The elevator pitch for Where to Start With goes like this:

Where to Start With helps you when you’re trying out new bands and artists by providing community-powered recommendations written by die hard fans.

If that new band you want to try has 10 CD’s out, then Where to Start With will give you… well, where to start with them!

The whole idea behind this site came from a need me and my friend found ourselves having; many times we would hear a song or read about a band that sounded interesting but then when we did go to try that band we would find they had a handful of releases out already. Where is the best place to start with them? Traditionally unless you got a specific recommendation for an album you would just try the lucky dip approach and hope you found a winner. If you got lucky you might have just found your new favourite band, however if you picked a rotten egg you may dismiss your potential new favourite band based on your opinion of one of their poorer releases.

A personal example was when I was recommended to listen to Porcupine Tree and given one song to try. That song was awesome, however Porcupine Tree have a massive back-catalogue (9 albums, 6 live/compilation albums and 4 EPs) and from trying a few releases out I found that they are very diverse and I still haven’t managed to get into them, although from that initial song I really wish I could. What I really needed was a guide to tell me where to actually start with Porcupine Tree, for example something that said "for starting out with Porcupine Tree what you really need to buy first is their album X".

This is how Where to Start With was born and also basically how it works — each band or artist will have an article about them which gives a short history/description of the band and each of their main releases (e.g. Albums & E.P.’s) with a little description. Any user can add these articles and each article is in the wiki-style, e.g. anyone can edit the descriptions to add new information and fix mistakes etc.

The real core of the site comes into play when people start adding their opinions on artists, once again anyone can do this, but it is better for people who are currently fans of the artist to add their opinion. Each opinion includes a rating, a recommendation (more on those later) and a personal comment on each of the albums for the artist. We then take these opinions and produce an article that gives you recommendations on where to start with the artist, what to try after that and even sometimes what to avoid.

What makes this different to other sites?

Well, whereas other sites, software and services may give you reviews, the most popular or most listened to albums those may not necessarily be the best releases to start off with a new artist.

For instance Reefs debut album "Replenish" is absolutely amazing and one of my all time favourite albums, however pretty much anyone interested in starting with Reef would be best advised to start with their second album "Glow", which is much more accessible in general. Another clear example would be Nirvana, I personally hardly ever listen to Nirvana’s "Nevermind" album any more (as I know all of Nirvana’s albums inside and out, every cough and guitar string noise included) and I would rate "In Utero" as my favourite album however "Nevermind" obviously would be the album I would recommend anyone new to Nirvana should start out with.

But going further than that after you have tried the "essential" release Where to Start With helps you with which release to follow the essential release with, a wildcard album and even sometimes what to avoid – these can be really difficult to determine from the other methods.

About the recommendations.

Each Where to Start With article can have the following recommendations for each release to help guide you:

• Essential: The the first release to try, the best introduction to the artist.
• Follow with: The next release to try after the essential release.
• Also recommended: Another good release to try.
• Wildcard: A release that may not be "the norm" for the artist but still could be interesting. If you try the essential release and weren’t so keen this should be different enough to be worth a try.
• Avoid: Yes, some users will also tell you what to avoid.

The votes of each person on each release are added up to ensure that each article has one of each of the above recommendations (where applicable) and the more opinions that are added the better the recommendations become. You also have access to personal comments of each person who gave their opinion to give you a better insight into why they voted how they voted. And finally, just in case there is a close call between releases you can also see the breakdown of the votes for each release.

Sounds great, how do I get started?

Well we’re currently in private beta and have been running with a small handful of users for the past couple of weeks but are accepting applications to the beta and adding new users on a daily basis. The reason we’re currently in private beta is to ensure that the platform is solid and discover any issues, we’re not sure how long this will take but we obviously want to be out of beta as soon as possible. We also have setup a dedicated blog for Where to Start With which you can follow if you want to be kept up to date with progress of the beta and other new things (as we’re not finished adding features yet).

It’s working for me already!

Even with the small handful of users in the initial phase of the private beta I’ve already found one new band who I would have probably a) never heard of and b) not known where to start with without the site. There is more on this in the post It’s working for us on our blog.

