What’s all this then?

This is an archive of the music community This Is My Jam. From 2011 – 2015, every song posted here was someone’s favorite.

Jam was built by Matt, Han, Andreas and Ralph in London. It was inspired by the fun of playing records with friends (especially if they happened to be 45s from Flashback Records), and chats with friends in the pub about music. Turns out asking people what their current favorite song is (instead of “hey, what kinda music do you like”) leads to two things: better music recommendations and better conversation.

Unlike a lot of other music services at the time, Jam was slow instead of fast. A reaction to real-time tickers, contextless infinite playlists, and social feeds, Jam was a place where you could only post one song at a time. It was a place where music from the past could be celebrated right next to hyped new releases. And instead of a plain text track listing, it was a beautiful full screen adventure.

Incubated by The Echo Nest, Jam grew to become a community of 200,000 music lovers, tastemakers, DJs, musicians, music publications and eventually, new friends. The co-founders took Jam independent and the community went on to post over two million picks. Not just any songs, but favorite songs. All hits, no filler – 500,000 different songs in all. Take a spin through the time-capsule of music or check out some of the curated lists by the community.

By 2015 the online music landscape had shifted dramatically from what it was in 2011, and not only did it create significant challenges for Jam, Jam just didn’t make sense anymore. But there is still this archive if you want to relive the people and the music that made this moment in time.

Flip through the yearbook.



Liner Notes

Jam wouldn’t have lifted off without the hard work and inventiveness of original developers Andreas and Ralph, and contributions from Ben and AanandIFTFOM for life. Thank you to The Echo Nest for giving us our start; Brian, Jim, and Dave, you guys are the very best (and Brian, sorry for stealing your domain).  Love to Anthony and the Hype Machine crew for bouncing many ideas and a sweet integration that helped us get started. Props to Dermot, Mark, Van and Shannon at MTV for giving us work when we needed it the most bootstrapping Jam. Thanks to the friends and mentors who advised along the way; Fred, Anthony, Nat, and to the people who helped us get Proper Business done; Robin and Mia, Gregor and Sachin at Reed Smith, Bruce, Miles and Lou. And to those of you who helped us shape this plan and let us bounce ideas over a drink, you are the #realtalk; Kristen, Joanna, James, Matt, Matthew, Dan, Arkadiy and Sam. Last but not least, thank you to the friends and passionate music fans who have unconditionally jumped on board with all the music projects we’ve ever got involved with (yes even that one) and kicked the tires. There are too many of you to list, but we know who you are. The things we make wouldn’t be as fun or as good without your curiosity, passionate feedback and of course, bug reports ;-)

xoxo,
Matt & Han