Helsinki, Finland-based Hitlantis launched its iPhone app, providing independent artists and music fans a new way to find one another. The application features a zoomable map that highlights the artists attracting the most streams of their music with graphic bubbles filtered by color according to genres; by size, determined by the amount of plays received from music fans around the globe.
Hitlantis is actually a web-based service where artists can upload their music for it to be discovered in the sea of bubbles that makes up the “Hitlantis graphical universe.” The end result is a novel “user interface paradigm” which merges visual exploration of content with consumer recommendation mechanics.
All said, we were not surprised to learn that Hitlantis was founded by a collective of former record company executives and developers who came together with a mission to help artists get additional exposure. In that sense, the company pitches its value proposition for indie artists to “pick up where MySpace left off.”
The initial version of the Hitlantis iPhone app is targeted to music lovers who can use it to follow and help their favorite Hitlantis bands. In the future, artists will get their own version of the app that will include some powerful tools to advance their position both in the Hitlantis universe and in their career too.
Hitlantis (FREE) [iTunes link]