So give it a whirl, and do get in touch to give us your thoughts etc.

It’s great to see people stand up against this, but again it’s such a shame that people have to fight the RIAA in this manner. Surely it would be better all-round to embrace the many great potentials that the web as a distribution channel presents?

Link from Boing Boing.

The email simply contained 2 links to some videos on YouTube, which turned out to be (the cryptic YouTube URLs don’t reveal the contents beforehand) two videos of guitarist Andy McKee.

The first video, Drifting, is absolutely fantastic, some of the best finger style guitar playing I’ve ever seen — I had to watch it about 10 times last night.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of seeing Tommy Emmanuel and his ’support act’ Richard Smith, both of whom are amazing guitar players and I’ve also been dying to see Newton Faulkner live since I first saw his "I need something" video (this isn’t the original video, which I can’t find, but is just as good). But as far as originality and versatility on the guitar goes (Newton Faulkner has the edge as being a singer/songwriter as well as an amazing guitar player) I have to say that Andy McKee is now my new favourite.

After just a couple of videos I had to buy Andy’s album, Art of Motion, I’m not sure it will have quite the same impact as the videos (and definitely wouldn’t compare to seeing him live) but nonetheless I’m sure it will be fantastic. My only problem is now I’ll be tempted (like most albums I own) to try and learn a song or two myself and these are beyond my skill level.

As well as the fantastic Drifting video are Keys to the Hovercar and two great examples of Harp Guitar playing: Gates to Numeria and Into the Ocean.

Something special indeed.

The William Shatner album Has Been was recommended to me by a work colleague earlier this year (but the album was released a couple of years ago) and I feel it’s about time to pass on this recommendation to anyone I can because it is simply fantastic.

I have quite varied tastes in music, but generally I’d describe myself as leaning towards the Metal and Rock genres; but in all honesty anything good ends up in my collection.

The album is best described as spoken word with a strong soundtrack provided by Ben Folds who produced and arranged the album, but I find it hard trying to pin it down to any specific genre and feel that description to be lacking somewhat. As a little aside I came across one review site which simply said There is no word to explain this genre. which seemed quite apt.

Has Been has to be the single most open and honest album I have ever heard, it is captivating, interesting, unique and much more. It has a dark but almost black comedy side to a couple of tracks which are uplifting in their honesty.

I continually find myself returning to this album time and again. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but if you are open and willing to give it a chance then you might just end up loving it.

For those who have heard his first album and disliked that – don’t worry, this is nothing like that. I just hope he has a go at a follow up album or two and doesn’t break the winning formula.

So what you waiting for, go buy your copy of Has Been now.

IgniteImage.com is a website for my web design company Ignite Image, which specialises in creating stylish, modern, accessible, functional, professional, exciting and standards compliant websites for bands and musicians. I’m extremely proud of both the aims and objectives of this website and company and the website itself.

We are a small team of four at the moment; there is me, responsible for design & development, another excellent developer, a designer & marketeer and an artists relationship manager.

All four of us are closely involved in the independent music scene, with us all being active musicians and regular gig attendants; on a personal note almost every one of my closest friends are members of active bands. Being us so closely involved with unsigned and independent artists as well as being web developers we have had constant requests to create stylish and functional websites for our friends, on a shoe-string of course.

This has given us lots of experience in the common requirements and problems faced by independent artists wanting to create their first online presence and we want to share this knowledge and expertise with other artists outside our circle of musician associates.

We aim to offer the most competitive pricing and feature set without compromising on quality to artists and musicians who wish to create an exciting and modern web site for themselves.

So why not head over to Ignite Image now to learn more, if you think we could help you out or you just want to learn more then don’t hesitate to contact us.

According to the suit, the record company is treating digital downloads like traditional record sales, rather than licensed music, triggering a different royalty deal.

Under that old rubrik, the record company deducts fees for the kind of extra costs they used to incur when records were pressed on vinyl, including packaging charges, restocking costs and losses due to breakage.

