Guitarati, pronounced Guitar-ati (like literati, but for music), is a new online music store that launched its private beta in February 2008. The website provides an unconventional, intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation.
The correspondence between music and color is a very old and persistent one, engaging the curiosity of Aristotle and Sir Isaac Newton, among others. Amidst a world of music discovery marked by words and logic, the creators of Guitarati wanted to come up with something that did not bind users with tag clouds or 1-10 rating systems, but allowed them to easily find music that others have 'felt' the same about.
Musical notes can elicit diverse emotions and each emotion can be mapped to a color. So when someone is looking for soothing music, they may be more likely to pick softer colors and in the same way, softer-colored music. In the same vein, Guitarati users can follow their instinct through 'color maps' and quickly find music they actually like. While they listen to a song, they can mark it with various colors that come to their mind. Each song thus has a dominant color, resulting from collective color markings.
Users can listen to high-quality full-length songs or free, 30 second high-quality samples. They pay 1 cent for each full-length song streaming, and these cents get deducted from the download price if / when they decide to download the song.
Guitarati provides multiple revenue streams for bands and labels, as they get paid for song downloads as well as streaming. They decide the price of their music and retain 75% of the earnings. Record labels can manage their entire roster and earnings easily through a single dashboard. Artists can upload their unsigned as well as released albums. The website is free to use and there are no hosting or registration fees. Guitarati also aims to offer a plethora of unconventional tools to the artists and labels to promote and sell their music.
The site is currently inviting bands and record labels to upload their music for sale. A public launch is scheduled for the middle of March. The music will be offered in DRM-free MP3 format for maximum portability.
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