I’ve been catching up with some episodes of The 404 and they mentioned this relatively new website that lets you create a social environment for listening to music. Outloud.fm allows you to create a chatroom with the added bonus of anyone invited able to upload music to a collaborative playlist. The queue of music then plays out for everyone at the same time.

I love this concept.

I’m no music afficionado. I like what I like and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, Mr C and I have been known to have the odd Friday night conversation about music, the kind that starts with Glastonbury and ends with the knowledge that Sergeant Wilson was the father of one of the Wombles.

Talking about music can be fun, and Outloud.fm seems to be a new way to do this. With the introduction of our Sidepodfilmclub over on Sidepodcast, we discovered that watching films together can be a great experience. It made me ponder the idea of a site allowing that kind of thing on a larger scale.

This seems to be the music equivalent of that. Being face to face is hard to beat, but this solves some problems such as “Oh, I should have brought this, I left it at home” or “We are all living quite far apart, is it worth a plane ride to share a song” or “I just don’t like going outside.”

I can’t begin to imagine the legality of things like this, given the uploading and sharing of music with no sign of payment, but strictly as a concept, I love it.