Jazz Odyssey

Mashable is speculating that Amazon owned IMDB may be gearing up to start a music-oriented social network called SoundUnwound.

While there is not shortage of music-focused social networks out there such as Mog and Last.fm, a social network built on a robust, collaborative database structure like IMDB, combined with Amazon’s rating systems, collaborative filtering and one-click purchasing of digital and physical product would be a force to reckon with. In addition, the ability to leverage the millions of pre-existing commerce relationships that Amazon has already forged could put such a destination on the radar quickly and efficiently.

Amazon has been rather quiet in their digital music rollout, though recent articles have pointed to a large deal with Pepsi set to kickoff at the 2008 Super Bowl.

Amazon has achieved a hyper-efficieny in handling physical goods–a process that squeezes the most out of the razor thin margins in the discounted physical goods business, and additional efficiencies in this area will offer very limited upside. The next logical step for Amazon is to ramp up their digital business–they’ve been quietly distributing digital video for the last year plus, their proprietary Kindle ebook reader is their first step for digital books, and the Pepsi initiative is their first high-profile initiative for digital music.

Plenty of companies are rooting for Amazon to take a bite out of the Apple, and one can’t help but feel that any perceptions that the Amazon giant is sleeping in the digital space are about to be shattered.