OwlMusicSearch.com - Find Music through Music

The problem with Last.fm’s ‘Similar Artists’ feature is that they are hardly ever similar to the artist you wanted to hear in the first time, in so as much as it frequently is the case that you may like artists that play very different genres and styles. Thus is why the launch of OwlMusicSearch.com is just a reason for celebration: this site allows you to search music using music. Let me explain myself a bit better: in the first place you need to register as a user in the site, and after that’s done, you use the site to choose one song in mp3 format from your music folder, use the media editing tool to select the part of the song you prefer, and then let the Music Owl find tunes that are similar to the part of the song you are in the mood to hear. You can preview –prehear, really— the songs and if that is what you were looking for, you go ahead and purchase it from the site, as you do from iTunes and similar sites.

“Owl Music Search compares your favorite songs to thousands of others to find similar songs for you to listen to, enjoy, and purchase”.

The reason why this site could become a killer startup is that it tackles a concrete need, which is to trace objective similarity, and not automated or user-defined, which is more readily available from similar audio sites, and prone to fail to produce interesting results. OwlMusicSearch.com really lets you find the kind of work you like, by using that very same music you like, without having to type in stuff, tag or really do anything other than select a song you like.

Having only mp3’s to choose from seems a bit restricted in my opinion. What about other frequent (though hideous) formats, like the ever-present .wma? If users need to convert their files to an extension this site supports, it doesn’t make it too user-friendly, does it? How will they see to this issue?