A winner will be chosen in each North American city that the tour visits. That winner will have the opportunity to perform a full set with other emerging artists on the “Village Stage,” the same stage that featured artists like Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado and Tegan and Sara ten years ago. 

“We are thrilled to partner with the such an important and prestigious tour as Lilith and to help deserving female artists earn regional and national exposure,” shares OurStage CEO Ben Campbell. “OurStage is in the business of delivering life-altering opportunities for worthy artists so this is really exciting for OurStage and our whole community.”

Lilith co-founder Terry McBride adds, “We are really excited to be partnering with OurStage.com. It was extremely important to us to choose a partner that was artist friendly, had a strong platform for discovering regional talent, and had the ability to enable the fans to sort through the best music in a scalable and fair manner. Together, we provide an exceptional platform for discovering and promoting the best emerging female artists.”

At this time, 17 North American cities are tapped for the Lilith 2010 tour, with more cities to be announced soon. Artists should only enter the talent search if they live in or near one of the Lilith tour stops. Further details, rules and regulations will be announced at a later date. Interested female musicians should visit www.ourstage.com/go/lilith to enter the contest and create a profile.

Stay tuned for more information, including artist announcements and more cities!

As you may have noticed, we recently made a few changes to the site. Thanks to all of the folks who took the time to write in with positive feedback regarding these changes. We appreciate those of you who cared enough to let us know your thoughts, even if you didn’t like some of the changes we made.

Operating a growing website like OurStage poses many challenges, like knowing when it’s time to improve functions and when it’s time to leave things alone. No one likes getting used to one experience and then waking up the next day to find everything has changed — forcing one to relearn how things work all over again. By the same token, we feel obligated to make the experience on our site the best it can be. And so we periodically make changes in an effort to improve the overall music discovery experience. Thank you in advance for bearing with us when we make these changes, and for understanding that we only make take these steps in an effort to improve your experience. If, and when, we miss the mark we really do appreciate users pointing it out to us. We try very hard to listen to our community in order to make the site as valuable as possible for each of you.

One of the new additions coming soon to OurStage is a section called “Best Of.” Unlike our monthly competitions which track fans favorites by genre, “Best Of ” will track those artists who are consistently performing at the top of the charts over a period of time. The analytics that drive the “Best Of ” charts will include how well artists perform on OurStage over an extended period (across a variety of metrics) as well as how much buzz the artists are getting out in the general marketplace on other sites too. Right now we expect to maintain “Best Of ” charts on the big four macro-level genre:  rock, pop, hip hop and country. This means that rather than have “Best Of” rankings for all 30-40 granular genres, we’ll be rolling up all of the artists whose genre roughly fits in one of these four, larger categories and displaying the ranks for each on a regular basis. Important players across the music industry, from a broad variety of sources, advised us that this approach will make it easier for great OurStage artists to get discovered by fans and industry professionals alike.

Another change that we are considering is the concept of a Premium Channel each month. OurStage has been steadily gaining more and more traction in the industry. We are now at a point where many mainstream industry players are working with us. The good news is that this gives us the chance to offer prizes and opportunities well beyond what we’ve been able to historically offer. The bad news is that some of these opportunities are also very expensive for us to offer. In the past, when OurStage has offered great opportunities for top-ranked artists, we’ve been forced to pay substantial fees in order to secure the prizing. As you all know the site has always been free to submit to and free to use. We have never passed these fees onto you. Nothing about this is going to change. However, in the future when we have the opportunity to offer a truly career-altering prize (that costs OurStage significant expense to obtain) we will ask the artists entering into that particular “Premium Channel” to help offset costs with a modest entry fee.

We are well aware that our community, and the music world in general, is very sensitive to asking people to pay for anything. Given the long history of big companies taking advantage of artists and consumers this hesitancy is understandable — which is why we’ve never done it. So before considering this concept we asked you all what you thought. Two months ago we ran a detailed survey of our artist community and we were pleased that fully 73% of you said that you’d be willing to pay a modest entry fee for a competition that had a substantial, potentially career-changing opportunity for the winner, especially if the entry fee was only to be used to offset the cost of operating the competition and/or paying for the prizing. We think this is a positive thing because it effectively means we’ll be working together with our community to uncover and create even better opportunities for top- ranked artists than ever before. Please be on the look out for this “Premium Channel” idea to launch sometime in December or January.

