I've been following upstart AjiSignal, a blog network of music journalists for several months now, and I'm really liking what they are doing and the direction they are heading in: to "organize the world of music blogging." Essentially, AjiSignal brings together indie music blog writers from around the world to contribute to city specific music feeds. Recently, I had a chance to ping co-founder and editor Patrick Woodward with a few questions about AjiSignal, and here is what he had to say. His responses are really helpful, and if you're a musician or in a band, read 3 & 4.
Many thanks to Patrick Woodward for taking the time to respond and talk about AjiSignal!
1) Why did you start AjiSignal?
We're coming to it with the goal of trying to organize the world of music blogging. There are so many music blogs out there but it can be difficult to connect with anything amongst the endless supply of music being served up by writers all over the world. As a reader, if you find music you like, its nice to be able to associate the music with something. We decided one way to do this would be to break it down by city. We think a city is something that can be attached to an artist as part of their defining characteristics. If a listener thinks in terms of an artist being *from* a specific city it can give the listener something else to relate that artist to. Hopefully it helps implant that artist into the listener's mind a little bit deeper. Organizing music by city to show what kind of music a city produces has been really interesting. A lot of the stylistic differences have been really unexpected. Its cool to see the differences from city to city with respect to musical styles and sounds.
2) What does the name mean?
Aji means "taste" in Japanese. AjiSignal is a "Taste Signal" I spent time in Japan last year-it's a little carry over from my experiences there.
3) So what can AjiSignal do for a musician or band?
AjiSignal highlights artists in cities around the world. So, for artists in those cities what we do is give them a feature article at AjiSignal.com. In addition to an article we provide relevant links to other places on the web where the artist has a presence whether its Last.fm, MySpace, Amazon, FoxyTunes or YouTube. We want to give the reader a robust representation of who the highlighted artist is and what they're all about. If the artist has any upcoming shows we'll include that information as well. Since we're city specific, AjiSignal is a great way for a artist to be highlighted amongst peers from their home base city.
4) Can a band submit their own information or article about themselves?
We have writers reporting on the music in their city. That being said, an artist can certainly submit information about themselves but what we'll do is forward that information to a writer we know in the artist's home base city. If we don't know of a blogger in the artist's city, we'll find one.
5) How many readers do you all have?
Well, we've been up and running since Aug 15 and we average about 3,800 page views a month right now.
6) What kind of music stories are you looking for? That is, are you only looking for articles about new music?
Thats a good question and one we've had to contend with over the course of the past few months. We are in fact most interested in new music that is emerging. On the rare occasion we've highlighted established artists but new music is what we're most interested in.
7) Are articles edited in any way?
With the exception of necessary tweeks here and there articles are not edited. We try to make it really clear to contributing writers as to what AjiSignal is all about and what we look for in the articles so that editing isn't a necessity.
8) What are your top 5 cities that you would like to have music journalists in?
If we had five *more* cities on board they would be Stockholm, Tokyo, Austin, Philadelphia, Paris.
(editorial question: What about Atlanta?)
9) How is AjiSignal different than the Indie Music Project?
What AjiSignal does is really very simple. We're music in cites. A music reporter/blogger in a city uses AjiSignal to talk about an artist they are into at that moment and that they feel is an important part of the musical fabric of their city. Dan and I take that material and add to it any other web presence the artist may have so the reader has a rich representation of the artist being highlighted. We want the artist, the writer and the city to be super visible for the reader. The Indie Music Project brings together different types of city specific content.
As you can see, AjiSignal not only helps music enthusiasts discover new music through its network of music bloggers, but it can also help emerging artists attract a larger audience outside of their local sphere of influence. I think AjiSignal will be highly successful in college markets with strong music scenes like Athens, GA or Charlottesville, VA. If you would like to become a contributing music writer for your city/area, please contact AjiSignal.
Have you ever wanted to find new music for the mood you're in? This is exactly the problem that recently launched Guitarati is trying to solve. Incorporating aspects of Color Psychology, Guitarati has developed a technology that correlates music styles and genres with a listener's emotions, expressing these relationships in a wide range of colors. Guitarati, suggests that for every mood, every state of mind, colors can more accurately represent the kind of music a listener wants to hear, as musical notes elicit emotions as diverse as the color spectrum, something that text based tagging is not able to achieve. Here's how it works: You pick the color that best represents your mood and
Guitarati will automatically provide you with a list of songs representative of that color. If you listen to a few samples and the tracks are still not quite the style or genre you were looking for, you can then narrow the list down by selecting a darker or lighter shade of the color you selected, or even filter the results by only the genres of music you like.
