At Contrastream.com, indie music fans and musicians can share information about independent music, hype their favorites, and discover new artists.
Any member can submit an indie album to Contrastream, which currently focuses on three genres: indie rock, underground hip-hop, and indie electronic. The community – not the music media – filters out the best albums, since the most-hyped ones appear on the front page of the site. You can also browse through Fresh Albums (those climbing the ranks and seeing a lot of activity from members), Upcoming, and New Releases. Members can ‘hype’ or ‘drop’ and album, make comments, share with friends, or follow links to the artist’s MySpace or webpage (which is where you can actually listen to samples of an album). If you like an album, Contrastream will suggest similar albums you might enjoy. There is a community discussion forum still lacking much by way of activity, but it shows potential with such thread topics as “Upcoming Concerts,” “Best Album of 2007,” and “What’s the Best Indie Magazine?”
ContraStream.com In Their Own Words
“Contrastream is a new way to find indie music by having the indie community take over the role usually held by journalists/reviewers; who have had control over filtering music (and deciding what’s worth listening to). Usually the best way to find music is from word of mouth and this is a way to hear those recommendations from a community of indie fans instead of just a few friends (or pretentious reviews)… Everyone now has a voice in filtering the good from the bad and by leveraging the power of crowds we can improve the standard of music we listen too. We believe the success of albums should be measured by the quality of the music not marketing budgets.”
Why ContraStream.com It Might Be A Killer
Independent artists are always looking for ways to promote their music, so they may like this site for making it easy to share albums and bring together a community of indie-minded music consumers. Likewise, indie music fans will enjoy the mainstream-free atmosphere (you can even flag an album as “mainstream!”), the range of small-time artists featured, and the potential is there for good indie music discussion in the forums.
Some Questions About ContraStream.com
A banner across the top of Contrastream.com announces “Big Update! We’ve added audio, new profiles and more,” however I could not find anywhere on the site to actually listen to music. If this feature currently exists, it is fairly hidden and the site should make it easier to figure out. If such a feature is not already in place or in the works, it seems users might get frustrated with constantly having to link to outside pages to actually hear the indie albums being hyped. 
