Discovering New Music

[jfk]

Please forgive me if this is a little bit spammy, but the wife and I recently put seed money in a technology startup which is involved in the promotion of undiscovered bands and solo artists, something in which TLDR has traditionally has had interest.

The site is called AirSpun.com. At a fundamental level we're a marketing and promotion company in the music space. Currently revenue is generated by providing independent bands or solo artists a way to get radio airplay without the help of a label.

The area of the site in which the TLDR readership may have interest is our monthly AirGods competition. We currently have over 12,000 bands registered on our site. Part of what I do (since they reeled me in to work there) is to comb through the bands and solo artists and find good candidates to vie to be a monthly AirGod. The voting is then done by the site's visitors.

This month we have two categories, both Alternative Rock and Urban/Hip-Hop.

Unfortunately, voting has been slower than normal. If any of you would like to listen and vote for your favorites please do so here:

www.airspun.com/index.cfm...s_rock&n=a

www.airspun.com/index.cfm...hiphop&n=a

We also have a podcast, which features a lot of highly talented artists whom you've most likely not heard or seen.

I figure that the typical TLDR reader is probably somewhat older than our typical listener and/or site visitor but there are a lot of hidden musical gems peppered around the site in multiple genres.

If any of you have thoughts or commentary on the music, the bands, the nature of the music industry and the challenges faced by independent artists, I'd love to hear them. I've been spending a large part of my time recently listening to music that is not widely heard and I'd like to hear outside opinions about its quality.

Again, my apologies if this crosses the line into spam.

[diebitter]

jfk

It is spammy, but you are a reasonably regular poster here, and I think it might be of interest to some Loungers, so it can stay, at least for a while. Just this once though.

However, if anyone wants to complain or if one of the other Lounge mods object, I invite them to pm me directly and I'll take steps to remove it.


We'd also be interested in some backstory of how you got involved, what work you do, etc, but no pressure. Tell if you want to.

[jfk]

Ah, the backstory...so the company was started by a friend's wife who, like my wife is something of a driven, respected world beater in the business world. (Her husband, much like yours truly, is somewhat less corporate, and we wound up being friends as we'd see each other at the park frequently with our kids...but I digress).

Anyway, the founder was a lifelong musician who was active in the independent music scene and always harbored a degree of dislike about how the music business was traditionally run. With the advent of internet radio and the software music tools that afforded musicians ways to produce their own high quality music without the aid (or shackle) of music industry apparatus, she saw an opportunity to build a business helping independent musicians with their marketing and promotion.

The company grew successfully and more quickly than they anticipated so the founder and her partners, people who are also avid independent musicians, started to seek outside funding.

My wife has worked in or around the venture capital community for many years and she made a number of introductions. The response to the business concept was favorable, but the stage of the company was still a bit early for VC funding so my wife and I decided to step in and provide our own seed funding to foster continued growth.

That led to my now working with them in a jack of all trades type roll, though the most interesting part of what I do is to search through the now large body of music which is hosted on our site and find the best candidates to be showcased. I get to listen to music hour upon hour and claim credit for doing actual work.

Of course, I'm the one guy without any sort of music industry background or musical talent. I'm the outsider voice. I'm also the type of guy who enjoyed bands like REM or U2 much better in 1984 than in 2004 and now I'm getting to hear a lot of great talent in a very early, raw stage.

So in tandem with having no real music background, prior to a couple of months ago I didn't know much more than the average person about the music industry or the changes it is seeing. Artists have a real opportunity now to maintain greater ownership and control of their own content due to the technical change brought about software and internet distribution.

Nor am I the type to have always pined to be in the music and/or entertainment field. I like this as much from the technical side. We're patenting a number of different technologies and that in itself is a whole other realm of learning for me.

I was very much in the dark about the degree to which sites like myspace facilitate this sort of democratization of the industry. There are bands/artists who've had millions of spins just based on the content of their myspace page. That wasn't possible a few years ago.

At a very basic level, its interesting to hear song after song and think to yourself, "this could/should easily be on the radio, this is really good music."

So I would have genuine curiosity hearing what people think about the concept and content. I'm sure there are some very knowledgeable opinions to be found here.

I didn't want to start dropping airspun.com references into posts without the full disclosure that I had an interest in the site/company and hoped that doing it in this way would be the most appropriate.

[MrWookie]

You guys do blues?

[jfk]

[ QUOTE ]
You guys do blues?

[/ QUOTE ]

In theory, we do anything although we haven't had much in the the way of Blues artists register with us and the majority of the radio stations on which you'd hear an AirSpun spot aren't oriented towards Blues.

We have had some good R&B acts register and purchase airplay but I don't recall hearing anyone who'd be musically akin to a BB King, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, etc.

That being said, when bands or artists register with us they control their own content. The musical direction of the bands themselves determines the direction of the content (and it seems Alt. Rock and Rap/Hip-Hop are the areas which dominate).

Also, we're still in a very early stage of development and haven't yet had the resources to build the site to the degree to which it will one day evolve.

Up until recently we only had the resources to help serve the artist/commercial side of the site. It is our goal to work on making the site more attractive to repeat visits from music fans. The AirGods concept is part of that approach.

Of course, a fun part of what I get to do is that I could go out and recruit a bunch of Blues acts to register on the site. For instance, one of my favorite, though highly obscure, blues bands is called, "Rondo's Blues Deluxe". They're out of St. Louis. I've never heard them outside of the CD I own ("Shack Pappy's") and don't know of anyone who has heard them. If we ever do a Blues AirGods competition, I can openly hunt around and try to recruit a band like Rondo's.

[diebitter]

jfk

Cool thread [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[J.A.K.]

JFK,

Sounds great and I will definitely check out the site and try to do some voting. I lament the crap I hear on the radio and always read the music threads to find the diamonds in the rough.

Is your business specifically an alternative to major labels or would you facilitate the process if one of the bands were noticed and chose to sign with a major label? Is this kind of a springboard for the groups?

[jfk]

[ QUOTE ]
Is your business specifically an alternative to major labels or would you facilitate the process if one of the bands were noticed and chose to sign with a major label? Is this kind of a springboard for the groups?

[/ QUOTE ]

AirSpun.com an alternative in the sense that radio airplay has traditionally been shut off to those bands who are not signed with major labels. We break down that barrier without a band or artist having to sign with a label. We function right now as a marketing and promotion vehicle for independent artists.

Signing with a label can be a great thing for a band or it can be an exploitative process (see Billy Joel). We offer a way for bands to have a greater hand in controlling their own direction.

There are various business possibilities that may arise from our early discovery of talent, but that is not currently our focus.

[samsdmf]

jfk

As a musician myself and a friend of much better musicians I probably know a few people who would be interested in Signing up as an artist.
Would I simply go through the 'Airgod registration' and let the site work its magic or are there more steps/ personalizations I could make (any advice)

Thanks for sharing, I approve of anything that supports unsigned music!

[jfk]

samsdmf,

We have a musician's toolkit page here: http://www.airspun.com/bands/

There a band can create their own page and register for our AirGods competition. We also have an audio player widget which can be embedded on other sites. These are free and available whether or not a band or artist uses our service.

Should a band elect to buy airtime they may browse the various options off that page. Right now all the stations available are in the U.S. though there are both cell phone and internet delivery options. So a band from say, Wales, would want to decide on the value of exposure in the U.S.