I've spent some time going through SoundUnwound, the new Wikipedia-like music encyclopedia created by IMDb and Amazon.com. The site allows users to create and edit pages for artists, albums songs and labels (you can log in with your Amazon.com user ID and password). Unlike a typical Wikipedia entry for an artist, album or song, the pages at SoundUnwound are so far sparse or completely blank -- and sometimes far more poorly written than a typical Wikipedia entry. Radiohead's entry is fine, for example, while Robert Earl Keen's entry is paltry. Since the site was only recently launched, so I imagine the quality and scope of the entries will be greatly improved over time.

In terms strictly of usability, SoundUnwound has a lot to offer. Along with text entries are YouTube videos, external website links and easy-to-browse, comprehensive discographies pulled from Amazon.com's database. It succeeds in offering the quick artist history that makes Wikipedia so valuable for research. An album page has a list of the tracks and the ability to stream a clip or purchase the track at Amazon.com. I have not run across a buy button for a complete album, and purchasing the CD requires navigating to an Amazon.com page. The genre pages benefit from Amazon.com purchase history by offering a selection of top ranked titles. (If you're curious, check out the pages for Latin, shoegaze, bebop or doom metal.) Hopefully some serious sub-genre wonks will fill out those pages well. The artist timeline page is a nice feature, although it is not contained within the main artist page.

The main differences between SoundUnwound and Wikipedia are the business model and the motivations of the users. SoundUnwound has advertisements -- currently the main page has only a single ad, for a mortgage company, near the bottom of the page -- that will contrast with Wikipedia's ad-free, volunteer-driven ethos. Amazon.com is a for-profit company, which means SoundUnwound could miss out on the unpaid crowdsourcing idealism.

How much money can be had in this sort of operation? It could probably amount to a considerable bit of revenue eventually. There are some companies that run a similar operation and try to subsist mainly on affiliate fees. In this case, Amazon.com gets the best of both worlds -- sales from page traffic without payouts to an affiliate.

More than money, at least for the first year or two, SoundUnwound can help Amazon.com serve a greater purpose: Become further ingrained in music fans' shopping habits and build awareness around its MP3 store. For download buyers, Amazon.com is far less familiar than is iTunes. This may be a good strategy to help with that.

For more commentary on SoundUnwound, read posts at Listening Post, Motley Fool and Lifehacker.