Dingo Breakfast
A yawn, a leak, and a good look around.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
• StartMySong.com
Personally, I don't get it. You upload your songs (for $10, EACH), and then if an industry heavy likes your stuff, they have to pay $5 to get your contact information?
Myspace is free. Artists can upload music for free. Industry reps can stalk artists for free.
There are a few other perks, listed in Mashable's review below, but... I don't get it.
Mashable's review of StartMySong.com:
20 word description: Start My Song allows songwriters to post their new songs for music industry members looking for new material to browse.
CEO’s 100 word description: Start My Song is a website dedicated to Songwriters. It solves the problem of new material and demos having to be sent to multiple organizations including song producers, record labels and artists. Now songwriters can post their best material in one place for music industry members looking for new material to browse. The website accepts MP3 formats for finished songs or available beats and melodies that are ready to be matched up with lyrics. The website also accepts lyrics and music sheets in the form of PDF files.
Mashable’s Take: Start My Song is a new community for songwriters and other music artists, to help promote themselves and find others to work with. Artists can upload their own content, whether it be songs, beats, melodies, or lyrics, and rate the uploaded content of others. All of your uploaded content will display on your profile page, along with your contact information.
While this is a community for music artists to find each other and promote themselves, this isn’t really a social network of any sort. In order to protect users from spammers and non-serious inquiries, Start My Song does require a $5.00 surcharge for each inquiry. This seems a bit steep, even for protecting users from spam, and will make it difficult for Start My Song to compete in the very crowded online music market, against other startups like Songpull or the big boys like MySpace.
Aside from this surcharge, another obstacle Start My Song is facing is its lack of promotional tools that are available for artists. Adding widgets, photo galleries and portable players along with additional feedback mechanisms could help Start My Song better gain traction.
Myspace is free. Artists can upload music for free. Industry reps can stalk artists for free.
There are a few other perks, listed in Mashable's review below, but... I don't get it.
Mashable's review of StartMySong.com:
20 word description: Start My Song allows songwriters to post their new songs for music industry members looking for new material to browse.
CEO’s 100 word description: Start My Song is a website dedicated to Songwriters. It solves the problem of new material and demos having to be sent to multiple organizations including song producers, record labels and artists. Now songwriters can post their best material in one place for music industry members looking for new material to browse. The website accepts MP3 formats for finished songs or available beats and melodies that are ready to be matched up with lyrics. The website also accepts lyrics and music sheets in the form of PDF files.
Mashable’s Take: Start My Song is a new community for songwriters and other music artists, to help promote themselves and find others to work with. Artists can upload their own content, whether it be songs, beats, melodies, or lyrics, and rate the uploaded content of others. All of your uploaded content will display on your profile page, along with your contact information.
While this is a community for music artists to find each other and promote themselves, this isn’t really a social network of any sort. In order to protect users from spammers and non-serious inquiries, Start My Song does require a $5.00 surcharge for each inquiry. This seems a bit steep, even for protecting users from spam, and will make it difficult for Start My Song to compete in the very crowded online music market, against other startups like Songpull or the big boys like MySpace.
Aside from this surcharge, another obstacle Start My Song is facing is its lack of promotional tools that are available for artists. Adding widgets, photo galleries and portable players along with additional feedback mechanisms could help Start My Song better gain traction.
Labels: daisichain, linear walkout, review, websites
2 Comments:
Etc
Thanks for your post!
The charges surfaced from the fact that we wanted to avoid splashing ads everywhere for revenue but you're right and that model didn't work well for anyone.
Now the site is free to upload your music and to contact artists. We are also pushing our artist's music out via our daily new music fix on Twitter and Pownce. We hope this helps our artists get noticed and also brings return traffic to the site.
Our latest addition has been the Share This widget to each song allowing people to easily share songs they've enjoyed with friends on the platform of their choice.
-Start My Song
www.startmysong.com
Thanks for your post!
The charges surfaced from the fact that we wanted to avoid splashing ads everywhere for revenue but you're right and that model didn't work well for anyone.
Now the site is free to upload your music and to contact artists. We are also pushing our artist's music out via our daily new music fix on Twitter and Pownce. We hope this helps our artists get noticed and also brings return traffic to the site.
Our latest addition has been the Share This widget to each song allowing people to easily share songs they've enjoyed with friends on the platform of their choice.
-Start My Song
www.startmysong.com