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No Simon Cowells allowed!

OurStage - a new on-line model for undiscovered talent

A good friend of mine who, like myself, is an unsigned singer/songwriter recently commented to me, "I'm so sick of uploading my songs onto websites that only other unsigned musicians will ever see or hear. It's like sending my art down a black hole." To which I responded, "Have you checked out OurStage.com yet?"

With a plethora of sites out there for the indie-artist/band it becomes increasingly frustrating to make a dent, even if the music is very good. Add to that the fact that only other musicians are checking out these sites to further their own careers, which means the artist or band receives no real new fans and only a fair-weather kind of social networking friend (hello MySpace).

OurStage.com is different because they have partnered with some the biggest taste-makers in the industry and come up with a new model and real cash prizes-from $100 to $5000 each month. Granted they do send out a lot of t-shirts to the runner-ups, but what musician doesn't love another black t-shirt to add to their collection? The real reward is that someone in the industry who is not another musician, and is actually a person in a position to help them out, is listening (granted, it might only be the interns for those people, but interns are young and, therefore, the real taste-makers, aren't they?).

The model is this: it's like an on-line version of American Idol, without the nasty judging of Simon Cowell. It's a multi-genre, anonymous judging system where the listener picks the favorite of two songs in the category they choose to judge. At the end of every month the top-rated songs go head-to-head for cash prizes and bona-fide promotional opportunities for the artists, such as festival gigs, studio time and tour support. OurStage has a video/film category as well.

Since it is a competition an artist has to be prepared for the worst, while hoping and working towards the best. Songs go up and down in the rankings, so if a song is in the Top Ten one day, it might be in the Top Two-hundred the next. Remember, lot's of people are judging and there's no accounting for taste.

My skeptical friend ended up joining OurStage, but he never told me about it. The way I found out was one day, while checking for my own song rankings, I saw that his song had surpassed mine in the indie-rock category and was actually number one for a couple of days. He ended up winning a black t-shirt, but the confidence he gained from the experience of the competition inspired him to write and record new songs with a fervor unlike I'd seen in him in years.

An artist needs feedback and small tastes of success in order to to prime the musical pump and OurStage is a great place to get the creative juices flowing.
For the non-artist, casual fan OurStage is a great place to find a new favorite song or video that you can put on your MySpace or Facebook profile, thereby making you more cool than your friends.

Learn more about this author, Blake Guthrie.
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