Covering Microsoft for the last eight years, I've seen this pattern time and time again. Internet trend comes along. Microsoft watches. Trend picks up steam. Microsoft watches. Some other company--usually a start-up--creates a site that perfectly crystallizes the trend and achieves a surprising spike in traffic. Microsoft creates a product team somewhere in the bowels of its online organization to come up with an answer. Six to eighteen months later, the imitation launches to general yawns in the press and perhaps some temporary spikes in traffic thanks to Microsoft's massive online reach. (400 million-plus registered users--that's the number of Windows Live IDs out there, and it's sure to get you some cross-traffic.) Endgame: obscurity. Think of MSN Soapbox versus YouTube. Or Windows Live Expo versus Craigslist. Or MSN Music.
This takes the cake for me, though. This week, MSN U.K. launched a new site, MSN Unsigned, that proposes to give unsigned musicians a new chance to reach a bigger audience. Sort of like OurStage has been doing since 2007, and MySpace has been doing since 2004, and Sonicbids since 2000, and CDBaby since 1997, and IUMA way back in 1993. Except that MSN Unsigned doesn't let you upload audio clips, create a home page, find gigs, or communicate with your fans. Instead, it's simply a vehicle for bands who own the rights to their music (look ma, no copyright infringement lawsuits) to upload videos via Soapbox, after which MSN will review them and promote a few on the front. Never mind that most unsigned bands don't have the budget to film a video, but every garage band worth its salt has a folder on their computer filled with music clips. Oh, there's also going to be articles and advice, like this priceless set of tips for aspiring guitarists. (Someone tell Keith Richards--watch the sauce!)
In all seriousness, if you're going to do something halfway, why bother doing it at all? It just makes you look silly.
In case you're just awakening from a coma, today's election day in the United States, and turnout's expected to set records.
You'll find this song from Pocket Rocket on the Punk/Ska/Psychobilly channel. I liked the composition and the instrumental playing enough to rate it one thumbs-up.
But what about tomorrow? After the polling places have closed and the results are in, what can you do if you still hanker to cast a ballot and make your opinion count? OurStage offers you the chance to make or break thousands of independent artists by listening to and rating their songs.
The Web site's been around for more than a year, but last week the company added a free iPhone application as well. You can choose from more than 50 stations in genres such as indie rock to death metal/grindcore to singer/songwriter (with separate categories for male and female). Unlike the Web site, which asks you to judge two songs head to head, the iPhone application simply asks you to rate each song with one, two, or three thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Even if you're not particularly interested in voting, it's a good way to discover loads of new music you wouldn't hear otherwise. The ratings determine which songs rise to the top, which means the average quality of songs you'll hear on any given channel is pretty high--better than surfing among randomly connected bands on MySpace pages, for example. Pick a favorite genre--I like their Experimental channel--and you'll probably find a couple gems.
I wrote about OurStage a couple weeks ago: it's a battle-of-the-bands site that's actually worth looking at, as it requires no up-front payments to participate, seems very hard to "game" by stuffing the ballot box for your own or your friend's bands, and offers prizes of actual value.
Concert giant LiveNation will offer 300 opening spots on the OurStage Marketplace.
On Wednesday, the company signed a deal with concert giant Live Nation, which owns many top concert venues in the U.S. and has been signing so-called comprehensive record-plus-touring ("360") deals with acts such as Madonna and Nickelback. Under the terms of the deal, Live Nation will offer opening gigs in the new OurStage Marketplace.
With the Marketplace, bands can sign up to create a free electronic presskit, then submit them for these gigs--which include big arena gigs like the Punk Rock 2008 Festival at Colorado's Red Rocks and opening for the Allman Brothers at the 20,000 seat Comcast (formerly Tweeter) Center outside of Boston. Unlike OurStage prizes, which go only to winners of the head-to-head competitions, any act can participate in the Marketplace.
Long-term, OurStage envisions itself becoming a clearinghouse where emerging bands can connect with venues that need to fill spots. It's an interesting concept, but OurStage will have to amass a fair number of proven high-quality live acts--not just kids in bedrooms with Garage Band--to become a trusted source for venues. So far, I've liked some of the artists I've heard on the site, but not enough to write their names down. That points to a chicken-and-egg problem--a lot of artists probably feel they can get "noticed" in the traditional way, by making great recordings and playing lots of local shows, getting press writeups and radio play, and attracting the attention of A&R men and concert bookers. As long as OurStage is free, bands have nothing to lose by giving it a shot, but it will be interesting to see how entrenched the traditional gatekeepers of the music business really are. I'm betting these old institutions won't die away, although they might use online sources (such as OurStage and--more likely--MySpace) as one more way of discovering acts.
I tend to be skeptical of "battle of the bands" contests in the physical world. There's often an entry fee to participate, which basically means bands are paying to play in some sort of showdown showcase. Often there's no quality gate--if you can afford the entry fee, you're in, and that means that the only people in the audience are other participating bands. The prizes tend to be loaded with catches, like a "recording contract" that forces you to sign over your publishing rights to the organization sponsoring the contest.
But it appears that some online competitions are actually worthwhile. The other night I took a look at OurStage, which launched in September. There's no fee to enter, and artists retain full rights to their music. The prizes are worth competing for: winners of each monthly contest can take home $5,000 in cash, win mentoring sessions with music industry folks, and even earn slots at festivals people actually care about like Bonnaroo.
The song on the left is good, but it's not experimental--clean vocals, jazz chords, and a drum machine. The song on the right isn't particularly experimental either, but there's no New Age category, so it's a reasonable fit.
(Credit: OurStage screenshot)From a fan's perspective, the voting interface is excellent, and the company claims to have taken pains to make it hard for artists to game the system--you're seldom asked to vote on the same act twice, and never asked to vote on the same head-to-head matchup. After spending a couple hours with it, I can say that the artists on the site compare favorably to Garageband.com, a very similar service that later spawned iLike, a social-networking service for discovering and recommending music.
Still, OurStage suffers from the same problem that I experienced with Garageband.com: there's not much incentive to keep voting. I like to hear new music, but of the 20 or so songs I sampled on OurStage, only three were interesting enough for me to listen all the way through. I can't imagine that casual music fans will spend a lot of time listening to unknown bands on the site unless OurStage offers some incentive--say, a chance to win free downloads from big-name artists, concert tickets, or other prizes.
The other problem: lax enforcement of genres. I like experimental music, but found lots of other types of songs in that category, including Christian guitar rock, hip-hop, and jazz-pop, all of which would fit better into other genres. I imagine these artists thought it'd be easier to win in the experimental channel than in the more popular channels. I guess they didn't expect any Moonchild fans to check them out.
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