the Mountain Goats. Then I tried to listen to some music by the Mountain Goats, but this didn’t get me very far.
Mercora, like Pandora, has to have some restrictions to stay within Copyright law - basically it cannot be an on-demand free music player. So, I couldn’t listen to the mountain goats, and I’d have to wait a long time until someone streamed one of their songa and I could hear it. Oh well, I’m sure a more popular artist would be more readily available.
So, next I chose to search by Genre - choosing alternative - and here I found some pretty good results. I clicked on a song by Clap your hands say yeah, which took me to a users stream of music. It was a pretty good stream - until the user stopped streaming.
So, it’s not perfect. Neither is pandora.
It’s built around instant messaging and even allows you to add it to Google Talk, which would be helpful if I used Google Talk. Of course, now that AIM has opened up, maybe it will be available for AIM before long. You can also add a Mercora search box to your site. And, I’m sure there are other features I haven’t foudn yet.
Part of the reason that this might not be getting attention in Web 2.0 (that is to say it’s not on TechCrunch, and not discussed in the Last/Pandora debate) is because it’s old - it was started in 2003. Of course, it’s old because it’s a sustainable business. Which might be another reason it doesn’t draw much attention - business models, money, that’s not very 2.0.
I might switch to Mercora if:
- It does integrate with AIM
- It gets a larger base, so that I can find more music (although it seems to be doing pretty well)
- Pandora somehow lets me down
All in all - it’s a great product, but I’ll probably stick with Pandora.