New site to post your music - Garagesongs.com Digg like for unsigned bands

[Jarvey]

Hey fellow artists,

 

I started a new site www.garagesongs.com Here unsigned bands and amateur musicians can post their mp3's and videos (youtube, myspace) so others can listen, vote them up and comment. You keep the rights (streaming audio no downloads). You can also tag your work with a creative commons license to show others how you want to share your music. It's growing quick but I still need more music over there, and hey it's free exposure!

 

Thanks,

Jon H.

 

P.S. need to clean up some posts here!

[Poker99]

Offering anything new?

 

Its just than there is litterally hundreds of sites like this, and a new one seems to pop up every minute or so.

[Jarvey]

Offering anything new? Its just than there is litterally hundreds of sites like this, and a new one seems to pop up every minute or so.

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the feedback. I simply posted a link to garagesongs.com because the thread topic was about music distribution. I wasn't aware there were 100's of sites just like Garage Songs, they need better Google indexing if so!

 

We tried to make Garage Songs more like an unsigned music aggregator so musicians can post their best song and link back to their own home page (or here, Jamendo, Soundclick etc.). Also integrating the Creative Commons licensing system for submitted music helps the musician set conditions on how their music is shared too. Voting/song ranking is member driven and the comments feature to give pointers and constructive criticism for the song posted so the site is more member driven.

 

 

Jarvey

[richardmac]

First, a disclaimer - when you post a business venture here, you move from one person to "fair game." Meaning some people here are going to give you a dead honest opinion of what you post, whether you ask for it or not. With that in mind, here's my dead honest opinion after visiting the site:

 

PROS:

 

The elements are there - there are forums, the ability to upload songs, some decent music already uploaded (I've always liked Brad Sucks,) and the interface is fairly straightforward and easy to use.

 

 

CONS:

 

AHHHH!!! MY EYES!!!!!!

 

Black background with white text has been shown in tons of different web studies to be difficult for some of the population to read. That's why you don't see any Fortune 500 companies do black background and white text. Web Designers think it looks "cool" but for some people, it's extremely annoying. I'm one of them. I'd never upload music to your site because I can't stand looking at it.

 

I don't know about hundreds of sites like yours, but there certainly are a real lot. And to many of us, they all have the same issues - everyone posts their music there hoping to gain fans, so you end up with a kabillion musicians and very few actual listeners. Songs are ranked based on voting, so bands will try every single possible trick they can to artificially increase the ranking of their own music, and in reality they won't gain much, because everyone else on the site is too busy worrying about their own ranking to really listen to other artists, EXCEPT...

 

The exception is when you have a site with a really good supportive community where people pat each other on the back and tell each other how talented they are. And every song is ranked outstanding, thus promising that the true outstanding stuff will eventually be buried. Example - MacJams. Sites like that are very successful to amateurs who need hand holding and a pat on the back. They serve an important purpose.

 

The forum part of your site is bland looking and uninviting - that will make it harder to build up a good community.

 

SUGGESTIONS:

 

If you're serious about having a good site, don't do it the way every other site out there has done it. Here's what I'd suggest, and it would be controversial but I bet it'd work. Hire someone for each genre who LOVES that style of music. Let them be the rankers. They wouldn't have to do reviews for every song... just maybe a grade from 0 to 100. And make sure they're not bribed. I bet that approach would totally work, if you got good people. But to do that, you'd have to pay them, or give them some sort of incentive.

 

GarageBand.com tried to do something different by having musicians randomly review each other's music, but musicians hear music different than non-musicians, and they're not a representation of the general listening public. As a result, the highest rated stuff is simply the stuff that sounds most like what's on the radio. By having a panel of people (who aren't going to just high rank stuff that sounds just like what's on the radio,) you stand a decent chance of the thing working. A perfect system? No, but it would at least be different than all the other sites out there.

[Poker99]

Here's what I'd suggest, and it would be controversial but I bet it'd work. Hire someone for each genre who LOVES that style of music. Let them be the rankers. They wouldn't have to do reviews for every song... just maybe a grade from 0 to 100. And make sure they're not bribed. I bet that approach would totally work, if you got good people. But to do that, you'd have to pay them, or give them some sort of incentive.

 

YES. THIS.

 

Let them rank songs, then show their ranking and songs to the public and let the public decide what songs should stay/rank higher.

[richardmac]

 

YES. THIS. Let them rank songs, then show their ranking and songs to the public and let the public decide what songs should stay/rank higher.

