Social networking is an activity in and of itself, but as the preponderance of applications and widgets on social networks indicates, things get a lot more interesting when there’s something to do other than adding friend after friend. For specialized activities like making music, it makes more sense to create an entire social network centered around the activity than to embed an application in an existing network.
We covered socially-networked music creation sites in April, but recently came across another site where musicians can create profiles and record together online: Kompoz. Anyone can create a new project on the site and upload individual tracks to it in the MP3, WMA, or WAV formats. After choosing a Creative Commons license, you can invite other users to add tracks to your project. Or, you can search the site by genre, artist/member, talent/instrument needed, keyword, tag, and/or license type to join someone else’s. Every project has its own discussion forum where participants can post ideas and suggestions for the song.
Some social music creation sites let you record directly onto thesite, but with Kompoz (and some others), you download tracks into yourown music creation software and then upload your contribution to thesite. Although this system isn’t as convenient as recording directlyinto the online project, it allows for higher-quality results andallows people to use familiar, full-featured software.
Check out the dub track "Psycho Riddim," a project started by a Floridian who is "10 and just starting to learnto play drums." Between his original beat and all of the stuff peopleare adding, it’s turning into a nicely fleshed-out track (the dubgenre, with its repetition and layering, seems work particularly wellfor this sort of collaboration).
Update: It’s also possible to embed Kompoz’s songs on a blog:
