This week’s winner of The Afternoon Show‘s Website of the Week is the new music supporting site Eyeseesound.tv. In this exclusive blog, Creative Director Julian Bowman tells us all about why the site is such a deserving winner.
We love music. That’s basically our main reason for being, working and paying for www.eyeseesound.tv.
Thing is, it appears the music business is less enamoured with music. It’s more about ‘product’ and ‘demographics’ and ‘exploiting markets’ or ‘creating new markets’ etc… They’re wrong. It’s about music… and people’s connection with an artform that matters and inspires.
We grew tired of what was being peddled in the mainstream press. Even a lot of what was talked about in the ‘independent’ music press. It was tired. Derivative. PR pushed ‘product’ aimed at capitalising upon an established user base formed through the exploitation of (usually) one good song, or a creative hey day now long since gone.
So we started what we do, with our remit being to find and feature great independent bands/artists, be they signed to small indies, DIYers or just unsigned. Genre didn’t matter, but they had to be doing something good, something a little different or adventurous, not sound like a wagon chasing A&R man’s idea of ‘cool’, and have a small profile. And we had to like them.
Eyeseesound.tv
The site is utterly subjective… it is, after all, ours! It is also utterly honest. There’s nothing that goes on there to do someone a favour, or to get us a freebie (in fact we end up buying a fair few of the bands’ albums we feature, rather than trying to blag them), or to keep someone sweet in case we need an interview with one of their roster, or even because perception suggests ‘the kids’ want to hear about A, or B, or Z.
The site is about us presenting stuff you won’t have heard of, and you deciding if you like it. You all have minds, tastes, can and will ‘feel’ something when it’s right for you. Close your ears for a bit from The Machine that shouts ‘like this, and this, and this this this’ and start finding stuff that really means something to you.
On a more boring and pragmatic level, the site contains:
A webTV show (The Show) which is a music magazine style show with irreverent comedy.
Live Sessions: done rather stylishly and artistically by us and featuring some rather special bands.
Mix Tapes: online only, 7 songs from 7 bands that work together as a single mix
HeadsUp: which is bite-sizedTV, offering up 3 bands in 6 minutes.
Cinematica: which is like HeadsUp but for short film and animation.
We also have a blog where we stick some music videos, shorts and a CD recommendation of the week. And we’ve just opened a forum, but it is like being on the moon at the moment, so if you fancy carving out a community space for yourselves where it’s about real DIY music makers and lovers, then we’ll take you with open arms.
The whole site is free to use and we try and put up 2 or 3 new pieces of content a week.
Anyway, that’s our waffle over. We like music. We believe in the DIY scene and independent music being made for the love of music. And we don’t just pay lip service to this, but walk the walk (much to the annoyance of our small but perfectly formed PR company who keep suggesting we need to features bands with bigger profiles…). So stop by, and discover some amazing bands.
Ta.
Ta guys! Hear Julian chatting about Eyeseesound.tv on The Afternoon Show from 3pm today, on Amazing Radio.
Tags: afternoon show, Amazing Radio, eyeseesound.tv, julian bowman, the afternoon show
