an experiment in narrowcasting and curation of the independent DIY music community
as some of you may know i have been kicking around the idea of creating a new website to feature music from our community (independent DIY art music). my original idea centered around the observations of how various website in the community functioned.
originally there was S21 which like a new music magazine functioned as good watercooler to discuss whatever articles and music being promoted. then there was NNM which functions basically as a social nework and community fourm/clubhouse (on most days) for the new music community. overall the problem as i see it centers around both of these sites have specific purposes, but neither functions well as a music publishing and aggregation platform. after thinking about this quite a bit and surveying many of the platforms available and as an experiment i decided to try and create a website that focuses on curating and aggregating this music ourselves.
my "big idea" is is as simple as this; let the new music community aggregate itself. i.e. making use of the talent of those "in the know" and aggregating it to the enthusiasts (the wider public). after my latest conversation on NNM i don't think it matters how any of us find the music, but what is interesting to me is what is the music that each of you like. of course the harder job is to how to publishing this information in a usable format. so what i'm proposing is for us to create a aggregated feed of the music we like which can be as simple as this:
a curated-aggregated (re-blog) that features downloadable music that is tagged and organized on a separate website.
in general i think the anybody who is an active participant in these communities should be welcome to curate. i wouldn't want to base the aesthetic on my own tastes. crowd-sourcing curation from the community to the enthusiast is a much better solution for now. if any of you are familiar with the slashdot and digg.com websites i think there is a similar analogy. slashdot is a curated reblog of the tech community that was supposed to be supplanted by the more neutral and crowd-sourced digg, but interestingly enough after 5 years slashdot still is the better place to go to get the more interesting articles about the tech community. they are focused on one thing while digg.com is a great place to find wider variety of content for a larger mass market. as i alluded to above this is an experiment that i want to try. i think it might work and make it easier for others to find the best music of our community. i always have my non-music creative friends in mind when i'm creating this site.
my filmmaker friend jon comes to all my shows and loves reich and nyman, but doesn't have any idea of where to get music like it (i'm his main source). what this site is primarily is a place for all our friends to find new music. i also assume along the way as the site grows with content we will have a pretty good idea of the breadth of musical aesthetics in our community (while creating our own little record store). although all the music on this site will be free and easily downloadable, there is no reason why it can't point to our itunes/emusic/rhapsody accounts. if you still aren't sure the power of free i highly suggest you read chris anderson's "free" http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/07/free-for-free-first-e...
for now also think that all of the music on the site has to be downloadable. eventually tools will be made so we can listen to streams anywhere, but i think we are 2-3 years away from that and having many options of how you listen is very important. i know won't listen to many tracks if i can't download them to my iphone for later.
although we had a pretty spirited discussion about this on NNM it really helped solidify my ideas. i know there probably will not be consensus, but i'm interested to see what you think.
here are a few things i'm still kicking around and if you are interested in curating please let me know. i look forward to your comments and ideas.
thanks,
paul
how many curators?
i think that there could be a rotating group of 3-5 curators at anytime that rotated. on a monthly basis?
how often to release tracks? daily, bi-weekly, weekly?
my gut tells me that releasing too much of the feed at one time will overwhelm everybody. and originally i was thinking about releasing tracks on tuesday and friday.
(i eventually want to take this discussion into google wave and send me your email address for an invite if you don't have one, i think its a better place to work out some of these details if you are so inclined)
originally there was S21 which like a new music magazine functioned as good watercooler to discuss whatever articles and music being promoted. then there was NNM which functions basically as a social nework and community fourm/clubhouse (on most days) for the new music community. overall the problem as i see it centers around both of these sites have specific purposes, but neither functions well as a music publishing and aggregation platform. after thinking about this quite a bit and surveying many of the platforms available and as an experiment i decided to try and create a website that focuses on curating and aggregating this music ourselves.
my "big idea" is is as simple as this; let the new music community aggregate itself. i.e. making use of the talent of those "in the know" and aggregating it to the enthusiasts (the wider public). after my latest conversation on NNM i don't think it matters how any of us find the music, but what is interesting to me is what is the music that each of you like. of course the harder job is to how to publishing this information in a usable format. so what i'm proposing is for us to create a aggregated feed of the music we like which can be as simple as this:
a curated-aggregated (re-blog) that features downloadable music that is tagged and organized on a separate website.
