US company Smule has attracted more than 125m people to its music-making apps, including karaoke app Sing! and instrumental apps Guitar! and Magic Piano. Now it’s hoping to turn that community into a web-based social network called Smule Nation, where people can listen to one another’s performances and follow one another’s profiles, which span all the company’s apps. Smule tells VentureBeat that activity is growing, with Sing! generating more than 20,000 performances every hour, and Magic Piano 50,000. According to CEO Jeff Smith: “A lot of the content is pretty horrible. But some of it is really good. If we get enough people curating it, commenting, rating it, then the best stuff rises to the top. What’s fun about it is that it is all pretty authentic. It’s raw. It’s like YouTube. It’s like a new radio channel. And that’s fun.” Smule as the new YouTube may be a stretch, but the community is worth watching.
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