Update: I have a few invites to share to the beta. If you want one let me know.

On Friday’s Webcurios newsletter, Matt posted a link to Record Club – a new social site focused on music curation and discovery. I’m as reluctant to join a new social network as anyone, but when I got access to the beta on the weekend, I spent a surprising amount of time on it. Here’s my (public!) profile (add me if you join!):

It’s kind of Goodreads for music, if Goodreads wasn’t stuck in 2014. You build your ‘Top 5’ records, you can set 5 more to ‘On Rotation’, you can follow other users, artists and labels, mark releases as ‘heard’ and rate them. You can also create custom lists, like and comment on things that other users do. Here’s a custom (public!) list I made to test it out:

It isn’t built to allow you play the music on the site (again, like Goodreads). I don’t think that’s a downside.

It looks from their Instagram that the site only launched a few weeks ago, and it’s impressive. The user interface is slick and intuitive – within about 10 minutes I had a pretty solid profile page and more or less had the platform figured out. The only drawback is that they draw their catalog from a service called MusicBrainz, which makes Goodreads look positively cutting-edge. It doesn’t have all the artists and releases I was looking to add, and although it looks like you can add a release through MusicBrainz manually, I haven’t tried it.

Regardless, it’s a strong first impression. Years ago for work I was part of a team tasked with building a social network. It was really hard, and we sucked, and it failed (though I think it was doomed from the start). Good for the Record Club team.

If you somehow found yourself on my website, you’re probably exactly the type of user they’re looking for. I was let into the beta in less than 48 hours, so you likely won’t wait long.

Sign up here.

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