Interesting concept.

John Shirley invited me to "Blip.fm". I went, and listened to some of his music that he had chosen, and it was nice. John's in love, and can be excused if his chosen music tends to be more, uh, treacly, lately. ;)

On a whim, I opened my own account, and tried to see what it's about.

Actually, it's pretty simple.

After having registered, you search for songs and albums and bands that you like, and the site searches for them on the net. It seems to lean quite a bit on YouTube, but that's not quite half of the source. You can preview each song, and then remark about each song that you select.

Other people then come across your "radio station" and vote on whether they like your format. The more votes you get, the higher in the ratings you will be, which presumably will bring in more listeners, and more votes, if that's your thing. More votes for you means more credits to vote on other people's broadcast tightcasts. You start with ten credits.

The bonus for the company running it seems to be that they don't actually have to host the music, and get to post ads on the far right side, and they get kickbacks from iTunes and Amazon, who each get a link for each song played.

If nothing else, it builds a stable of music that I can listen to, when away from my music at home or my mp3 player. It may --I say again may-- be feasible as a business plan. I was quite sorry when the Yahoo radio station went away, and haven't started playing with Pandora.