Calling all 2,000 bands playing at SXSW
Every March, tens of thousands of music fans converge on Austin, Tex., for the annual South by Southwest festival, where nearly 2,000 bands play over five intense days. But which bands to see? The festival site links to the bands' own sites. Music sites offer a round up of some hot bands playing.
This year, AOL's indie music site, Spinner.com, is going to do something that as far as I can tell has never been done before. Over the six weeks, we are going to interview as many of the 2,000 bands as we can reach on the telephone. Spinner will publish the Q&A interviews with all these bands. And we'll also write band biographies for all of them that will appear in the AOL Music artist directory.
Actually some of you will conduct a lot of these interviews and create a lot of these profiles, by way of Seed, working alongside the veteran music journalists at Spinner. Starting today, you can apply to join our SxSW profile team. We'll send you the name of a musician to interview and a guide on how to do it. If your interview is published and you enjoyed the assignment, you can ask for more bands to interview. We'll pay $50 per profile, and you also get the fun of talking to artists on the cutting edge of indie music.
The details of how to join the profile team are in this post on Spinner and also on Seed in the Arts & Entertainment category.
And if you are going to SXSW, check back soon for how to join our SXSW street team, where you'll help be our eyes and especially ears, in the clubs, at the parties and yes on the streets of Austin.
With this project, we're starting to show off how Seed is going to be very different from other sites that offer writing work over the Internet. Seed is an integral part of the new AOL, one of the largest journalistic organizations in the world. And we're asking Seed contributors not simply to regurgitate what they can find searching the Web, but to get on the phone, get out into the world, ask questions, witness events and write what they've discovered.
You can also see how we are going to evolve the way Seed deals with creators. So far, we have mainly had open assignments, in which any number of people could submit articles. Some have said this seems more like a contest than a job. For SXSW, we are only asking one writer to profile each band. To make this work, we are using e-mail for part of the process. Soon the Seed site will automatically handle this sort of assignment. And it will invite creators to tell us about their professional experience, so we can match the right assignments to the right people.
This year, AOL's indie music site, Spinner.com, is going to do something that as far as I can tell has never been done before. Over the six weeks, we are going to interview as many of the 2,000 bands as we can reach on the telephone. Spinner will publish the Q&A interviews with all these bands. And we'll also write band biographies for all of them that will appear in the AOL Music artist directory.
Actually some of you will conduct a lot of these interviews and create a lot of these profiles, by way of Seed, working alongside the veteran music journalists at Spinner. Starting today, you can apply to join our SxSW profile team. We'll send you the name of a musician to interview and a guide on how to do it. If your interview is published and you enjoyed the assignment, you can ask for more bands to interview. We'll pay $50 per profile, and you also get the fun of talking to artists on the cutting edge of indie music.
The details of how to join the profile team are in this post on Spinner and also on Seed in the Arts & Entertainment category.
And if you are going to SXSW, check back soon for how to join our SXSW street team, where you'll help be our eyes and especially ears, in the clubs, at the parties and yes on the streets of Austin.
With this project, we're starting to show off how Seed is going to be very different from other sites that offer writing work over the Internet. Seed is an integral part of the new AOL, one of the largest journalistic organizations in the world. And we're asking Seed contributors not simply to regurgitate what they can find searching the Web, but to get on the phone, get out into the world, ask questions, witness events and write what they've discovered.
You can also see how we are going to evolve the way Seed deals with creators. So far, we have mainly had open assignments, in which any number of people could submit articles. Some have said this seems more like a contest than a job. For SXSW, we are only asking one writer to profile each band. To make this work, we are using e-mail for part of the process. Soon the Seed site will automatically handle this sort of assignment. And it will invite creators to tell us about their professional experience, so we can match the right assignments to the right people.
Like everything we're doing now at Seed, this is very much an experiment. We don't know how these interviews will turn out. But I'm betting, they will be as lively and varied as the SXSW festival itself.
UPDATE 2/10 As of today, we have more than 300 people who have been assigned profiles and more than 100 have been completed. Nearly all of them are fun, lively and interesting. We've started publishing them on Spinner. You can read them here: http://www.spinner.com/tag/sxswseed.
UPDATE 2/10 As of today, we have more than 300 people who have been assigned profiles and more than 100 have been completed. Nearly all of them are fun, lively and interesting. We've started publishing them on Spinner. You can read them here: http://www.spinner.com/tag/sxswseed.
Reader Comments
(page 1 of 1)This is great! I love SEED and I've already submitted my info to be a part of this opportunity.
I've interviewed a couple of musicians already by email. I'm willing to do the phone thing, too. However, phone interviews are very difficult because it's easy to misinterpret or get the information wrong when you're writing down what someone is telling you over the phone.
Anyway, I'm going to apply for one of these gigs. I love Seed and this is another good opportunity.
Yeah, Seed does feel like a contest, but less of one to those of us who are getting our articles accepted. Seed is working out for me, and I know it's working out for some other writers I know.
Colleen
Thank you so much for being involved in Seed. As a reporter, I know that taking notes can be difficult when you want extended quotes. Whenever I did a complex interview, I tried to record it. The Academy post with more specific instructions offers a few hints on recording interviews. Be sure to tell the subject you are recording. Most will be glad because it makes the article more accurate.
I've done e-mail interviews. They are fine for getting facts, or quick reactions. But in my experience, a back and forth conversation draws out more human and less prepackaged quotes.
Let us know how it goes for you.
Saul
Saul,
However, many music bloggers are mac people, and therefore iPhone people, and *therefore* unable to record phone calls on their device.
Nobody has landlines anymore, so I think to ask that writers do these over the phone is unrealistic. Many music bloggers do e-interviews, and I think if you want to play in this space, you have to accept the norms.
My thoughts.
Brian-
Interesting thoughts. The easy way to record an interview on an iPhone is to have your phone on speakerphone and to record the conversation with any device with a microphone. There are fancier ways involving gadgets that plug into the headphone jack.
On e-mail interviews. We are open to all sorts of ideas. I've certainly used that technique as a reporter. My experience is that the lack of direct back and forth, and the loss of tone of voice, is a significant loss of information that benefits readers. Moreover, in this context, I'm worried that publicists, managers, etc. would write on behalf of artists or edit their responses.
If you or others you know have used e-mail interviews and feel that you are getting authentic and interesting responses, I'd love to hear more.
Best
Saul
An incredibly useful too for recording phone interviews (whether it's landline, cell phone, Skype, etc) is this: http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-145051-Olympus-TP-7-Telephone-Recording-Device/dp/B000GU88CQ
One end plugs into your recorder, the other into your ear. Whatever you hear through the phone (including your own voice) gets recorded.
Frankly, this is disgusting. You're basically asking writers to submit for the rate that was paid in 1935! You are NOT Wikipedia. You are NOT a non-profit as they are. If it's user-submitted, great, it's user-submitted and you can deal with it as Wikipedia does, although I still think it's wrong for a for-profit company to not pay its content generators when the content is entirely editorial based. And to devalue writers at 2 cents a word is wrong. Just WRONG. You should be ashamed, as should your investors.
To all you whining writers if you don't like the pay don't take the job. Thre's no gun to your head..