Frederick, MD-based Qloud (pronounced “cloud”) took the locks off its online social music site a few days ago to open a new chapter in “music discovery.” I met with Mike Lewis, one of the cofounders, a couple of weeks ago here in the Twin Cities. 
Mike grew up in Edina, MN, just about a mile from me, though we hadn’t met till he looked me up on his latest trip home. A veteran of online music, having worked at AOL and Ruckus after college at Dartmouth, he joined with former coworker Toby Mordock to found Qloud, and the pair received funding several months ago. [It’s from a notable source who must remain unnamed, or they’d have to kill me :-)…]
To use Qloud, you download a free plug-in for iTunes (Windows only right now). The site also works with the open-source Songbird player, which has Windows, Linux, and Mac versions [though I can’t find anything about that on the site right now]. “Our key points,” said Lewis, “are these: (1) we make your iTunes experience better by allowing you to organize it using tags, (2) we make it easy to search for new tracks, and (3) we make it easy to keep track of what your friends are listening to.”
Here’s a screen shot of the home page, and three others showing the main views, which are Music, Tags, and People. 
For more, view the Qloud demo here. And here’s the launch press release. Blog coverage has already appeared at GigaOm and Mashable. Qloud was also named Lifehackers Download of the Day on October 11.
Biggest issue for now? Well, on top of the initial bugs that any beta release has to deal with, which Lewis assures me are being dealt with very quickly, is the fact that only a PC version of the plug-in is available right now. “We’re hoping to have the Mac plug-in before the end of the year,” said Lewis. Actually, he told me it’s basically done and working, but it’s the testing that takes time — working the bugs out. “We know we need it and we’re pushing forward.” So hang in there Mac lovers….me included!
But, Hold On — Qloud’s About More Than Sharing Music
“Something we haven’t even talked about yet,” said Lewis, “is that, over time, people develop lots of data in their player – plays, playlists, tags, ratings, etc. And every time they get a new player, they have to start all over. What we hope to be is a repository of metadata for a user’s music. In the future, we’ll let them push their information down to other players and other sites. That’s a big idea that’s coming from Qloud, and I think it’s cool.”
If you’ve ever seen the stats for the number of music players the average online music junkie has already gone through — a number that will only be rising — I think Qloud is onto something here.
Tags: Qloud, iTunes, social music, music discovery
I’ll continue to post a heads up or two about companies who’ll be presenting there over the next few days, and will be blogging onsite as well — starting late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, as the opening session fires up.
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