I tried out the music service “Beatrobo,” where you create a robot avatar and listen to the same music (YouTube videos) with your friends and introduce music to each other.
The avatar on the right has a little too much flavor …
This “Beatrobo” is a social music community that was just released on December 20th of last year. From its initial release, users gathered explosively by word of mouth, and also already over 170,000 users “like” the Facebook page. The service came out of Japan, but the site itself is published in English, so there are lots of foreign users. The original CEO founder is Hiroshi Asaeda from Melting Dots, [J] who have a business connection with Second Life and worked on management of the Japanese version of the German avatar service “Weblin.”
One major key point of “Beatrobo” is its “asynchronous” feature. Although it says “together with friends,” it’s not necessary to be logged in simultaneously. Also new users don’t need to go through the registering process, they can use it easily from their Facebook account. When you log in your Facebook account and friend information are automatically transferred.
When you first login, it starts out with the avatar creation screen. However the avatar design is simple, so you just choose eyes, mouth, and color combination.
When avatar creation is finished your room appears. YouTube video appears in the backstage. The interesting thing here is that Beatrobo’s system automatically makes a recommended playlist based on the number of “Like”s on Facebook. However it doesn’t completely search for music based on your own taste, but it’s quite nice as a starting point. Also it simultaneously displays avatars of people using Beatrobo via your Facebook friends, so even though it’s asynchronous, it seems as if someone is there with you.
This is a list of Facebook friends using Beatrobo (names have been erased). It’s also possible to call someone’s avatar to your room.
Up to 5 people can be displayed including yourself in one room. You and your friends’ playlists are played back in order, and as each avatar in turn takes the stage, the continuous motion in fine detail is adorable. Also can vote “LOVE” for videos that you enjoy (just in the same was as “Like” on Facebook). When you vote LOVE, points are added to users streaming that video, but at the moment it doesn’t particularly seem to be in use. In the future if you could buy avatar items or room items with these points, the virtual space type of play would be interesting, don’t you think?
Translation authorized by VSmedia
Chiho Komoriya