Singboard beta launches: First impressions

At 500Startups demo day last month, there were a few standouts, chief among them being Singboard. The site stole the show and some momentary media attention for its massive improvement on the Web-meets-karaoke game.

Singboard has launched its invite beta site, and at first glance it’s both impressive and lacking. At the moment, users can only sing along to the tunes of Lady Gaga, and the record function is currently unavailable. There’s an icon labeled “karaoke” which we assume turns the lyrics on and off, and while selecting it yields a notice the feature isn’t ready yet, the words still pop up after, giving you a guide through the Lady Gaga song of your choice.

We’re mildly surprised that Singboard decided to go even somewhat public without one feature: The ability to connect your karaoke session with your friends’. Singboard is undoubtedly going to have a place in your living room, competing with the likes of Wii karaoke games. It provides high-quality music videos and social networking integration – not to mention it’s incredibly easy to sign up and use. But we also imagine that this is going to have a strong virtual audience, connecting friends and strangers who want to show off their vocal skills. It’s definitely reminiscent of Turntable.fm… or at least it will be.

For the time being, it’s a soft launch that simply provides a glimpse at where the site is going. And given some of the reactions coming from Twitter, it’s going to be a hit. Even without a strong song catalog (Singboard is taking votes for new artists – Adele is currently winning most requests) or fully-functioning features, users are generally impressed.

Most importantly, Singboard is polished and eye-pleasing, unlike most karaoke Web applications. And given that it’s a beta launch, we aren’t expecting the site to pull out all the bells and whistles yet. So here’s what we want to see from Singboard, and what would spell success for the site:

• Connect via Internet to sing with friends, or even include a Chatroullette-like function to sing with randomly-selected users.
• A recording function for voice, as well as one for video.
• Eventually, we could imagine Singboard integrating with Facebook to use the application within the social networking site.