 

 

The bands would rig it. They'd have their fans or friends go in and vote their songs high and other artists low. And the artists would do that, too, a lot of them. Seen it before on many many other sites. You can trust "the wisdom of crowds," but only when the crowd is an authentic one, ie NOT overpopulated artificially by bands trying to get a leg up on "the competition."

[Jarvey]

Wow. First of all I want to thank you guys for the ideas and thanks richardmac for taking time to do a quick review of the site. I welcome any opinion, much better to see things in different perspective! Brad Sucks FTW

This forum is now on my daily click list

 

Here's some responses from Richardmacs feedback:

Dark/black - I guess I'm the only one that likes black backgrounds. I thought I could get away with it since there won't be a lot of reading, mostly music and pics. anyways a light color theme is on hot standby!

 

Forum - just a place for members to do a sanity check on what's going on other than playing each others music. I believe sites should be slimmed down to it's sole purpose, for us that's for members to share their music comment on others and link to their "home" sites.

I'll just point them over here, no reason to reinvent the wheel or try to be a wal-mart website.

 

As far as bands stacking votes with friends etc. (Democracy for ya, Poker99's idea is a Republic system - Civic lesson of the day) the "most voted" won't put it on top of the FRONT page, recently popular music will be cycling through the front page top but yea I understand, it happens at Digg all day long. We could just look for patterns like comment quality etc. we def can't hire anyone, this is a night weekend project for us!

 

Aside from playing bands music, garagesongs.com's sites purpose is meant to be a social bookmarking site for unsigned bands and musicians. We want members to link to all the other 100's of unsinged band sites to their homepage, profile or blog there. We will have an off site vote button so members can place it on their homepage/myspace/blogs and in a few months the profile pages content at Garagesongs will be expanding exponentially.

 

Thanks again,

Jarvey

[richardmac]

Well, you've got the right attitude. I threw the most realistic, in your face criticism I could at you, and you didn't flinch. It's good that you have the confidence in what you're doing. Myspace is really the place to beat when it comes to bands posting music. I wish you luck in your site. But to get serious market share, you need an edge or an angle... something that makes you different than everyone else. I don't think you have that yet. If you can get an edge, you've got a shot.

[TODMovies]

Nice website, I bookmarked it!

[belizer]

Well I shall also add some opinions. First I also like black background with white fonts, but I think it would be great for people who go to the site to have choose style of the page. It is possible from technical point of view.

 

Main problem is attracting listeners and making them to check site often.

I think the best way to make them stay is private and general chat. Also check stereofame.com - very interesting solutions there too, but they actually do not work for 100%.

 

Anyway - good luck - later i shall register on your site too %)

[Jarvey]

Thanks again.

The stereofame.com looks very nice from a design point of view.

 

Here's a tip for a bands or musicians to get more exposure thanks to Youtube and Google (probably old news here I'm sure):

 

Google likes coversongs via Youtube. If you or your band knows (and knows it well) a few popular coversongs, put a video out on youtube playing the song or a how-to tutorial. You can post the video link on Garagesongs hosted by Youtube (we're not getting into copyright issues with coversongs since it's hosted at Youtube) and also include a link to your homepage to your original music. Garagesongs.com already has PR4 Google rank and this will help your band come up on Google searches.

 

Anyways,

We'll be improving more on the site.

[samalka]

I checked out the site - but not sure I understand how it works. There are bands with 1, 2 or 3 votes under 'Popular'. Is it just because the site doesn't have many users yet? or am I missing something?

[horoskop]

I'm visited that site and aded in bookmark.Nice...

[Jarvey]

 

I'm visited that site and aded in bookmark.Nice...

 

 

Thanks. We made a few improvements from my first post, and many more to come.

 

-Lighter Theme.

 

-We have 3 ways available to promote your music, or any combination:

1. Youtube, Myspace Video etc.

2. mp3 upload

3. Or embed a player from your sites page you want to promote like soundclick, reverbnation, or jamendo etc. Just follow the steps when you submit your music. We want you to promote your bands site along with your best music!

 

-chat

 

- "applauds" point system for active members who comment and are all around active member on the site. We all know comments and honest reviews are very beneficial and appreciated.

 

Thanks again!

[Instrospection]

To be honest, I just don't know if there's the need for it. See, i'll perhaps be in the minority here, but we need LESS places to promote things at. Because bands and audiences are just going bonkers to find out the proper places to promote oneself at. You could promote yourself at tons of places, but alot of places have no power of awareness or hardly any listenership, anyways. With more of those sites, came reduced emphasis on any sales outlet in particular. It sucks as a new venture that wants to do good things, but i've seen the same thing tank at alot of other places, because there's not the reason for people to network and hang out. That's just the reality of it any which way you slice it, and unless you have serious $$$$ to dethrone MySpace and Facebook, you're screwed.....unless you're ultra genre specific. I could see a genre specific or more specific site like that working.....but then you'd just be flooded with every band that had the same influences and sound, and that would most likely backfire, too.