The above quote in itself is actually quite interesting as if they are treating digital downloads as sales, where traditionally the companies have stated that you’re buying a licence to play the track; then we the buyer must have the same rights as when they buy a hard copy. Such rights as re-selling the CD etc. to a second hand record store, I wonder if there is a market place for cut-price second hand digital downloads.

The thing I’ve always found annoying about paid for digital downloads, and why I’ve never used them, is that they are generally not any better value than the CD version, which of course has superior audio quality and – in the most part – is DRM free. When you have a distribution channel such as the internet that removes a massive amount of your overheads, duplication, packaging, rack space etc. why the difference in price isn’t greater than it currently is always made me weary that the record companines were just skimming off more profit.

I’m talking about taking the CD’s that I own from my collection and putting them into MP3’s and having them organized in a way that suits me and listening to them all the time and that is a wonderful pleasure. It’s the next way to listen to music.

But even more telling is the fact that no-one else high-up in the industry he tried to explain this to to understood where he was coming from. This is given more insight in a comment posted by howie:

I actually WAS in charge of a label during the original fight with Napster and I totally did not get it. I’m embarrassed to say so now, but it took me months before I figured out how helpful services like Napster were for the music business.

However the latest round of actions is starting to take the biscuit.

Firstly pear lyrics, a site which provides software to simply search existing websites for song lyrics while playing an MP3, is made to shut down (later the lawsuit is dropped and an apology issued).

Now as I understand this iTunes provides legal downloads without the packaging (although I’ve never used it), so if you buy a track, or even an entire album and you’re having some trouble figuring out the lyrics what do you do? Is the point that the industry doesn’t really care that you understand the content of their output?

Along with this over the past couple of days I’ve noticed that a couple of guitar tab sites (Wikipedia : Guitar Tab tablature is a form of musical notation which tells the player where to place their fingers on a particular instrument rather than which pitches to play) have gone offline.

I’m a guitar player and this point really doesn’t sit well with me from my personal expierence. Firstly let me say, I do understand there are alternatives to using guitar tab websites, either buy the sheet music or figure out the song by ear.

Purchasing the sheet music is flawed for most people for a number of reasons:

1. It is almost always more expensive than the CD itself (a search on the internet will confirm this).
2. It assumes you want to learn all songs from an album.
3. You have to plan the purchase, which removes the impulse action of learning a song when you’re listening to your music.
4. It is usually highly accurate, which depending on your genre of music and skill level may make it harder to try to learn. Quite a lot of online tab takes a more down to earth approach that doesn’t include every ghost note etc. and some even combine mulitple parts, so that, for example, a single guitarist can play songs from bands with mulitple guitarists

I’d consider myself a fairly accomplished guitar player, I can figure out the basics of most songs within my musical genres by ear and a little practice, however it took me years to get to the stage where I could figure out an entire song on my own. I still visit tab websites regularly (as recently as today) for either the ease and speed of learning a song that they provide or to learn more complex parts of a song.

The problem I see with shutting down these types of resources is that, for the majority of musicians, the reasons behind starting to learn an instrument is down to the music they enjoy. When learning an instrument like the guitar, once you have learned the basic concepts, notes, tuning, picking, chords etc. the next logic step is trying to learn the music that drove you to that instrument in the first place.

From experience, I bought the Foo Fighters debut album as sheet music – this was in the pre-internet days – and never really grasped it until years later – at that point in time the complexity of the presentation of these quite simple songs (ghost notes etc.) confused the hell out of me. The frustration that an experience like that can cause may lead to a dissolution of interest with your instrument, as you can’t do anything beyond the basics, you can’t do what drove you to it in the first place.

Eventually your skill on the instrument progresses so does the complexity of the songs you want to learn, playing an instrument is really an on-going learning experiene.

For me and all of my musician friends (which is a very large percentage of my inner circle of friends) this push to learn more complex songs, along with the simplicity and immediacy of tablature, has been the driving force behind our progression with our instruments.

If there is no quick, easy and cheap way for beginners to access this kind of catalyst for their passion you risk loosing that passion forever, and ultimately the world risks loosing the next generation of creative musicians that this process leads to.