Thus perhaps concentrate on promoting those things that those who read your blog would be interested in.

Kind regards,
T.

I was erring towards wordpress.com (robust, deals with the user admin nicely) but the standard templates deal terribly with Author links.

What functions would you need from the author links? What would they need to do?

Does wordpress.com allow for non-standard templates yet? (sorry, haven’t look at it in a while)

Yet for these less-mainstream styles of music it’s sometimes harder to track down online when/where the weekly/bi-weekly/monthly sessions take place; if someone new is in town, a new promotion, or if anything special or out of the ordinary is going on. Sure, we’ll get blasted with the big names on at the NIA, Symphony Hall etc, but what about the new visitor in town who puts jazz into google and ends up at the website for our rather poor excuse for a jazz festival – surely we can take him to the Yardbird on a Thusday, to a Sampad gig, Commuter Jazz, a Moseley Folk gig at The Cross, a Jibbering night in Kings Heath, something loopy at the Old Mo …

Otherwise Mr X visiting from Europe will really need to be on top of everything in the more niche areas – on the individual band/promoter/venue mailing lists etc, and even then a lot will rely on a single flyer or word of mouth, rather than trying to pull in new people or visitors to the city, or even just the occasional gig-goer after something interesting. There’s also a huge student crowd out there who are often not tapped up outside of Selly Oak or the City Centre.

CiB is already established and an excellent platform to help great events out of the mainstream and marketing spotlight to keep running and find different audiences.

What might be good is a weekly roundup of the forthcoming week, with a ‘top 3’ interesting gigs in particular genres or styles. It shouldn’t try to cover everything in every style, else it’ll end up listing Yet Another Jazz Jam, Visit Our World-Beating MySpace or A.N.Other indie band at the Flapper and be saying nothing new or interesting.

Equally, as Bounder mentioned, you could open it out a little and get a few regular people to contribute or cover a certain idiom, a bit like Adrian does with football on the Stirrer, and/or have recommendations from a few people – Robin’s 5 recommended gigs of the month etc.

Then, from this pool, if any jump out as being more than three acts on a stage making a beautiful noise they can go onto the CiB blog.

This fulfills the requirements of croundsourcing, opinion filtering and resource building along with minimum time expense. Now all we need is a name. Don’t leave this to me or else it’ll be called “Brum Flyer Nation” or something equally uninspired.

I was erring towards wordpress.com (robust, deals with the user admin nicely) but the standard templates deal terribly with Author links. Might be a way around but still to check what Blogger does these days.

You’d probably want to cast an eye over the submissions to ensure there wasn’t any content appearing that shouldn’t, but otherwise it might work… maybe?

At least it’s a model where the community can post (and comment) on the music/gig scene and gain awareness via CiB with minimal effort from yourself.

So if a band becomes the first rock act to play a gig at a city centre venue re opened after refurbishment and collaborates with an internationally known local artist for a show they hope will make people think about the place of music in their lives, the you might say that’s news worthy.

Or if that band (in the pre CiB days) plays their 28 minute debut single for the first and final time along with a set of visuals based on the single sleeve then again I’d agree with the reviewers of the Sleep Easy Mr Parker gig at The Rainbow last November who hailed it as: “a triumph of art over commercialism that takes the fetishism of the limited edition format and extends it into the live arena” and being worthy of coverage.

And if that band collaborates with a local photographer to present a piece of work during their next Birmingham show which is inspired by their home city and a classic film shot in another city then I’d say that that’s worth a mention.

I wouldn’t dream of sending you a press release which states that Einstellung will be playing at El Paso’s, Old Street, London this Saturday 13th October and that the most recent comment on the band’s myspace page reads: “Your music makes me want to move to Birmingham”, because that simply isn’t news!

Isn’t it just upcoming with pictures, in a way?

Unfortunately it’s too much like a job, even if you only cover the genres you’re interested in. It needs a critical mass of hundreds (or at least 10s) to make sure everything is covered.

upcoming.org seems to do a fair job of this anyway.

Something a little more in touch with the local scene perhaps with that 2.0 edge of letting the artists and promoters add their own info might be worthwhile trialling but I also think its fair to say you have enough of a handle on the Brum scene to be able to select a gig and write your own take on it…