Taylor Hicks, winner of American Idol season six, is currently trying to resurrect his career by appearing in a Broadway production of Grease. The show's viewers haven't always been right. Of course, as Ludacris points out, there's a precedent for crowd sourcing in the traditional music world: American Idol. 'People can look at these sites and say, 'Well, the top ten songs must be pretty good if the users picked them.'' 'These companies give people some kind of guidepost,' he says. Ted Cohen, founder of PartnerTAG Strategic, a digital music consultancy, says consumers feel overwhelmed by all the music available on the Internet. But music industry veterans say they are worth watching. It remains to be seen if WeMix and OurStage will achieve the scale and power of Apple's iTunes or MySpace Music.

This week, OurStage announced that Live Nation, the nation's largest concert promoter, has agreed to use some of its best unknowns to open 300 of its events. Another is OurStage, a Boston-based service that launched last September and now hosts 43,000 acts and 170,000 tastemaker participants. WeMix isn't the only music site using crowd sourcing. That's a lot of mouse clicks for a Web site that only went live in June. This week's favorite is Wally J.'s ribald 'Booty On My YouTube,' which has been played 614,938 times. Then, Ludacris lets the users of WeMix's pick the songs that rise to the top of the site's home page. Ludacris and his partner, Matt Apfel, a former reality television show producer, have latched onto an increasing popular concept on the Internet called 'crowd sourcing.' The rapper singles out acts that he thinks are good. 'It's almost like a virtual American Idol,' says Ludacris, whose real name is Chris Bridges. Ludacris, the Grammy-Award-winning rapper known for his hits like 'Chicken and Beer,' is one of the founders of WeMix, a Web site where unknown 50 Cents can find a wider audience - that is, if they pass muster with the rest of the Web site's users.

Ah, the bitter wages of hip-hop stardom.īut one rap luminary thinks there is a business in collecting music from unsigned acts and posting it on the Internet. NEW YORK (Fortune) - Famous rappers often gripe about how would-be Snoop Doggs always try to give them demo-tapes.

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