Any music lover can attest to the fact that the internet has done great things in terms of accessibility to new artists and their music; thanks to the likes of YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Itunes, Spotify, Vimeo, Rdio, Pandora and everything else in between, it’s now easier than ever to find great music.

The problem though, is that with so many different websites, platforms, and music players, organising all those tunes can be a real bitch. Organising all those bookmarks, Facebook suggestions, YouTube mash-ups, and general music tabs can be a nightmare.

Cue new French website Whyd. From the people who brought us baguettes, striped shirts, and funny moustaches comes the answer to everyone’s online music organising woes.

The invite-only, streamlined website allows users to add music from any online platform making combining all your music bookmarks and sources easy as pie. Once you’ve found a song you want to add you simply enter it in on the website, or automatically add it using a downloadable widget on your browser. The music then gets converted into Whyd’s own special music-playing device, allowing users to create playlists from their web hotspots. “We intend to be a social network built around music, where new music lovers collect and share tracks that touch them” – Co-founder Gilles Poupardin

Though originally launching last November with its music bookmarking functionality, Whyd has since expanded to incude a music discovery and recommendation service between its expanded user base, essentially becoming a music-based social network in the process, including a ‘follow’ feature a la Twitter and subscribe to others music streams and playlists.

It’s also got a clever little function that virtually shuffles all the music of everyone you follow in a music discovery feature akin to Pandora’s, making finding new artists and bands to your tastes even easier.

Selling itself not as a music player but rather another form of social networking, Whyd co-founder Gilles Poupardin is adamant that they’re not in direct competition with any of their contemporaries telling ItechPost: “We do not intend to be a full service music consumption destination but rather a social network built around music, where new music lovers collect and share tracks that touch them,” says Poupardin.

“We see that today, people discover music on Whyd and then add it to Spotify or whatever service they use for offline access, even though it happens frequently that the music is not (nor will ever be) on Spotify,” he adds.

The Whyd co-founder tells TechCrunch that the recently implemented music recommendation service is the engine that will drive its expansion, “we worked just as hard to make it effective at recommending other similar people for you to subscribe to even if you are new to the site”, says Poupardin. “Obviously the more tracks you add the better, but it should still give you good results if you add at least three songs.”

Unlike other popular locations for music consumption, such as streaming services like Spotify or Deezer, Whyd doesn’t have to deal with nasty licensing restrictions, as the content isn’t being made or uploaded by them, simply referred to as a bookmarking utility (clever little Europeans!)Unlike other popular locations for music consumption… Whyd doesn’t have to deal with nasty licensing restrictions, as the content isn’t being made or uploaded by them…

This means Whyd potentially skirts the entire licensing and royalty issues that have landed giants like Pandora and MySpace in hot water with record labels, the former getting involved in a messy court dispute with American royalty bodies and being heavily criticised by all manner of music-makers in the process; while the recently re-launched MySpace was slammed by the independent music sector as “regressive and outdated” for their refusal to acknowledge their illegitimate use of licensed music on the site; saying that they’ll only respond to take-down notices for individual cases rather than clean up shop.

Whyd’s innovative approach to online music-sharing and social networking based discovery is a novel one, which could see it rise as a nice alternative to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, who are both looking at introducing deeper music functionality.

Mark Zuckerberg’s ubiquitous networking website is undergoing a major design overhaul to its core news feed that will introduce a new ‘Music Feed’, which could just end up being an inadvertent stream of commercials for Spotify. While Twitter is plotting a music service which could launch before the month is out after reportedly buying up Aussie-founded music aggregate site We Are Hunted for an undisclosed fortune.

Take a look at the Whyd introductory video in the baner, and head to Whyd.com if you want to score an invite to the music service.

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