 

IMHO the future of that is to pay bands for plays, related to advertising. MySpace gets tons of money in advertisements, and also collects tons of money from the bands that pay to be on the front page, in which they have their top advertisements on. And the place to implement this the best--and first--will have the future of music networking locked up. Last FM is doing that. But they don't have the networking power that Facebook and MySpace do (MySpace, in particular, who sells). And you need BIG $$$$ to entice acts to pay them well, and to attract a certain level of quality. Because most bands can't act as a quality filter when they're promoting their own music, as opposed to a major or even a prestigious indie, which used to act as quality filters in the past for people to sort of hold as a beacon of good taste and good releases. So my speculation is that in the future, that the better networking sites with better content, will find a way to pay artists--and pay the better ones more--to create what, in the past, labels used to have to do, and that there will be a bidding war to entice the best acts, just like the labels used to do.

 

I'm not saying this to be abrasive. I'm saying it to offer you the truth that until supply stops exceeding demand (not likely to happen soon), we will have to accept some of the powers that be (MySpace, ITunes, Facebook, etc) as the places that got there first and are nearly impossible to dethrone. We've seen it with Friendster, Bebo, Hi5, Ok Cupid....networking sites that were either strictly networking without music, or with a music networking site that wasn't as good as MySpace....or with a music networking site started up far too late after MySpace.

[Jarvey]

Thanks for the input but I've mentioned several times on this topic that's not what garagesongs.com was set up for .

 

My apologies to beat a dead horse but...

 

Our goal is not to dethrone Myspace, Soundclick, Youtube etc or even compete. It's to promote your bands page and music from those sites.

 

You are right Instro there are so many sites like the ones mentioned above, that's why we're trying to reduce the time and effort by linking to any of those sites along with a sample to get more visitors to your bands page.

 

This is why Garage Songs is set up for members submit their link from Myspace, Reverbnation or the bands personal site along with your bands video or song and embed the bands widget from that site. You can even submit the link where your band is selling their latest CD or mp3.

 

Example:

http://www.garagesongs.com/story.php?title=wrapped-for-me-acoustic---zack-walther--the-cronkites

 

Just like tech websites, news sites, and bloggers submit articles to Digg - Digg is promoting the news from those sites, not competing or duplicate it!

 

Garage Songs would like to achieve the same service but for unsigned bands.

Clear as mud?

[Instrospection]

Cool. Your biggest hurdle is to secure enough advertising.....it's a weird vortex of needing to create enough interest for bands and users alike in where it has a decent amount of popularity, in which to secure advertisers. And we already have so many sites with big, flashing banners and headache inducing things (ie: gratuitous amount of flash or marquee on a MySpace page), that often times, I think that audiences are looking for places that DON'T have the big flashing banners and advertising.....but it becomes truly difficult for most smaller places to be seen as any major type of thing, without advertising. Even Facebook has Facebook ads, like Google Adsense or whatever.

 

The real hurdle nowadays is to attract enough bands of quality. Even cheap or free music sites are finding this problem....in order to convince bands to even set up a profile or upload tracks, you have to have an audience. But no audiences will go there unless there's more prominent bands to draw them in. Confused? I would be. MySpace even highly discourages fan tribute pages (remember the glut of unofficial MySpace pages? ZZ Top had shut those down and other artists weren't happy representing "them").

 

But bands have to spend time uploading tracks and creating a profile and maintaining it, and I say this because i've done that at a site or two, and it just doesn't have the traffic to make it worthwhile for the amount of time that I invest. As a band and label, I think that I speak for most others in the same position in that we're willing to be open to new outlets for marketing.....but they also have to be worth our time and effort, too, because here's the thing--even getting fans to transfer to ILike and Facebook FROM MySpace is a task, because here, you're trying to take fans from a networking site onto another networking site, and they've got to set up a new profile or add a new place onto their favorites or whatever. And not everyone wants to do that. It's often a hassle for them. I've known bands that have thousands of people on MySpace, that only have tens, or maybe a hundred or two people on Facebook.

 

As well, you have to ask yourself if setting up the site and maintaining it is worth your own time. If you want to help bands out, maybe become a promo person that's willing to invest alot of time at an affordable price to get bands' stuff into the hands of specialty places, reviewers, interviewers, etc. At this point, I think that bands need more people that are personally working for a few....rather than trying to help anyone out and not really having much of an effect for any one of them in particular.