MusicHawk Member Blog

How is MusicHawk different than Last.fm?

When we first introduce MusicHawk to music fans sometimes they ask "is it similar to Last.fm?".  Our answer is yes and no. 

• Yes, in the sense that MusicHawk uses a people-powered or community-based approach which is similar to Last.fm's world view on music recommendations (we are probably distant relatives).
• No, in that our way of capturing a fan's music taste is very different. MusicHawk allows fans to participate regardless of how they listen to their music (MP3 on an iPod, MP3 on a computer, Internet radio, radio, satellite radio, CDs, tapes, records, 8 tracks, etc...)  While Last.fm for the most part presumes that their community has the majority of their music in an MP3 format.

How is MusicHawk different than Pandora?

The biggest difference between MusicHawk and Pandora is our "world view" when it comes to music recommendations. MusicHawk believes in using a people-powered approach while Pandora takes a technology-based or technical approach.  Our people-powered or community-based approach helps you to discover new music through people that you trust. Today, this plays out in 2 ways:

1. We make it very easy for you to see what music your friends and fellow fans are into
2. We automatically roll up the collective musical taste of our membership in form of the MusicHawk Charts

Bottom line, we are very intrigued by what music fans are into and we believe the best way to capture this is simply to ask them.  The great part about this approach for us is that we get to know fans all over the world and start to understand the "why" (why i like this band) behind the "what" (what band i like). The why is a very important part of the story line which ads such vibrancy to our growing music community. Don't worry, we are not going to ask everyone to hold hands now :0).

Stay tuned for more features that take our people-powered approach to an even higher level.

How is MusicHawk different than MySpace?

As we go to shows and talk to people online many people ask: "how is MusicHawk different than MySpace?". There are many differences, but today we will focus on 4:

1. We only do music. MySpace does some other things outside of music. Since we focus 100% on music we hope you will have a richer music experience.
2. We are an independent company. MySpace is owned by a very large corporation.
3. We have heard from our members that our website is a lot easier to use.
4. Friends are private. The idea is that your public identity on MusicHawk consist of the music you are into not the number of friends you have. When you login to MusicHawk you can then see your list of Friends and your Friend's Friends (fof?). With that said, there are many benefits of inviting friends to join MusicHawk but using them to make your friend count higher isn't one of them.
   

One important side note. As a part of our Music-Info-Hub we attempt to link to all of the best music websites so you will find that we link to specific MySpace band pages quite often.