BBC launches the Musicubes

BBC Radio 1 has recently launched a new project called the Musicubes. Being behind a firewall I couldn’t experience it at full, but looking at the interface and analyzing the concept it appears to be very interesting. As stated in the copy “Musicubes are a new way to share and express your musical taste online. Put a Musicube tower wherever you have a webspace or send it to a friend to show them what your’re made of“. Basically it is a music player you can customize according to your tastes, and then you can share it with your friends and with the visitors of your blog.

The choice of using Real player is somehow questionable, and probably will limit the diffusion of the Musicubes, but I also understand Real is the technology usually used by the BBC. Also, you can select only your favourite genres, but you can’t actually pick the artists you want to listen to. Not a big deal, but certainly a point in which the service can be improved, especially if the benchmark is either Pandora or Last.fm. In any case, a very good concept, taking advantage of blogs to generate awareness and word of mouth around BBC radio, and also a very good idea for a music interface.

This is, for example, my own Musicube:

Agency Republic is behind the Musicubes idea.