Ever wish you could head your own record label? The Next Big Sound is a new music 2.0 site that lets you play music mogul - scout unsigned talent and sign the artists you think will make it to the big time.

Many sites such as Fairtilizer, use a Digg-style model where users vote for content they really like. The more votes an item gets, the higher the rank. TNBS takes a different approach. Your label can only sign 10 bands at any given time, so you must be very choosy about which ones you think will succeed - ensuring that only the best artists climb to the top.

There are a variety of ways find unsigned talent - search, charts and filtering your player by new artists and genres. There are also many ways to stumble upon random artists. Once you find a great band you can sign them to your label. Based on how many other labels sign your bands after you, you get mogul points - the more points you have, the higher your prestige and ranking in the charts. If you are the first label to sign a band and other people then sign the band, you get a big boost in mogul points.

You can track all of your label’s activity on your dashboard. There is an update area on the page that shows recent activity among your bands, new band announcements (sign them quick!), and moguls you follow. It even lets you know when another label that has a roster similar to yours signs a new band. There are also some cool visualizations that show your point breakdowns and timeline.

Overall, the site is slick, has an intuitive UI and is a lot of fun to play with. It would be great if there was an RSS feed of my updates so i don’t need to continually monitor the site for new bands and other news. It would also be nice to be able to download mp3s of the artists I sign. If I am helping them out by raising their visibility some free song downloads aren’t too much to ask for.

See Rocketsurgeon’s Next Big Sound profile