Site for game-music producers

I've been playing with the idea already for a while, and I think there was once a thread about it, but oh well.

Would there be any interest in a site where you, as a game-music producer could create a profile, hang some tracks, network etc?

I've been doing a lot of webdesign lately and a friend owes me some back-end work. :)

Would you guys find it useful?

Yes! I would love to do sound/music for games, and a site like that would encourage me to create a music portfolio for that sort of thing. I'd definitely use it.

OK cool. I'm curious what type of features you guys might like, or find useful. :)

a place where you can upload tracks and get paid

this is an awesome idea. its basically a place where designers can easily find musicians for their games.

how bout for sorting tracks instead of giving them a music genre you orginize them by the genre of game it would fit into. then for example, if a designer is making an action game, he searches "action." then it lists all the musician profiles that have action tracks. while only showing the relevant tracks, just so he doesnt have to weed through a bunch of ambient pecies to get to the one upbeat thing the musician made.

another cool thing could be a rating system. but not for the tracks, for the musician. a place where a designer could leave comments like "he delivered the track(s) on schedule" or "was very pleasent working with them" or even "they didnt take the job seriously, and made a track that sounded horrible."

and another thing you could do is have a separate section where instead of the designer contacting the musician, you switch it. have musicians "bid" on the designer instead. then the designer could pick which musician they liked the most.

sorry for all the ideas but i just think this is so cool and i can imagine all the possibilities of where this could go.

that's exactly the input I'm looking for! :)

I was thinking to make each artist a profile with these kinds of "tags" that a developer could search by. Like a graph of all your attributes or something.

The feedback system is a great idea. Like HP for the artist. :) A bidding system could be rad too. :D

BTW I've been listening to eunomia 8 all day :) Great stuff!

It's a dream job for sure. I'd definitely be interested in this. Nice ideas Frankie.

That would be pretty cool.

I tried this once but it was like a 10:1 ratio of people producing music to people seeking musicians

also it's usually fgts with their orchestral soundfonts they torrented not GAMEMUSIC

  On 2/14/2013 at 12:04 AM, Ragnar said:

I tried this once but it was like a 10:1 ratio of people producing music to people seeking musicians

yeah, that might actually be the biggest problem. you'd definitely get the musicians but the designers would be few and far in between if you are just waiting for them to come to you.

so perhaps a solution would be getting in contact with gaming sites directly? like Newgrounds or something, sites that harbor many designers, and work out a deal with them where theyll put a link on their main page. places like that are already flooded with mindless posts of thousands of people wanting others to hear their music. Newgrounds isnt a music site, it is and always will be a game site. if you could offer a service that would clean that shit up for them, i think they would be very interested.

oh and beans thank Foil for that one. it was all him.

This sounds like an interesting idea. It's definitely something I'm looking for a way in to.

  On 2/14/2013 at 2:43 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 12:04 AM, Ragnar said:

I tried this once but it was like a 10:1 ratio of people producing music to people seeking musicians

yeah, that might actually be the biggest problem. you'd definitely get the musicians but the designers would be few and far in between if you are just waiting for them to come to you.

 

so perhaps a solution would be getting in contact with gaming sites directly? like Newgrounds or something, sites that harbor many designers, and work out a deal with them where theyll put a link on their main page. places like that are already flooded with mindless posts of thousands of people wanting others to hear their music. Newgrounds isnt a music site, it is and always will be a game site. if you could offer a service that would clean that shit up for them, i think they would be very interested.

 

oh and beans thank Foil for that one. it was all him.

Ya the idea would be to have a selective (make new artists apply and be approved before making a page) collection of artists, so that developers know they are getting a pre-filtered selection of talent. Once there is a good base of users, I would absolutely push it through all the big gaming development blogs, podcasts, magazines, etc to get some interest. I wold never want it to be hundreds of artists. More like a dozen or 2 really talented ones who are reliable etc.

Newgrounds is big, but it's mostly for gamers, and there are other channels that are more specific to developers and designers. Sites like http://www.gamasutra.com/ , http://gafferongames.com/ , http://gamesfromwithin.com/ , http://www.hobbygamedev.com/ Just for a few.

It would be awesome to push it at SXSW or something too if we got our shit together for that. :) I know whark is in Austin.

i really love the approval system and it would definitely cut down on a lot of shit. maybe have them submit a preview track of their work. it may take awhile to pick and choose but if youre only looking to have a small community then it shouldnt matter that much. as for SXSW, that would be amazing.

This is a pretty cool idea!

  On 2/12/2013 at 6:03 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

I think there was once a thread about it, but oh well.

Yeah. Pretty sure the thread you're remembering was mine. And like many of my idea threads, it kinda drifted off into the aether.

I've got the wireframe shared with me on my Google Drive. That was your doing, right slightlydrybeans?

I'm still interested in this, especially with a few small soundtracks under my belt now.

ya that was me. :)

My friend in Sri Lanka sounds good to do all the backend development, so I would do the UI and all that. I had forgotten that you started that thread hahaha. Where is that thread anyways?

  On 2/15/2013 at 11:04 AM, slightlydrybeans said:

ya that was me. :)

 

My friend in Sri Lanka sounds good to do all the backend development, so I would do the UI and all that. I had forgotten that you started that thread hahaha. Where is that thread anyways?

No clue. Sounds rad though. I was sad to see it just kinda peter out.

ya me too. Just time issues. :p

I plan to kick it back up in the next few weeks though. :)

I finally got around to making a working spec for this project. So far it's like this:

Key Goals

• Allow game music producers to promote themselves using a reputable platform.

• Create a platform to pool trust, attract industry attention and promote members.

• Allow game devs to search for a producer according to metrics.

• Allow producers to bid on projects put up by devs (create format for this)

Home page

• Showcase members with featured Sounds

• Video, audio of completed projects from members

• Featured members with interviews (spotlight)

• Explain concept of collective

Member Profile

• Repertoire

  • Sounds (would be tagged for searching)

  • Videos of finished work

• Bio text

• Key style indicators (search tags)

• Contact info

• References from previous clients

• Sound design video examples

General Ideas

• Format pitches for projects. IE, 30 seconds of sound design to video or two 30 second test tracks to standardize responses from artists.

• Pitch system should be private, viewable only to members.

• Create system of standard tags to describe tracks. These would be searchable.

• Make neato graphs to display tag info on artist page.

• Put out compilation EPs to build interest. Hand out at SXSW or other conferences. Need to be kick ass.

• Make a follow up system for references. Could also build up a database of bad developers to avoid haha.

• Could produce a standard IP contract for members to use on projects.

This is all very prelim, so if there are any more ideas or if you think something here is dumb, speak up! :)

I wholeheartedly support this.

Haven't read everything in this thread.

But maybe show in the profile what kind of games the music is for. Think of Mario type games or Zelda games, Call of Duty sort of games use different kind music. So maybe what their biggest influence is [game influence and original music producer for those games that inspire the people] and the genre of the music [in the game genre thingy]. Then the game people could search for that.

Different types of profiles, for the music people and the game people who are looking for music.

Let people rate each other's music.

Feature new tracks on a page or something [just like on deviantART]. [Just like on dA, popular and new tracks] That way not only the popular tracks get rated, but also new tracks.

Another page for popular artists [one or two for each subgenre] and new artists [also subgenre].

its looking pretty awesome Beans. cant wait to see it in action.

A lot of my music exactly fits the bill for indie type games, so this is indeed a very appealing prospect to me!