More Info than Brains

Just last week I was at a local showcase rock show and I mentioned to some friends that I really could use another indie-music website. I have had trouble finding terrible music on MySpace, PureVolume, LastFM, GarageBand-blah-blee-bloo. It has also been a little too long since someone created a site playing on the MySpace name.

Thank assorted gods that the folks at Ourstage.com took care of both my needs in one, sexy, new website. I am, of course, being as sarcastic as Web 2.0 will allow with most of that, except the sexy and new bit.

Allow me to break from the cynicism for a second and begin with a few things that they’ve done that are bordering on progress. First, the site is well programmed, well designed, super pretty, smooth, fast and generally a delight to click about. Their marketing and explanation videos are well produced and stream without delay. Also, there is a distinct lack of the making-a-buck-off-dilusional-artists concept that plagues the music industry (*cough*Sonicbids*cough).

Most importantly, Ourstage.com is an organizational service, which is part of the solution. They’re attempting to help sort all this information into some type of order for easier consumption. So far, Ourstage is looking like an excellent solution.

Essentially Ourstage.com is the Hot or Not of music and film. They’ve incorporated a slightly more complicated phase-system of voting where at the end of each week the top ten contenders can duke it out for cash and prizes, but essentially the user is given two songs, side by side, and they’re to rate which they like better on a sliding scale. It’s a simple, proven, concept that in the past has been enjoyable for the user when presented with either excellent or terrible content to judge – which is endlessly important when dealing with online music discovery.

Here’s where Ourstage.com’s concept begins to break down. Hot or Not worked because the user was required to spend a fraction of a second analyzing the shirtless dude in Zoobas posing with his Glock before giving homeboy a 8 and moving on (10s are reserved for Skidz and a Camero). On Ourstage.com the user is required to listen to, or watch, a minimum of 30 seconds of each option before making their rating. That’s a full minute of terrible music, if you’re lucky. The worst, and most common, situation is that you’re faced with two, mediocre, Nicklebackish, attempts at rocking your world – and you have to sit through a full minute, which is, I discovered, just barely enough time to tie your shoelaces into a noose. I gave voting my best go, hoping each time that the next pair would include either a great new band, or a white guy rapping about Yamahas, but after three or four pairs of Jam Bands and chicks-with-guitars, I couldn’t take anymore.

Although I commend their intentions to help organize this shitsunami of online music, without funneling artists’ dream-cash into their checking account, in the end, Ourstage.com is just part of the problem. Another URL for me not to bookmark.

Their slogan is “let the fans decide,” which again is a noble sentiment on the surface, but really the “fans” would just be doing their work for them. This brings us back to the problem at hand. We have “tastemakers” for a reason, people we trust to sift through the multitude, and pull out the diamonds so that I can go about my day without having to dig through all that rough first. This is why we have blogs like Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork (not recommended), Stereogum, Spin.com, jasper.webvomit.com (highly recommended). It’s why we have our local alt-weeklies, and showcase nights at your local shitty rock dive. Someone has analyzed the information, and picked what was worthy for your brian. Just find someone you trust, and generally agree with, and let them handle that for you.

It’s called delegation.