Hunting for other musicians to collaborate with is one of the hardest challenges, but that might be a thing of the past if Philip Kaplan has his way.
The new site called Fandalism is one part social network and one part database that allows musicians to sign up and enter basic information such as preferred genres of music, influences and their location. They can also share their original photos, lyrics and embeddable Youtube videos and SoundCloud players.
Does the world really need another social network?Do musicians really need this service? Well, Fandalism started out as an invite-only platform in January and has already had 85,000 musicians sign up mostly by word of mouth. Also, when Myspace first came out it was heavily populated by musicians in a way that hasn’t quite been matched by any other social network since.
I think Fandalism shows a lot of potential for two reasons. First – because it does address a real problem that musicians have which is being able to easily find other musicians. The promise of Fandalism is to be able to find other musicians to work with based on how good of a match they are to your influences and preferences. Craigslist, Google and Facebook weren’t making it as easy as Fandalism claims to be.
Secondly – the site is not trying to be the next Facebook; it’s by musicians for musicians. When musicians get together and support each other, they can create a grassroots movement that can eventually bring in real fans. This is something that I learned from playing in a band; when you’re just starting out and haven’t built a large following – you’re often performing for the other musicians performing on the same bill as you (and the bar staff).
Should Fandalism keep a narrow focus on helping musicians, they should do well. If they change gears and focus on getting the audience to show up, things could potentially degrade into the spam-fest that Myspace became filled with bogus ‘friends’.
I think Fandalism could be a great way to network with other musicians and allow ‘orphaned’ musicians to be able to sync up with other musicians to potentially start a band or to collaborate on a music project together. The potential here is to find a higher quality musician to work with instead of putting up with the guy down the street how attends ‘alcohol practice’ each week and brings his guitar with him.
Find out more about Fandalism below and let me know if you think this site is all hype – or a great way to network and raise your profile in the music circles that you are most interested in.
Fandalism: Finally A Social Network That Works For Musicians [EXCLUSIVE]