It started a year ago with a music Web site membership and an idea. Now two college students, Chris Griffin and Tyler Culley, are making noise with their own Web site, collegeplaylists.com. Griffin said they wanted to create a site that would benefit students at universities where music downloading is banned. Their goal is to provide playlists that will satisfy users with a variety of tastes and needs.

The site isn’t your typical Internet radio site. Griffin said the site has no restrictions on how many songs you can skip, and you can listen to how many songs you want to without penalty.

Collegeplaylists.com has 100 artist playlists and 30 themed playlists to choose from, including a non-stop party playlist and a music video playlist.
Griffin said they haven’t created a search feature yet, but that is something they are looking to finish during the summer. They’re hoping that the feature will make it easier for users to find the artist they like and the playlists the artist is on.

Playlists are updated weekly, along with the “Artist of the Week” section. Griffin said the featured artist each week comes from artists that they want to learn more about or from user suggestions.

Users of the site can go to the suggestions tab and send in ideas for playlists. Griffin said that he and Culley check a few suggestions each day.

The site’s music player, Project Playlist, Inc., pays royalties to performance rights organizations like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. This allows the site to let users listen to music legally and for free.

Griffin and Culley run the entire site by themselves. It’s manageable, but they are looking to employ others in the future, Griffin said.

In the next year, Griffin would like to see collegeplaylists.com become a part of college culture.

The music site has a strong fan base on the social networking site, Facebook. Griffin said that Facebook has been a great networking tool, which has provided collegeplaylists.com with new users and great friends.

Contests have also been a way to expand the user base, Griffin said. Users can expect to see more contests in the future.

Griffin said he and Culley would like new and current users to go out and suggest collegeplaylists.com to all of their friends.