in general i think the anybody who is an active participant in these communities should be welcome to curate. i wouldn't want to base the aesthetic on my own tastes. crowd-sourcing curation from the community to the enthusiast is a much better solution for now. if any of you are familiar with the slashdot and digg.com websites i think there is a similar analogy. slashdot is a curated reblog of the tech community that was supposed to be supplanted by the more neutral and crowd-sourced digg, but interestingly enough after 5 years slashdot still is the better place to go to get the more interesting articles about the tech community. they are focused on one thing while digg.com is a great place to find wider variety of content for a larger mass market. as i alluded to above this is an experiment that i want to try. i think it might work and make it easier for others to find the best music of our community. i always have my non-music creative friends in mind when i'm creating this site.
my filmmaker friend jon comes to all my shows and loves reich and nyman, but doesn't have any idea of where to get music like it (i'm his main source). what this site is primarily is a place for all our friends to find new music. i also assume along the way as the site grows with content we will have a pretty good idea of the breadth of musical aesthetics in our community (while creating our own little record store). although all the music on this site will be free and easily downloadable, there is no reason why it can't point to our itunes/emusic/rhapsody accounts. if you still aren't sure the power of free i highly suggest you read chris anderson's "free" http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/07/free-for-free-first-e...
for now also think that all of the music on the site has to be downloadable. eventually tools will be made so we can listen to streams anywhere, but i think we are 2-3 years away from that and having many options of how you listen is very important. i know won't listen to many tracks if i can't download them to my iphone for later.
although we had a pretty spirited discussion about this on NNM it really helped solidify my ideas. i know there probably will not be consensus, but i'm interested to see what you think.
here are a few things i'm still kicking around and if you are interested in curating please let me know. i look forward to your comments and ideas.
thanks,
paul
how many curators?
i think that there could be a rotating group of 3-5 curators at anytime that rotated. on a monthly basis?
how often to release tracks? daily, bi-weekly, weekly?
my gut tells me that releasing too much of the feed at one time will overwhelm everybody. and originally i was thinking about releasing tracks on tuesday and friday.
(i eventually want to take this discussion into google wave and send me your email address for an invite if you don't have one, i think its a better place to work out some of these details if you are so inclined)
Tags: curation, music, self-publishing
Views: 7
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by J.C. Combs on -
"although all the music on this site will be free and easily downloadable, there is no reason why it can't point to our itunes/emusic/rhapsody accounts" - Paul
I'm not sure that's doable (at least I'm pretty sure to get on iTunes you have to go through a digital distributor), averaging around 50 dollars. Is there a list of all the places we could point our music without a fee with this system? Maybe a guestimate?
But if you mean point to our existing accounts, that would be pretty cool. I wish there was a way we could tag and get on all those sites without a fee!
-
Permalink Reply by Paul H. Muller on -
Sounds like an intriguing project and I would be interested in helping. I was thinking along similar lines - I would like to have a list of minimalist/post-minimalist composers - partly to hear new music and partly to share ideas.
Maybe this takes the form of blog posts on an existing site or maybe something completely different, but I think it would be worth the effort.
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on -
james,
yeah, i mean the music points back to our existing accounts (or wherever you/they want it to go)
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on
-
paul,
i think each track is a short blog post. through an RSS feed you don't even have to visit the site, but it's there to be searched over time categories would be formed (just like a record store)
Paul H. Muller said:Sounds like an intriguing project and I would be interested in helping. I was thinking along similar lines - I would like to have a list of minimalist/post-minimalist composers - partly to hear new music and partly to share ideas.
Maybe this takes the form of blog posts on an existing site or maybe something completely different, but I think it would be worth the effort.
-
Permalink Reply by J.C. Combs on
-
I definitely recommend Paul M. as a curator and Bruce Hamilton for starters. Paul has done a great job with the IF CD and Bruce is into organizing music.
