For the rest of December, we'll be blogging a few projects we've launched over the last few months. To kick things off, here's a recent favorite:

"It's like American Idol. Online. In Japanese." That was the brief for Otorevo.jp, a web site lets users upload audio and videos of themselves performing musical numbers. Other users vote on their favorites and at the end of the contest, the performer with the most votes wins a record contract with Columbia Records Japan.

Apperceptive built the site on Movable Type 4 with the Community Pack and a custom plugin to integrate with Blip.TV API. Users can also select "friends" to follow — and see who is following them. It's a tight, fun, beautiful community-powered site — and very entertaining. Following an artist or your favorite works is super easy and there's new content at every turn. If it hadn't been for the list of most popular songs, I wouldn't have found Iyse or Airmail.

You can also follow the project's growth on executive Ejovi Nuwere's blog:

The other week I met with one of the top 10 artist. During the meeting the artist cried tears of joy for the opportunity that has been given to them. For me this project has always had a emotional significance. I love to fight against the bigger foe. For the other people attending the meeting I think they realized for the first time the importance of what we are trying to do.

Pretty powerful stuff.