In an increasingly interconnected world where the Internet has made physical distance an afterthought, there’s a curious dearth of ways for musicians to make meaningful connections. Musicians are often relegated to doing member or gear searches through services like Craigslist, which while functional, are not designed with musicians specifically in mind. MusicTown, a New England startup, has set out to remedy this problem with what they describe as a combination between OKcupid and LinkedIn for artists.
No, the service is not meant to foster romantic relationships as the OKcupid reference might imply (you never know though). The comparison is apt because the online service (currently in a private beta) puts a lot of effort into determining the personality, preferences and tastes of the individual user. Instead of connecting people based purely on need alone, the service surfaces connections with both similar needs and compatible personalities.
You may be thinking: why does personality matter as much as need? As an example, think of a band that needs a studio musician to play specific parts of a recording during the multiple hours the band has booked at a local studio. This band, likely on a tight budget, must make sure they accomplish their goals within the allotted time or waste time and money. Hiring a studio musician off of a non-personality-based website like Craiglist could easily lead to incompatible people meeting at just the moment they need be productive. Imagine the frustration a band with clear ideas could face when they bring in a studio musician who thinks there are last-second changes that ought to be made. MusicTown’s personality-based algorithm pumps the brakes on the chance of this or something similar occurring.
The value of MusicTown is clear, but they have more to offer musician mixers such as the recent Songwriter and Musician Hangout they hosted in conjunction with SongwriterLink (another Boston startup). Artists from across the genre spectrum are encouraged to group up, listen to each other’s music and even share the stage for an impromptu jam session. Maybe that local Boston metalcore band will realize what the addition of an excellent keyboardist could add to their somewhat played-out sound (not that adding a keyboard would really remedy that problem…).
These events also serve as a middle ground to meet people you may want to contact for more specific purposes before you invite them over to your house or the studio. As Nathan, the founder of MusicTown puts it, “We wanted to save people the often awkward situation of meeting someone from a website for the first time at a house or paying for studio time before you discover if you actually like them or not.” Makes sense to us.
MuiscTown fancies its nearest competitor to be Craigslist, which is often the de facto choice for people seeking out other people for just about anything (see: time travel), but in this very column we’ve covered two other services that provide analogous experiences. Both GroupTones and SoundBetter offer ways for musicians to find one another and get work done. Despite a similar basic premise, each of the three services have important distinctions. GroupTones puts its major emphasis on location while SoundBetter works more like a beefed-up and online classifieds page in a newspaper (yes, they still exist). MusicTown carves out its own path by focusing squarely on the social, emotional and local aspects of its service. It doesn’t just want to facilitate the creation of music, but also the creation of important relationships that can lead to excellent results, but most of all, good times.
Though MusicTown was founded in Boston, its model could easily expand beyond the city and they certainly plan to do exactly that. Nathan explains that, “there are millions of people in this country alone who passionately identify themselves as musicians,” and that MusicTown is “currently exploring revenue models including strategic partnerships and services to help us serve more people.”
MusicTown is passionate about solving connection problems for the music community and their fledgling platform shows a lot of promise. Nathan sees the connection of musicians around the country as a wonderful way for regions to celebrate their own local sounds. The bottom line is that creating music should also be about the relationships that lead to it, and as Nathan puts it, “we come from different genres and backgrounds, play different instruments and at different skill levels, but are united in our mission to help people connect, collaborate, and create the music they love.”
You can learn more aboutMusicTown and follow them at the following links: MusicTown’s Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.