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on
-
i think that anybody who want's to curate should. we know who is active making music in our communities. if they want to join and be active then they can also help out.
there are a lot of details to be worked out (how many curators, how long a rotation, how many songs...) but open to trying lots of things and seeing what works. i also want it to be as transparent as possible.
one of the big questions is how to balance the number of curators vs. the overpublishing of music. too much music to listen to is not useful at all.
J.C. Combs said:I definitely recommend Paul M. as a curator and Bruce Hamilton for starters. Paul has done a great job with the IF CD and Bruce is into organizing music.
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on
-
if the site is organized properly over time you could browse and find a lot of great music pretty easily, but releasing (publishing the data) a little a time seems to be a rational approach.
-
Permalink Reply by J.C. Combs on
-
Have you visited freesound.org? I think their system is maybe the closest example for what you want to do.
Not only do they have an ingenious "random" flash player (we know how difficult that is), but every sample is tagged.
So if I want to hear machines, I type machines or industrial, clank, bang, etc., into the search engine.
If I want to hear scraping on a piano string, I type "piano scrape." Actually, the site has more features which I haven't had time to check out. Its a good model I think.
paul bailey said:if the site is organized properly over time you could browse and find a lot of great music pretty easily, but releasing (publishing the data) a little a time seems to be a rational approach.
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on
-
i have,
freesound is a great example of a sound/music repository. i think (and hope) that wordpress could handle a single function site dedicated to hosting mp3's.
i have been keeping a list of useful tags that should be a start: and i'm going to really try and make sure that all the music is meticulously tagged by genre/microgenres, instrumentation and performance practice
here is my list so far, feel free to add
alt-classical, post-classic...
sound
ambient, darkambient, drone, electronic, field recording, found sound, just intonation, glitch, lofi, microtonal, noise, 8bit, soundscape
post
postclassic, postminimal, postmodern, postwhatever
acousmatic, contemporary classical, cinematic, experimental, minimalist, non-pop, collage
performance practice
free improv, modular improv, improvised, instrumental, looping, mashup, remix
platform
ableton, csound, max/msp, pd, renoise, tracker
instrumentation
broken consort, instrumental, spoken word, vocal
J.C. Combs said:Have you visited freesound.org? I think their system is maybe the closest example for what you want to do.
Not only do they have an ingenious "random" flash player (we know how difficult that is), but every sample is tagged. So if I want to hear machines, I type machines or industrial, clank, bang, etc., into the search engine.
If I want to hear scraping on a piano string, I type "piano scrape." Actually, the site has more features which I haven't had time to check out. Its a good model I think.
paul bailey said:if the site is organized properly over time you could browse and find a lot of great music pretty easily, but releasing (publishing the data) a little a time seems to be a rational approach.
-
Permalink Reply by J.C. Combs on
-
To sound:
lowercase sound and noise
platform:
audition, sonar, cubase, logic, etc? Or is that another category?
-
Permalink Reply by J.C. Combs on
-
This is what I think should happen. We need to clarify what step 1 is. Obviously this is a real cool idea and, speaking for IF, we want it to happen.
But what's step 1? You've done a lot already, so right now we just have to catch up to where you're at.
-
Permalink Reply by paul bailey on
-
you are right.
i just wanted a reminder that some people like to know what software was used in the process of making the music.
what do you think about opening curation to everybody (who is interested)?
J.C. Combs said:To sound:
lowercase sound and noise
platform:
audition, sonar, cubase, logic, etc? Or is that another category?
Groups
-
Live Streaming Concert A…
31 members
-
IF Music Vault (Weekly P…
24 members
-
FAQ/Rules
5 members
Blog Posts
2012 ImprovFriday Fund Raiser
Posted by Paul H. Muller on May 21, 2012 at 2:00pm
ImprovFriday-related releases
Posted by J.C. Combs on May 17, 2012 at 9:30pm
Richard Lainhart / Lucio Menegon recording
Posted by Jim Goodin on May 13, 2012 at 1:51am — 3 Comments
Steve's One Bad Ass Motherfucker On This Site!
Posted by Steve Moshier on May 13, 2012 at 12:30am — 7 Comments
My other music . . .
Posted by Glenn Smith on May 12, 2012 at 4:08pm — 1 Comment
© 2012 Created by J.C. Combs.
