Collaborative Music Filtering Keeps It Indie

While most social music sites run the race of getting the latest news and music from the biggest, most popular artists, Contrastream, sets its sights on the unsung heroes of music, the working-class independent musicians. In fact, the site itself could very well embody the indie disposition. First off, the moniker denotes going against what mainstream dictates (“contra” is Spanish for “against”) and then the site is registered under Go Daddy , a popular domain registrar known to charge a measly amount per domain name, an argu-ably clear reflection of the near empty gig venues and the almost empty pockets that finance independent raw recordings.

The site is draped in straightforward black and gray blog-like templates with everything you need easily within reach. Music is arranged in albums according to their popularity and how recently they were added to the site; or in singles, based on the top ranking tracks. These can searched by artist, album or song using the search fields. Users can band together in the included communities or groups to support their musicians and are even given their own blog spots within the site; while musicians can embed their videos, bios and external links to theri official sites and stay connected with their target markets.

The basic premise here involves discovering new music from underground artists and giving the attention they deserve . Any registered user can submit their albums which are independently produced and/or signed under independent labels. Meanwhile, Contrastream gives its users free reign over what should or should not be listened to by giving it either a thumbs up with the Hyped button or shove it down a notch towards probable obscurity with Dropped.

Also, to keep the site fresh with exclusively indie music, users are encouraged to do some music filtering and flag musicians they think have already gotten sufficient attention and coverage from the mainstream media by hitting the Mainstream! button. When a musician gets a large number of Mainstream! flags, he is believed to have crossed over to the popular spectrum of the scene and therefore taken out of the site.

Established Network Platform Still At It

UK-based Internet radio and music com munity Last.fm basically exploded into the Internet limelight when it was launched in 2002 and has since evolved into a huge social media site with over 21 million active users globally. Its popularity is largely due to the fact that it’s more of a customizable Internet radio site with a comprehensive list of musi-cians than it is a social networking community; a fact that is not lost on the users as they are naturally drawn to joining sites that offer more content and advanced Web 2.0 capabilities.

Usage is fairly simple, housed in a well organized page layout. Each artist profile page is chockfull of information neatly arranged in tabs on top of each page, including bios, videos, pictures, events, albums and a recommended list of musicians under the same genre you, as a listener, would probably like as well. On the other hand, user profiles also allow you to support your musicians by joining internal fan groups, keeping a journal, and listing the events you’ve attended. A Taste-O-Meter tab helps you decide whether to add another user or not by gauging your compatibility through how many artists you have in common in your playlists.

To be able to fully utilize Last.fm’s features, you’d have to download the accompanying Audioscrobbler software, which can be used even without setting your browser to the Last.fm site. You can use it to search songs which it automatically plays, and it gives you the options to recommend or have songs banned from ever being played again. You can also create playlists, which you can share with anyone from your buddy list. The software then queues up a series of tracks from other musicians that other users have recommended, letting you discover a lot of artists you may or may not have heard of. The songs you’ve played are then displayed in your profile page where other users can use the integrated Shoutbox to make comments.

There is an array of widgets you can append to your blog, personal site or other social networking profile pages that show off the songs you have recently played in either an embeddable media player or their respective album covers lined up in JPEG format. People from the open source community can also do some PHP diddling to create new plug-ins for the application or download from a list of user-submitted ones.

Putting the Spotlight on Asian Talents

International music cable television net work Channel V’s Asia’s Music Platform (AMP) was set up specifically to promote the Asian music scene, giving local artists a bigger, more accessible stage to showcase their music. Launched during the first quarter of last year, AMP is still on its beta stage, but it currently lists more than 5,000 reg-istered users and continues to be a growing community of musicians and music fans.

It carries a clean layout that delivers most of the site’s features and contents immediately accessible through the front page. There are no fluffy cluttered ads, heavy animation or action scripting that prompt media autoplay on every page load here, so you can be sure that the site loads considerably fast. While its Discover Music page rolls out a list of newly registered artists for those on the look out for raw, undiscovered talents in need of an audience, AMP content writers also con-duct sit down interviews with various musicians for the Seen & Heard section of the site.  AMP TV, on the other hand, compiles a handful of videos of live performances captured during AMP-related events around the region. In addition, Asian music magazine Junk provides fresh news and special features in the world of internation-al music with a special focus on Asian talents.

You can search AMP’s library of musicians by country, genre or if you have particular musician in mind, by specifically searching for them using the ubiquitous search text field. Artist profiles come with complete information – from the standardized social site elements like bios, contact details and external links, to the latest news, monthly gig sched-ules and a recommendation board that suggests other AMP artists that carry similar music styles. Visitors to the site can also play some of the artists’ uploaded tracks and music videos on the embedded music and video players, and leave comments of praise or constructive criticism. A weekly chart is then generated based on the number of plays a song gets and is displayed either in the general AMP Chart or a country-based chart.

By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros

If there’s one good thing that came out of the Ajax-fueled Web 2.0 standard, it has to be social networking sites and, by extension, social media sites. The recent leg of the annual SXSW Interactive Festival in Texas (hailed as the incubation hub for the next big Web application) yielded a whole slew of beta sites that employ the social networking principle. This reinforces what we already know: that social media sites have become a massive online trend and it’s paving the way for the next wave of Web innovations in the coming years.

Naturally, competition ensued with the explosion of these sites all over the Web, starting a race to find fresh, innovative ways to connect you with your friends and possibly make new ones. And essen-tially since digital music streaming, downloads and purchases pretty much make up a considerably large fraction of our daily Internet activities, it’s only logi-cal to come up with social media sites to support and connect people with this common interest.

With millions of registered users globally, these social music sites have been adopted by musicians as part of their marketing model to spread the word about their music, connect with their existing fan base or with other artists, and gain more exposure than traditional media could possibly offer. Music fans, on the other hand, look to these sites as a way to contact and connect with their music heroes, get updates like gig schedules and album release dates, find likeminded people, join fan groups, and possibly stumble upon a free download or two. On the other end of the spectrum, record com-panies and label managers can discover new talents to sign and offer their managerial services to through these sites, as well as further promoting their current crop of talents and utilizing the site as a platform to strike deals with sponsors and advertisers.

If you’re a musician, record label executive or simply an audiophile, gather round because this month we’ve collected some of today’s notable music networking sites.