In closing, I’d ask that everyone who has not done so to Opt-In for the OurStage newsletter. We take our communications to and from the community very seriously, and this is one of the best ways to stay abreast of all the cool happenings and potential changes to the site before they happen.

Thanks again to each of you for being part of the democratic revolution in the music industry, and for being part of OurStage. Working together, we really are changing the way the world discovers the best new music and the best new artists.

Warm regards,

Ben

Dear Friends and Fans of OurStage,

Since my last update a couple months back, we’ve had some exciting developments that I’d like to share with you.

Bigger Partnerships: As you may have read in the press, we’ve recently  partnered with MTV on a number of interesting initiatives—all involving very cool opportunities for top-ranked artists. Beginning this Fall and continuing into next year, we’ll be expanding this partnership to include even bigger and better opportunities for OurStage artists. Some of the possibilities we’re discussing include using music from top OurStage artists in MTV TV shows, asking top-ranked OurStage artists to play live at major awards shows and other events, running custom channels on OurStage to choose artists participants for artist-focused TV and reality shows and much more. Naturally, after the preliminary logistics are nailed down, we’ll make formal press releases. But the bottom line is we expect to have an even greater number of cool career-altering opportunities for top OurStage artists in the coming year as a result of this partnership.

In addition to the expanded MTV partnership, we are working on 3 other giant/national prospects, all of which will include major radio and/or TV promotion. Look for details in my next update.

We also have updates regarding the site its self…

Site Improvements

We are continually seeking your feedback on ways we can evolve and improve the site to make it easier to use, and to make it the best new-music discovery experience available. As a result, we are releasing a number of cool new features throughout September. Here are just a few:

Cleaner Design – We’ve been striving to develop our brand into the best new music and new artist discovery site on earth, not just a “contest” site. As a result, the new site design focuses more on the music-streaming/discovery aspect of what we do, rather than the contest aspect. Our new layout, page designs and features are all designed to highlight this goal. We hope you like them.

Permanent Player – You may have noticed the new permanent player in the bottom margin of every page, which allows you to continue to surf and explore the site without shutting off the song you are currently listening to. This has been on our to-do list for a while and it’s finally live on the site.

New Profile Pages – In the next few days you will notice a change in your profile pages layout. The set-up will be simplified, the tab structure will be easier to navigate, and the pages will render much more quickly. Also, artists will notice they have the ability to highlight URLs linking to other sites where they may have additional info and profiles. We strongly encourage artists to fill out these URLs for both fans and an expected increase in the number of industry eyes visiting the site. We want to make sure they can easily learn about your music.

More Fan-Centric Activities – Ultimately OurStage is only useful to artists if large volumes of fans are  exposed to their music. We are constantly adding features to attract more fans and then engage with the site on a long term basis. One of these new activities will be competition designed to discover and reward (handsomely) fans who have the “best ears” when judging and picking great artists. We even plan to create a widget so that fans can compete with each other both on OurStage as well as on their favorite social-networking sites. Our hope is that this type of fun, engaging, potentially-viral fan activity will help take OurStage—and expose our artists—to a whole new level.

Facebook Connect and MySpace ID – I’m sure you all know what these are. Integrating with these two industry standards will allow users of these sites to log onto OurStage with their Facebook or MySpace credentials. It will also allow for a certain types of information to be passed back to one’s Facebook or MySpace account to be displayed. We expect these integrations to help artists by limiting the number of times and places that they have to re-enter the same data. And we also hope that fans will be able to share the new music they’ve found on OurStage much more easily with their friends throughout their favorite social networks. Look for this functionality to go live by the end of September.

“Best of the Best” Update

As mentioned in an earlier newsletter, we are continuing to develop a key new feature to the site designed to showcase the very best OurStage Artists. Right now the monthly competitions show top-ranked artists based on that month’s song entry in any one of a few dozen categories. However, there is real value to artists, fans and the industry folk to know which artists are consistently pulling  high ranks on OurStage month after month. This Fall, we will begin tabulating this new type of rank across the four largest genres of music (rock, pop, hip hop and country) twice a year (using 2 six-month seasons). Over time, we hope to start including data from other sources outside of Ourstage as well, and eventually make these artist rankings an industry standard.  Keep this on your radar and look for more on “Best of the Best” in our next newsletter.

