Hitlantis is a Gorgeous World of Indie Music

Penn Olson features start-ups. Find out more here.

If you’re into music, you got to check out Hitlantis, a Finland-based free-to-listen indie music web start-up.

I’m promoting it with strong reasons. My first on-trial impression was great. After signing up (takes just 30 seconds), you are thrown straight into its music database and greeted by a sea of tiny bubbles in different colors.

Out of curiosity, your mouse pointer would want to dabble them. Each bubble represents a band while its color represents its music genre.

Hitlantis is interactively sleek. You can zoom in or out to get the perfect view of the entire music collection. It’s like an interactive infographic, with thousands of music for users to explore.

The design is great, so is its music. Hitlantis’s music isn’t powered by the likes of Lady Gaga or Rihanna. Instead, Hitlantis offers fresh unsigned music by unsigned bands (Indie music). The more successful a band is, the nearer it is to the center circle.

Hitlantis can also be seen as a middleman who connects Indie bands with enthusiastic music lovers. The bands earn revenue from music sales while users enjoy free indie music when logged on to Hitlantis. The attractive perk for bands is that Hitlantis only takes a 10 percent cut. The rest of the 90 percent goes straight to the band and that makes Hitlantis the world’s most generous band site, according to Co-founder, Timo Poijärvi. To support its operations, Hitlantis earns revenue through advertising, typically flash ads which are displayed at the center circle.

“We’ve been live just six months and we now have over 10,000 registered users,” Co-founder Timo Poijärvi told Penn Olson. “Hitlantis isn’t yet profitable but we aim to breakeven at the end of this year. It all depends on how many bands we can get and China will help us a lot.”

“We’re currently studying the possibilities to launch Hitlantis in Asia. I would love to open our Chinese version of Hitlantis as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let’s hope many Chinese bands will upload their music on Hitlantis” said Poijärvi, when asked about his next strategic move.

Web technology has helped to uncover numerous music talents. Through YouTube, talents like Justin Bieber and Greyson Chance were uncovered. I’m sure Hitlantis would be able to discover some musical gems too.