DropPlay Mixes YouTube, Facebook and Pandora

DropPlay, a new music service launched yesterday, combines the social nature of Facebook with the free streaming YouTube policy, and throws in a suggestion service like Pandora’s to boot. The service lets you search for any song, which streams as a YouTube player, and create and save playlists. The company claims it’s the “free online version of iTunes.”

DropPlay can be used directly from the web, which beats other music streaming competitors that require downloads, like Muziic. And even though other players like Seeqpod have Facebook applications, DropPlay is the first to fully integrate social networking on its frontpage. Here’s how:

When you visit DropPlay for the first time, it asks you to connect to your Facebook account, and adds a folder to your sidebar that displays all the music your friends have added to their own playlists. You can also send songs to specific friends by simply typing their name in a box underneath the YouTube player.

The social music startup is still fresh, and rough around the edges. But they haven’t taken any funding, which means that the service is free of advertisements or other monetization efforts. Co-founder Christopher Pedregal puts it like this:

“We’re really just trying to make it the best music player and sharing experience. The way we envision it, people could have it open in a window, listening to it as they work all day.”

We all like to tell our friends about our favorite music, and the seamless sharing feature on DropPlay is especially welcome. Give it a try, while it’s still devoid of the major music industry’s grasping tentacles.

Source: VentureBeat