That’s the latest update from here. I hope you all find the information flow valuable.
And thanks to all of you who take the time to be part of the OurStage community, and who take the time to support worthy artists everywhere.

Best regards,

Ben

KB ~ Director of Community
KB has been working at OurStage the longest out of the current editorial staff. She handles all the major responsibilities in Community and keeps the rest of us in line. It’s KB’s job to answer all the hard questions and make sure all the gears are turning in the right direction!
~KB has managed bands, produced records and programmed music festivals all in the hopes of illuminating and supporting emerging artists. This girl is dedicated to what she does.
~She is a member of NARAS (perhaps you have heard of “The Grammys?”) and is on the Boston Committee of the New York Chapter of the Recording Academy.
~In high school, she had a radio show called Hank’s Laundromat which played “everything from Pixies to Kraftwerk, Bauhuas to Ministry.”
~Her first concert was Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour; the most recent was Kings of Leon.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Indie Rock and Indie Pop
Best KB Quote: “My brain only has so many storms left in it today.”
 
Rainy S. ~ Community Manager
That’s me! I’ve worked at OurStage in many different capacities, including as a field rep for the site. I’ve always been on the other end of the musical world: making noise on stage and in the studio with different bands. When I’m not making music, I’m usually crocheting something or crafting with hot glue, buttons, pipe cleaners, you name it.
~Right now I make up one half of Eye Witness, half of Olox the Terrible and am the founding—and sometimes only—member of Hang Lorraine.
~Among these various projects, I find myself responsible for drums and percussion, bass, flute, clarinet, accordion, xylophone and vocals but this doesn’t mean I’m good at all of them.
~Last weekend my friend and I drove an hour, then took a four hour bus ride to stay overnight in a youth hostel (on a Sunday)  in order to see my favorite band, Café Tacuba, in New York City.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Electronic/Electro-Pop and Latin

Jay Sweet ~ Editor-at-Large [Paste Magazine]
Jay is a welcome and familiar face around OurStage, though he isn’t someone we see in the office every day. Speaking from his wealth of  industry knowledge, Jay contributes blog posts, offers great ideas for editorial content, and even pops up in our Twitter updates. He recently tweeted for us all the way from Bonnaroo—admittedly leaving us all just a tad, well, jealous!
~Jay is a principal of Sugarfoot Consulting, a producer of the historic Newport Folk Festival; co-founder of Sweet & Doggett music licensing; Editor-at-Large and Director of Biz Development for two-time national magazine of the year nominee, Paste Magazine.
~He is a frequent keynote speaker at film, video game and music conferences around the country as well as several syndicated programs on NPR such as “The Connection” and “On Point.” He is also a monthly guest on Boston’s highest rated morning news program Fox 25.
Favorite OurStage Channel: Americana/Alt. Country

Kate B. ~ Staff Writer Starting as a music journalist then working in digital marketing at Atlantic Records, Kate has kept one foot in the music industry for the past 8 years.  She’s interviewed the likes of Fugazi, Blondie, Joss Stone, Bow Wow, Nada Surf and countless other artists. She also gets to brag that T.I. once threw his dirty t-shirt onto her desk while she was working. It was this kind of glamour that led Kate to make a career change. Now she works in marketing/advertising and happily freelances for OurStage on the side.
~She’s got a fancypants unique signature!
~Kate is also the one you’ve see writing all those awesome “How To” posts.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Male Singer/Songwriter and Indie Rock

Jordan M. ~ Staff Writer
Jordan was a Co-Op (intern) at OurStage a while back, then he wasn’t, and soon he will be again! We’re excited to welcome Jordan back to work. As you may have noticed, Jordan’s posts are typically quite metal-oriented—as is his personal blog, Munson’s Metal Madness.
~Jordan also writes for the Northeastern University music mag Tastemakers Magazine.
~He’ll be your best friend if you follow him on Twitter.
~Jordan proudly hails from the great state of Maine. A-yup.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Metal and Metal. Sometimes he also shakes things up a bit and listens to Metal.

