Garage Band.

GarageBand is a website that is totally unconnected with Apple's GarageBand software. GarageBand, the site, offers opportunities for independent musicians. The chief way it does this is through an elaborate reviewing system. The syatem is filled with checks and balances, and is quite complex, too complex to describe here. Bands sign up to GarageBand, and then have two options. Either they can earn credits to upload a song for review by doing reviews themselves, or they can pay upfront ($20 US) to upload a track. Signing up is free. If you choose to do reviews, you have to do 15 review pairs to earn an upload credit. You review songs in pairs- that is, you are presented with two linked tracks. (The linking system is obscure to me. The intention is obviously somehow to generate more representative results.) This means you have to do 30 reviews to earn an upload credit, which is fairly laborious. You are scored on your reviews, based on usefulness and diligence (basically). If you score too low, you don't earn an upload credit...So the system would seem to work well in terms of generating a solid stream of reviews.

Be warned that the state of the tracks you review can range all the way from "turned on the boombox to record the rehearsal" through to "veteran producer John Doe was involved at an early stage. Tracks where sent to legendary mastering engineer etc etc." The level of most people's artistic efforts is very high- most people seem to take the exercise very seriously. That's not to say everything is good, just that noone seems to be half baked about it (except in the case of those boombox recordings). People submit their tracks in various categories, and the aims of the artists clearly range from "commercial world conquest" to "mesmerisingly obscure experimentalism", and every point in between.

The tracks receive a ranking based on their reviews, and in theory capturing a number one spot could result in a lot of attention. My own reaction to the process, based on tracks that I've reviewed, is that I don't think the best tracks necessarily receive the best scores. But that is always the way things work in this kind of venture. So I wouldn't see the ranking system as necessarily the most useful aspect of the scheme. The first really useful aspect I'd see is the chance to get a ton of varied feedback on tracks in progress. For instance, you can submit demo tracks and ask for specific feedback on the mixes. The second useful aspect is the guaranteed exposure to a lot of potential fans- ie, the reviewers. GarageBand provides you with a lot of tools, like a fan list, to make the most of this. The third useful aspect is that I can easily see whole fan communities revolving around GarageBand. For instance, for the more experimental stuff, GarageBand could become the hub for such sites as "Best Experimental Rock on GarageBand." GarageBand has ties to Live 365 and CDBaby, so it provides that potential internet radio- CDStore- Fan community nexus that could be so significant. Note also that for a lot of the more commercial acts, exposure they already have on radio and so on doesn't seem to dissuade them from regarding GarageBand as a useful avenue.