Duffy sent me a little love note a couple days ago directing my affection to this thread. I finally had a chance to read it ... and re-read some of it.
Here are my thoughts (deep breath):
[The following is an unpaid advertisement for Cringe.com ... sorta.]
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THEIR LOCAL MUSIC SCENES
I doubt the people behind
http://www.localmusicscenes.com are out to scam bands. Chances are they are huge music fans in their respective cities. But certainly they hope to make a little money with their project on such a grand scale. But even with the best of intentions, life happens. People move on, lose interest, burn out, grow apathetic ... whatever. So maybe 2 years from now the site will be a stagnant snapshot of how things were in 2003.
One site isn't going to make or break a band ... but a whole bunch might. So as just a small piece of the puzzle it could be a good resource. $50 isn't that much. And maybe that joint show of bands interested could be taken further and actually be done as a localmusicscenes.com showcase. Don't take that as an endorsement, just an idea to run with.
But as others have said, megasites like this rarely pull together what you would hope. They end up gentrified, skimming the surface, mainstreamed, stagnant and/or a mixture of odd little pockets of mismatched bands who've decided to use or abuse it. The Columbus CitySearch site is a fine example of this these days.
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MY LOCAL MUSIC SCENE
Now as far doing your/our own localscene site goes, a lot of these same issues apply. Sure, I suspect a relatively small group of people could get a decent resource put together. Heck, most of Cringe is done by my hands - no matter how horribly I type. But maintenance can be a bitch. The related admin tasks usually ain't all that fun or intellectually stimulating and the rewards can be few and far between.
Take this as an example or an outlet ... Dealing with updating info for hundreds of nomadic local bands and such is a daunting task that I had come to dread. So about 10 months ago Cringe.com finally switched to a fairly flexible contact section where any kind of local music entity could add, edit and update their own contact info as often as they like:
http://www.cringe.com/current/index.php?name=YellowPHP
This listing includes a free short "Cringe URL" (i.e.
http://www.cringe.com/myband) linking directly to their detailed contact info page. The response was minimal for the first few months. At this point in time about 344 local music related entities have registered in this system. About one third of these were entered by staff members or myself.
This was all offered free to a community that to a large extent is familiar with the site. And the site itself has an 8 year history. I know there are many more local music entities than this in Columbus. There are at least twice that many bands alone. Maybe its ugly or confusing or too much work ... or good 'ol apathy that's keeping bands and such from listing their info. I don't know. But do know that this resource is available and open to your input.
I guess what I'm saying is taking advantage of outlets and resources that already exist may be a wise move. Rather than diluting the efforts, you can concentrate them. But I'm also a big believer in supporting those (and "thats") around you. So if you are seriously considering launching your own Columbus version of this, keep in mind Cringe.com has been attempting to this for 8 years. We have some semblance of structure, support, storage and bandwidth in place. We could use your help, input and enthusiasm.
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JOBS AND ART
I'm very much of the same mind set as Mr. Gerken when it comes to "the separation of profit and art." You have a job to pay the bills and so you don't have to sacrifice your art to make money. Of course there are exceptions and huge philosophical implications here that I'm sure Dan could probably state much more succinctly and intelligently than I. Besides that's getting off topic, so I'll stop at that.
The point is sites like Donewaiting.com and Cringe.com are largely done as overgrown hobbies, not for profit. Sure, Cringe.com makes a few bucks here and there with ads, shows, comps,mailings and hosting. But it comes nowhere near paying for my time, hardware, software, and our new hosting costs. That's why i have a part time day job that just happens to provide me with great hours, full benefits and decent pay.
Sometimes I'm even in a position where my job and hobbies overlap. At the day job we recently started working on a bunch of the Ohio Arts Council sites (
http://ColumbusArts.com/,
http://ExperienceColumbus.com/,
http://ArtsInOhio.com/,
http://www.gcac.org/, etc.). One of the most intriguing ones is
http://www.OhioEventFinder.com. This is a centralized database of events around Ohio which is leveraged by many organizations throughout the state. So local Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus arts councils and visitors bureaus all pull from this same database. Smart. Nice. Centralized. Of course, they don't generally list bars and such we'd be interested in, but the idea and infrastructure makes for a decent model.
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NOSTALGIA AND ORIGINS
Try the Web version of the very first hard copy/email of Cringe:
http://www.cringe.com/issues/5.1/
Or what's left of the old gig swapping emailing list I used to run:
http://www.cringe.com/amam/
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DoneRambling.