Hello, my name is Alec; I just graduated High School and right now I am working to make LoudCloud profitable. At its core LoudCloud is a service that allows users to remotely store their music and enjoy it from any browser, but that’s nothing new and certainly not what I think sets LoudCloud apart from other services.

LoudCloud is my answer to two problems I consistently run into: finding new music and playing enough good music during mundane tasks like homework. My answers to those two problems are what I think set LoudCloud apart from other services.

Right now the only thing that music startups share between their users are the users playlists. In my opinion sharing playlists is certainly better than nothing but in the pursuit of new music a playlist seems misguided. After all, when I’m hunting for some new jams I would rather skip the process of scanning someone else’s song grouping and just be alerted of the new things they themselves have downloaded. For example, I have a friend named Ben (friends call him Bean) and he is really into reggae. I occasionally delve into the reggae genre but not enough to sift through Pandora’s awesome collection to find something I really like. So if Bean and I were to have LoudCloud then each time he downloaded a new reggae song it would show up in my news feed, much like an update shows up on twitter. Then when I go to check my news feed I can click on the new music Bean has downloaded and hear a preview of the song, just to make sure I really like it before I download it. In a nutshell, LoudCloud attempts to harness the musical knowledge of friends and make it available to everyone.

In my opinion music can make even the most mundane, awful experiences bearable, I think most people would agree with that (right?). For me those tasks are chores, homework, and long drives: that kind of stuff. Usually I turn to the radio or Pandora to facilitate this need for music, but there are always a few rogue songs that I just don’t like. I always wonder about how much better the music would be if one of my friends was the DJ at the radio station or the one supervising my Pandora selection. Right now I think the closest thing to that is Blip.fm, which is an ingenious service; however, Blip.fm still only involves a single friend. Wouldn’t it be better if a group of friends could collaborate and contribute to a single radio station? I think so.  Ergo, I tried to incorporate something like this into LoudCloud. Here’s how it works: you create a radio station and invite your friends to be a part of it. Everyone involved in the radio can submit songs to the song queue, but the only one allowed to manipulate the song queue is the original creator of the radio station. If you’ve ever played Xbox live think of the radio station originator as the party leader and the radio station as the party.

That’s the jist of it. The beta version will be done sometime in August or September. Unfortunately, the service isn’t free but for anyone who signs up during the first month of beta they get their first month free. Also, this is my first crack at anything like this so for the most part I’m just winging it. If you want to help out or have any advice/complaints/comments/ideas, anything! Please don’t hesitate to comment or email me: hello@getloudcloud.com.