Brooklyn’s 8 music discovery sites

KMusic Box is the eighth venture in the music discovery sector we’ve seen come to light in Brooklyn. Apparently, finding sweet tracks is a gigantic challenge today. See our list below.
Matt Watkajtys launched the company, which opened for business last week. “Why can’t music be an experience again?” Watkajtys asked the crowd in Dumbo, during the Pitch Night for the Made in New York Media Center Spring Demo Day.
Previously, Watkajtys founded a company in 2011 that curated festival films for streaming online, according to his LinkedIn page, in a model that sounds very similar to Vyer Films, which closed down recently.
KMusic’s model is based on curation — four albums per package, picked by a panel of music fans with a shared aesthetic. The company will release packages at something like a monthly rate. Packages come in different formats, depending on how much of an audiophile you are. Regular folks can get a good deal on four albums for $10, digital only. It’s $15 for lossless files, and $33.33 for vinyl and digital. It costs $45 for all of that plus codes to gift digital files to friends.
KMusic is taking something of a retro stance on music. Watkajtys is a big vinyl booster, pointing out that vinyl is surging in popularity again. “Singles are great, but we think albums should be king,” he said.
It’s striking just how many Brooklyn ventures we’ve found that are making their bet not on selling music or making music but just in helping people find music they might like. Here’s who we’ve written about so far:

1. Hype Machine, the elder of music discovery in Brooklyn. The company aggregates posts on music blogs to find which tracks are getting buzz.
2. Gigit, a platform for booking bands for live events and giving communities a mechanism to choose which acts to solicit. We wrote about the company’s Fort Greene-based founder.
3. AppLoud, music discovery through live event samples. We covered the company after it appeared at New York Tech Meetup.
4. A Song A Day, by Shannon Byrne. It’s a side project where Byrne and friends personally pick out music for users based on information they give her. She blew up on Product Hunt.
5. SoundFriend: Hot tracks by a committee of “music leaders.” We saw them at #NotAPitch Night.
6. MoodSnap, an emotionally driven playlist generator. Now a service built into Spotify Premium. We discovered the company at a Music Tech Meetup.
7. BoomBox FM, an email-driven service where indie artists pay a modest amount to give away their music to the startup’s devotees. The company is wrapping up its time in an accelerator now.