mflow, a new MP3 download service, knows how hard it is to stand out in the a la carte crowd these days, so it’s launching with a twist. Anyone who joins can recommend songs to others, and if people buy tracks based on your picks, you get paid for it. Read on to find out how to turn the tables on the iTunes economy.
mflow is a new UK music start up that hopes to crash the party by offering a social networking twist to its store. Download the mflow app for PC or Mac, and you can set yourself a profile. You can then follow and be followed by others, Twitter style, and you’re able to share both the songs you’ve bought, and those that you recommend, even if you haven’t bought them just yet.
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Tracks and albums on mflow (which has Sony and Universal catalogues right now along with a bunch of indies, with Warner coming soon, and negotiations with EMI right now) are priced at a fairly standard 79p/£7.99 but here’s the twist: if someone buys through your recommendation link you get 20 percent of the price.
Five buys this way will essentially get you a free song, so if you’re smart, and have superb taste, you could build up a whole catalogue of legal downloads on flow without paying a penny.
We were shown the mflow app in action on a PC, and it works very fast, with snappy searches and downloads, and a clean layout, with profiles in a column on the right hand side. You can preview 30 seconds of any song before you buy, but if a friend recommends it, you can listen to its entirety once before buying too.
mflow should only get smarter too, as we were shown clever news artist pages which will show fans of a band. Groups can then reach out to fans and reward them with freebies this way, and big names such as Temper Trap and Ash will use the platform when the feature arrives next month.
Mflow is currently in private beta, but a wider launch is expected in the first quarter of next year, and you can sign up to get on the waiting list for an invite right now over at mflow.com. If you’re tired of Apple’s Genius function recommending you Jack Johnson all the time, the human touch will make it well worth the look.
Out Q1 2010 | £varies | mflow
