Wonder.fm aims to surface most played SoundCloud tracks

Wonder.fm aims to surface most played SoundCloud tracks


Stephen Phillips, co-founder of music discovery platform We Are Hunted, has unveiled a new website called Wonder.fm.

We Are Hunted was started back in 2009 as a way to surface the best new music out there using a combination of data and a semantic analysis of people’s comments on music. The company was beloved for its no-frills approach and a clean, easy to navigate design.

When it was acquired by Twitter towards the end of 2012, We Are Hunted was set to become the backbone for the social network’s first major foray into music. Unfortunately the entire project was shelved when Twitter Music failed to entice the general public. The reasons were multiple including the lack of full-track streaming (no SoundCloud integration) unless you were subscribed to a premium streaming service, the fact that users had to download a separate app in order to take advantage of the service and a fairly complicated system of hashtags.

Now Phillips has gone back to his roots with Wonder.fm; another clean, beautiful service which focuses all of its attention on album art and allows users to seamlessly navigate the 99 most-played tracks on SoundCloud.

At the moment the website consists of a single list, but the aim is to expand into more genres and into mobile at a later stage (as reported by GigaOm). 

Wonder.fm stands out because it presents music in an uncomplicated way, just like We Are Hunted did back in 2009. The fact that it is entirely based on SoundCloud tracks speaks volumes about the company’s influence in the music space but also about the fact that even today SoundCloud is not an easy service to navigate for a first time user that wants to discover new sounds. Wonder.fm can still provide an important jumping-off point to those who want to find new music without barriers of any kind. It's no-frills music discovery.


(Andrea Leonelli)