Every year 2,000 bands converge on Austin, Tex., for the annual South By Southwest music festival. This year, AOL's Spinner.com plans to interview all of them in advance. That's something that no other music outlet has accomplished.

But with your help, we can do it. Simply join AOL's music writing team through Seed.com, our new site that invites people to write and take pictures about what they are most interested in and earn money at the same time.

You don't need to have written a cover story forRolling Stone to participate, but you do have to be a resident of the United States. If you are passionate about music, attend shows and talk to bands (or just want to), this is an excellent opportunity to get your byline in front of millions of fellow music fans around the world.

If you're selected, we'll send you the name of a band. You'll research them, interview them and write up the interview in a simple Q&A format, as well as compose a brief biography. If we run your piece, you'll pocket $50. That's a bellyful of BBQ down in Austin, Texas. Plus, if your interview is published and you enjoyed the assignment, you may have the opportunity to contribute more.

We've already started publishing these interviews. You can read them here. But there is still time to jo



If you're interested in interviewing a band now, contact us at SXSWSeed@aol.com with the subject line "Writing for SXSW." In the body of the email, you must include the following information:

- Name (Legal name -- no pen names accepted)
- Physical Address
- Preferred phone number
- E-mail
- AIM screenname (If you have one. If you don't, get AIM here.)
- Will you be attending SXSW 2010?
- Highest education completed (students welcome -- just let us know)
- Describe your writing experience, if any (100 words max)
- Describe your musical tastes (100 words max)
- List all employment or connection to the music industry or other potential conflicts (if any)
- Feel free to append one writing sample or a link to a published work of yours (optional).

Please note that all assignments would need to be completed within a specified deadline, typically one week, and you need to follow our standards of responsible reporting and accept our publishing program agreement, which can be found here:http://www.seed.com/publishing-agreement/

When contacting the band for an interview, you can describe yourself as representing for Spinner and AOL. It is not appropriate to describe yourself as working for AOL or Spinner in any other context, such as requesting press passes, tickets, or recordings.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best,The Spinner Staff