Sam C. ~ Staff Writer
Sam is a recent addition to the OurStage Marketing team who swooped in to help us out with numerous ongoing projects, brand new ideas and, of course, the blog. You’ll be seeing her name a lot more in the coming months!
~Sam currently hosts You Can’t Do That On Radio Anymore! and was formerly the Music Director for 104.9 FM WRBB in Boston.
~She’s also a concert photographer! Check out her Flickr page here.
~Sam has to fill the void left by Mike Splain, to whom we are bidding farewell, as they are both from Pennsylvania because we always need someone on call to remind us what a Wawa is.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Electronic/Electro-Pop, Indie Pop and Alt. Hip-Hop

Bethany L. ~ Staff Writer
Bethany is pretty much the bomb. Another newbie around the office, she and Sam came along at the same time. Bethany is a Jackie-of-all-trades who helps out in different departments. She’s way into music and loves checking out new bands as well as playing with her own.
~Check out The Sitcom Moms and Bethany’s solo project, My Little Chickadee.
~Bethany is an alum of Northeastern where she was a music industry major. She also DJ’s under the moniker DJ Bethamphetamine at University Radio, WRBB FM 104.9. (I wonder if she sees Sam around?)
~Her first concert was Hanson in 1998  in at Great Woods, otherwise known as The Tweeter Center otherwise known as The Comcast Center. (No really, it changed again. I swear.)
Favorite OurStage Channels: Indie Pop and Americana/Alt. Country

Aidan R. ~ Staff Writer
Aidan is one of OurStage’s freshest faces. You haven’t seen his blog work yet but get ready because it’s a-comin’! Aidan is a 4th year music industry major at Northeastern and has one Co-Op at Nettwerk Music Management in Cambridge under his belt. He enjoys writing about music, and hopes to achieve a career in music marketing or music supervision some day.
~Aidan plays in The Organic Sound Project
~He’s a nature lover! You might catch him hiking, backpacking or just hanging out in the great outdoors.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Funk/Groove/Soul Rock and Experimental

Bethany S. ~ Staff Writer
Bethany is a Communications student at Northeastern interning at OurStage. She’s excited to learn more about the music industry and get connected to it! Keep following the OS Blog to see her upcoming posts.
~ She takes her coffee with cream, two Splendas, and extra love.
~ She’s a country girl at heart but didn’t like getting called a redneck along with the rest of the crowd at a recent Blake Shelton concert.
Favorite OurStage Channels: Country and Acoustic

With the happy hellos come bittersweet farewells to those bloggers who are leaving us. We say goodbye to Mike Splain and Jason Schneider, who are on their way back to school and then on to bigger and better things. Also moving on is Jessica Morris, who did amazing work for us on the Editorial Team both in a writing and editing capacity. The blog wouldn’t be what it is today without her hard work. We will miss you all!

The previous design of the new playlist editor is spiffed up with a flash-based interface. The library on the left includes your thumbed and favorite music and even offers some recommendations from us! It’s also a great way to organize playlists (our blog staff can attest to this because they each have dozens!) The look, feel and usage of the playlist editor will continue to grow over time with more functionality from commonly used software applications.

The channel page is the best place for you to listen to the top 100 tracks on any channel from the site.  The new page load time is significantly faster and allows users (that’s you!) to track content on the site with greater ease.

The revamped media item toolbar boasts not only a new style, but also an easy way to add songs to playlists!  You can see it used in quite a few different places on the site.

So what do you think?  Post a comment or email us because we’d love to hear what you have to say!  And keep an eye out for more changes to come!

Matt Mays & El Torpedo

When you’re in a band and on tour stuff breaks all the time — especially guitar strings. That’s why every month the folks at Ernie Ball team up with OurStage to help out one of our top-ranking artists. In May, the support of OurStage’s fan judges launched Nova Scotian rockers Matt Mays & El Torpedo into the Top 10 of the Rock Channel. Their track “Building a Boat” features all the scorching hot guitar riffs and fist pumping rhythms you want out of a classic rock tune. To reward the band, the group will receive a year’s supply of Ernie Ball guitar and bass strings — a prize that will come in handy when they open for The Black Crowes at the upcoming FredRock Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick on June 20th as a kick off for a set of summer tour dates in Ontario and Alberta.

For the month of June, SideCho is offering a digital distribution deal—accompanied with full service marketing support for a LP release—to one high-ranking artist competing in the Indie Rock Channel. The lucky recipient will receive services valued at $5,000 including media solicitation, bio composition, marketing plan formulation, booking assistance and promotion of the LP in brick and mortar record stores.

