Social Media Music News : Tunited
I have been given the gift of time today after a couple of meetings got cancelled, hopefully to be rescheduled later in the week. This afternoon I will be travelling up to Edinburgh to do some social media reporting work for Amplified and possibly a little bit of battle ukulele performance somewhere or other, but between now and then I am catching up on band admin. A neverending but empowering task, since most of what I do wouldn’t have been possible five years ago, or would certainly have taken far longer.
So, catching up on posting recent press links on the blog and archiving for my records, more website tweaks (usually done very late at night hence the recent hilarious addition of “Nail Gaiman” to the Disarm microsite), book design, email catching up and making more lists of kooky plans to make reality.
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I also want to take a moment to mention Tunited, a new music social networking site created by Midge Ure. My Mum saw Midge talking about it on TV a few weeks ago and sent me an email telling me to have a look so I duly signed up and uploaded some songs a few days ago.
In general I’m not interested in joining every new music related social networking site that pops up – I have limited time on my hands since the Tory government refuses to consider my petition for the 28 hour day – so anything I do choose to spend my time on has to be 1) useful in way the others I use is not, 2) fast and easy to sign up to and 3) actively engaging with users in cool ways, among other things.
So why did I sign up to Tunited? A mixture of great respect for Midge Ure and people like him who made music in that halcyon time when deliciously dark proggy synthy tunes got the mainstream attention they deserved, gratitude to my Mum for supporting me with my music and never asking when I’m going to get a “proper job” and geekitude – I love testing sites in Beta phase because I am very opiniated. What – you didn’t know that about me??
My sign-up experience was good. Uploading tracks was pretty fast and it was a relief that you can just paste YouTube links on the video page rather than having to upload those independently as well. It would have been nice to be able to paste an RSS feed in to the blog as I’m reluctant enough to cross post to MySpace as it is, let alone anywhere else, but I just posted a link to this blog instead. HTML doesn’t seem to be supported yet, but I would assume that’s coming soon.
So what of my other criteria? I need to spend more time looking around the site and figuring out ways to make it work for me, but I like its outlook already. Tunited is aiming to be a better version of the music side of MySpace, cutting out some of the noise by focusing its intent and gearing itself towards musicians and music fans only, building the community by encouraging users to recommend music they like to others – always the best way to find great bands. The claims to be able to connect musicians with industry bods aren’t particularly compelling – impressing label bosses etc isn’t a priority to me, working independently of the industry proper (whatever that is at the moment) as I do – but if genuine, and if the right sorts of industry people (those who love music not money), that could certainly be a good aspect of using the site.
This morning I had a nice taste of Tunited support and enthusiasm when I was featured in their Magazine. That there are staff dedicated to browsing through the site and highlighting and sharing the music they come across is fantastic, and naturally it’s handy as a musician if there aren’t already swarms of other bands using the site. However it grows, Tunited will have to maintain this sort of activity to continue to engage with users and make the site a compelling place for people to spend their time.
I look forward to having a good browse through Tunited myself this week to see what great music is lurking under its attractive exterior. If you’re already on there please paste a link in the comments and feel free to add me – my profile is here.
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