Turning snap judgments into fresh tunes

Malcolm Gladwell has argued that vital information can be gleaned from snap judgments, e.g., "Hey, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that, it's probably full of questionably substantiated pseudoscience". Empowering your musical snap judgments, SoundOff.fm.

Just launched by a pair of lifelong friends & music aficionados, SoundOff.fm's a fresh discovery site built around forcing users to make lighting-quick, "Pepsi Challenge"-style judgments based on 20-second clips uploaded by independent artists who dream of one day becoming dependent artists.

Register either directly or via Facebook, select a genre, and start voting in either "Fair Shake" mode, which pits two artists against each other and invites you to learn more about them once you've made your choice, or "Snap Judgment", in which you cycle through as many battles as possible in two minutes with the option to dig deeper at the end, which Christopher Walken had to do before finding his Watch in The Throne.

Voting earns credits (as does correctly pegging trending tracks) that can be exchanged for downloads of complete songs, or magnanimously bestowed upon your favorite artists as tips, which they in turn can use to score further promotion on the site, likely undermining your other tip of "stop giving away your music for free".

Should you discover someone particularly to your liking, you can also put credits towards "unlocking" said artist, the achievement of which grants you access to all of their uploaded tracks, as well as all of their future music, though no doubt bands will be upset you didn't get the aforementioned Tipping Point.