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Musebin: The future of music reviews?

03:08 PM PT, Jan 5 2009

For those who have complained that some of the Pop & Hiss reviews are too long, today is your lucky day. Musebin, a site dedicated solely to tiny album reviews, is up and running.

With a 140-character limit, that means the above two sentences would be too long. The user-driven site allows for only a sentence or two, paring down music reviews to a Twitter or Facebook status update.

For instance, here's a snapshot of three reviews of Kanye West's "808s and Heartbreak:"

Musebin_300

Although the launch of such a site might send fear into the hearts of a music blog with seven contributors, anything that promotes discussion of new music is welcome. Musebin certainly has that promise. At its best, it's a launching pad for users to find out more information. At its worst, Musebin's mini-reviews simply add to the clutter that the site aims to cut through -- there's no need for 25 characters on mid-'90s Weezer albums, after all.

Those who sign up can post reviews as well as sample songs via a music player. They'll also likely face a little social networking crisis, having to decide whether a review is better fit for Twitter, a Facebook status update or Musebin, among others.

Wired's Epicenter has more on Musebin.

--Todd Martens

Screenshot: musebin.com

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I'm working on launching www.suxrulz.com, which has a one-word limit. Sux or Rulz. That should cut through the clutter just fine.

I have another idea for a website: www.heardofithaventheardit.com. Same theory but you're only allowed to comment on albums you haven't heard. "heard it sux." "heard it rulz." That is the future.

You can also clip reviews from other publications and submit them to Musebin. If there's a particularly good 1-liner hiding somewhere in an LA Times review (and I'm sure there are many), you should definitely submit them. All the top 1-liners from each source are aggregated on their own page. For example... http://musebin.com/source/avclub or http://musebin.com/source/pitchfork

Good Lord. The value of critics and criticism is to stimulate thinking and discussion. It's really tough to have a discussion regarding a critique that's 140-characters long.

::sigh::

Oh, and 808s and Heartbreaks rocked. I don't care what anyone says.

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