By Kira Grunenberg

Music is an incredibly personal medium of expression, so it’s unsurprising that listeners’ tastes are often polarized. We live in an age when our love for and opinions about music are publicly expressed by “likes,” and “favorites,” which consequently goes hand-in-hand with the concept of music discovery.

Music charts have been around for the better part of the last century, lead principally by our friends at Billboard. While these charts have clearly stood the test of time and have made a mark on the industry as a whole, a newcomer to the ranking scene, Upbeat, is hoping to stir up how we interact with these rankings by combining flexible nomination with online-based interaction.

Based in California and launched only three weeks ago, this desktop and forthcoming iOS and Android app is already gaining an excited crowd, filling Upbeat’s database with plenty of cool, lesser-known songs for users to hear and vote on everyday.

The concept of use and browsing is effortlessly easy:

1) Sign up and pick a username.

2) Share SoundCloud tracks of your choice to the database.

3) Designate the song in the genre most appropriate for categorizing.

4) Gain “karma points” as people up-vote your submissions and watch your user number go up as you become a trendsetter and tastemaker!

And that’s the gist behind powering the Upbeat system.


Dig a little deeper into Upbeat, and registered users can personalize their browsing and voting experiences by ranking songs from sub-genres of song pools. A neatly compiled sidebar player includes a Twitter share link and a comment box.  Play counts add additional context when mulling over voting, and Amazon buy links will perhaps boost artists’ sales from within the platform. The main browser column lists songs based on genre qualifiers and shows recent and popular songs as well.

The interface itself is clean, bright, and minimal.  It won’t win any design contests, but since Upbeat is all about forming musical opinions, a flashy appearance would deter from the simplicity of browsing and voting. The link for submitting music is one of the prominent items on the site, which is great, since the top of a page is usually reserved for the most important content and functions. Essentially everything you need to get started on Upbeat is clearly visible, even if you haven’t signed up.

One weakness of Upbeat is a lack of genre options on the home page. Unregistered users only see filters for pop, electronic, urban, rock, and metal, and a sub-genre option is only available once you’ve signed up. Even though the average user might not delve too deeply into categorization, it is surprising that other essential genres like country, rap, or classical would not be included as well, even prior to sub-genre filtering.

The only other rocky element is in the submission process. While Upbeat currently aligns with SoundCloud and assures legality in its service, there seems to be a discrepancy in what are unofficial uploads. After browsing some of the songs, there are in fact some tracks that are clearly not from official band accounts.

Of course, these items are minor and may be evaluated and adjusted by Upbeat as the platform grows. What Upbeat presently offers certainly stands to compete with other voter-powered sites, and it never hurts to have another brand shining a light on artists outside of the mainstream.

You can sign up to start voting for music on Upbeat now, via their official app page, as well as Like their official Facebook page, follow their blog on Tumblr and/or follow them on Twitter too.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1

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