How would you do it?

wave files.

I have songs on Soundclik, Mixposure and Indie Music Works.
All of them are too busy, too much stuff. Especially since they seem to be trying to be social networks.
Just gimme the music.
 
edited for speelink. 

+1 to wave files. That'll be a headache though. Is it going to be sales site also?

+1 to lossless audio, or at least the option.

Some kind of search feature by genres might be nice.

Marco, the search function will have advance search with "genre" option

Child, Thanks! I hadn't heard of http://bandcamp.com/  and low and behold, there ARE several similarities, but again, I would have to give away our "gimmick" to explain it further.
The one big thing I can tell you, there are NO FEES! We even cover the PayPal transfer fees to your account.

Please keep these coming please!

If it's not feasible to provide a service for quality audio then the best you
can do is have a fast, clean site. ?
Offering members plenty of storage and control over their page with the
option of free downloading or purchasing of their material.

It seems to me that sites like I store my projects are mostly musicians.
Musicians trying to get other musicians to listen to their music. That's why I look
at it as an on-line storage bucket.

It seems to me the biggest factor missing is the listening public. In the 3-4  years
I've had music posted at a site with radio broadcast I haven't received one
review or contact from a non-member listener.
I would think if the public were listening and new that if they heard somebody they really liked and that they could contact them on-line, they would.
Maybe that happens at Mix but I'm inclinded to think it's not often if at all. If I'm right then
the ability to sell one's material really doesn't mean much....CD Baby would be a better
alternative.

Quite a delima...a public that's not really interested in high quality files.
Musicians wanting a place to handle high quality audio files.
A public that would rather steal music then get free Indie.
Musicains trying to sell music at sites with mainly musicians trying to sell music and the
public doesn't want it for free....if they even know about the site's.

Good luck is really the best I can come up with.

There's a growing underground trend to make lossless codecs available over the internet. To replace MP3 with something that doesn't stomp on your music. To regain the detail of magnetics over this still new medium. Your "gimmick" will be like many others once you hit the net. Music is a huge industry even with the internets restrictions. Most downloads should be considered as nothing more than advertisements for the show, and one day, the whole recording.

Some good points Spacey. It's funny though, the overall cynicism I am hearing here about all the "other sites" is WHY I want to do this.

I have been talking to my developer a little more, and honestly, I WAS thinking of having a "Little Bit" of the social networking because, lets face it, there is no ignoring the direction the web is going.

That said, we are now trying to limit the "social" functions to just the typical forums for now. The gain here is we can up our bandwidth usage for the larger files since we don't have all "social" functions hogging resources, I think we are at least going to be able to handle VBR MP3s, and based on size comparison between higher bit MP3s and wave, I believe we are going to be able to START with those two. Of course we are going to have to put some kind of cap. So if your thinking about covering 'Alice's Restaurant', you need to do it in less than say 7-8 minutes

Had another suggestion on a different forum and thought I would run it by you all. Would you like to have the ability to specifically select what you are willing to do with your music? E.g. Perform, record, sell copyright, sell partial mechanical rights, collaborating etc?

As Spacey said, ",.. biggest factor missing is the listening public." That's the tough one! I know we won't have a hard time getting artists to "store" their music with us, but it's getting the LISTENER and even more importantly, THE BUYER to acknowledge you as an artist. We have some ideas in our hip pocket on this. (Cross my fingers or my wife is going to beat me with one of my guitars)

I'm in a bunch of music "fan" forums too and I have rattled off  the names  of SEVERAL "Indie Music" sites. Very, very few "fans" have ever even heard of most of the sites.

Keep em coming please! This is a work in progress.

I guess I should have clarified, I wasn't even thinking about actual online collaboration. There are sites doing that like; http://www.ejamming.com/

I just meant, the artist having the ability to specifically list on their artist page, what they are looking for and "willing" to do with their material. All the indie sites give you the ability to sell your recorded material, but if your someone like me, I don't EVER want to be famous or to perform more than the local pub once in awhile but, I would be more than willing to make a deal if someone wanted to record my songs,.....well, for the right money anyway.