AniBlurbs (Column)

Every once in a while something comes along that just… Works.

It can be a product or a service that manages to captivate you just for its sheer brilliance. Not by throwing around zillions of options and other complicated stuff, but by being functional and simple.

Really simple.

What’s even more rare to discover is a concept that is -in your eyes- so special that it needs to be heard, seen and talked about. Directly.

That something just came along for me a few minutes ago and I just had to share my thoughts on it and what this means for you, your product or service and your organization.

In this case it’s a website for people that like to dabble with producing (electronic) music, either as a bedroom-producer or as a pro. As some of you may or may not know, I’m quite the audiophile, so when I read about SoundCloud.com and their waveform-annotation concept on SignalvsNoise (37Signals Blog) this afternoon I just had to go and check it out. #Serendipity soon followed :)

Note that I was at first purely and only interested by the waveform comment stream idea, wherein you see a visual of a WAV-file and friends or collaborators can leave time based comments on the spot, so the artist gets feedback on exactly which parts of a song sound cool and which parts need, say, a little more mastering to make the bass come out louder etc., etc. This can be shared privately or made public. Already big EDM names such as Funk D’void are using this service and having worked in this industry myself I can assure you that it will be picked up very soon by their respective followers.

What struck me as a huge surprise was not only the user friendliness of the site, both in design and in UI, but also the way the site communicates with me as a prospect / first-time user.

If I was a person who happened to be inexperienced with browsing the internet or using apps, this site would be happy to just gently guide me through the whole process, from the beginning. The funny thing is, the very core audience of this service is very tech- and web savvy!

Where to begin? The size of the fonts are big so I don’t need to squint to see them clearly, the color scheme and lay-out are clutter free and “logical”; the user is guided through a flowing process. In short: the usability is tops and I haven’t even started to use the service that this site was built for! (Sometimes you don’t need to or simply can’t rely purely on data; in such cases some common sense & gut feeling can help a long way)

Now the thing that really was the icing on the cake for me was that when I went to my account preferences, it gave me two relevant fields to fill in: My Discogs.com account and my MySpace artist account.

Bang! “The devil is in the detail”. These guys and girls are “in the know”. In that instant moment you just know that this site hasn’t been made or thought up by cynical marketers in conjunction with focus groups, but instead that it was crafted by people who’re obsessed with music just like me and with a lot of LOVE and attention to detail.

Aesthetically and conceptually everything fits together. Make no mistake; insiders recognize this kind of dedication and true devotion from miles away: in other words it’s authentic.

Take away: You can’t create authenticity by pushing a button or hiring a nifty PR spokesperson or consulting firm. You either are perceived by an audience as authentic or not, despite the fact that some marketers and self-proclaimed gurus would have the more gullible amongst us believe otherwise…

If you already know this, then why is that you’re still doing the opposite?