If Indie Rock is not your thing, don’t fret! SideCho Media services all genres of music and is looking for other OurStage artists with a new LP in need of distribution. If you have recently recorded a new album and are looking for an artist-friendly, non-exclusive deal then submit your OurStage EPK to the SideCho “gig” listing in Marketplace (located in the main nav on www.ourstage.com). SideCho will review only material submitted through their Marketplace listing. Be sure to update and complete your EPK prior to submitting.

SideCho Media differs from other digital distribution services because they only work with artists and material they feel passionate about. Their artists receive all the dedication and support that a label affords while still maintaining the freedom that comes from being indie. OurStage is very excited to bring all of you this career-building opportunity.

Past & Present Clients: Ilan Rubin (Nine Inch Nails), Michael Zapruder, K.O. the Legend, Eeenie Meenie Records, Custard Records, Bad Taste Records, Cheap Lullaby Records, Urband & Lazar Music, Cantora Records, End Sounds Records, Five-One Records, and more.

For a complete list of services awarded as well as information on how to enter the Indie Rock music channel contest go here.

Since the start of the new year you may have noticed some changes, not just in design but in our concerted effort to better serve you, our faithful reader. It’s not like we weren’t trying hard before; we just felt we could do better. To this point, we decided to forgo the more formal editorial protocol while avoiding the snarky, cooler than thou, critical sycophantism currently permeating the musical paradigm by simply creating a site we, as passionate, eclectic, musical omnivores, would read and turn on to our friends.

Even as our look and structure evolves, we still feel the best way to achieve this higher calling is by staying true to our goal of helping independent musicians navigate the ever changing music industry while continually championing their success. It may seem like an overly ambitious mission statement, but by encouraging fans and artists to engage in an open dialogue we’re sure as hell going to try; it’s what you do if you truly care about the music.

To further speed the process, we’ve greased the wheels with some new features such as:

Artists Ask: Submit your industry related questions to OurStage. Many of the Artists within the OurStage community have emailed us asking questions they have about the music business. We noticed that a lot of you have the same questions. In an effort to share our community’s collective knowledge, we’ve launched a forum called “Artists Ask”.

Take the Stage: “Take The Stage: Words from OurStage Artists” is a new arena for you to express your ideas on a wide spectrum of music related topics. We mine the comments throughout the site to see what people are talking about and then invite musicians are to share their voice in 300 words or less. Think of it as a place for artists to sound off.

PR @ OurStage: We’ve established a way for artists with news to connect directly to our Editorial team. Send your press releases or OurStage EPKs to pr@ourstage.com and tells us your news (i.e. releases, tour dates, song placements, etc.).

How To’s: Music Biz 101 series in which we give practical advice on industry related topics like booking a college show, making band tees,creating EPKs, etc. Think of it as DIY tips for indie artists.

As our name implies music is to be shared so, welcome to the new “us”; we hope the changes we’ve made help make music an even bigger part of your day.

-Jay Sweet, OurStage Editor At Large

In addition to his role at OurStage, Jay Sweet is the Editor At Large for Paste Magazine as well as the Producer of the Newport Folk Festival.

Back On My B S features the smash single “Arab Money” and the all-new “Hustlers Anthem” featuring T-Pain. The album also features guest appearances by premiere hip-hop and R&B recording artists Common, Mary J. Blidge, Jamie Foxx with John Legend, T.I. & Akon, Estelle, Lil Wayne and more.

To help celebrate Busta Rhymes’ career defining release, the legendary rapper and his label (Universal/ Motown) have partnered with Radio-One and OurStage.com to discover emerging talents in Rap. During the month of May, OurStage is launching the “Bust It Like Busta” music channel, in which Artists have to bust out their hottest 30 to 60 seconds freestyle spit.

The “Bust It Like Busta” entries will go head to head in a public battle in which fans will rank the order up through to the Top 25. Busta will select one winner amongst the top 5 ranking artists in the contest channel. The winner will receive a mentoring session with Busta Rhymes and Universal/Motown executives in NYC. If you have what it takes, you may even walk out with a record deal!

Fans have been asked to help Busta Rhymes discover a rising star by judging the spits entered in the “Bust It Like Busta” channel. Any person judging the channel will be automatically entered in a sweepstakes for the chance to win a trip for two to meet Busta Rhymes and see the legend live in concert.

For more information on how Artists and Fans can participate in “Bust It Like Busta” go here.