Local teen gets strong start to indie music sharing site
By Kathy Michaels - Kelowna Capital News
Published: July 01, 2008 10:00 PM It’s only been a year since 19-year-old Taylor Van Zant started up a website dedicated to promoting new bands, and in that time thousands have had a chance to get their fill of indie music.
“It’s something we started up awhile ago,” said the UBC Okanagan student. “Basically, my mum used to have an greeting card company and I was into music, so I started writing my own stuff, and compiling music so we could send out music on a greeting card.”
With time, that developed into a site where indie bands could send out their music to multiple sources, almost effortlessly.
Van Sant explained that the service, at this point, isn’t income generating so much as it is a free way for up and coming bands to advertise and promote their own sound.
Bands can upload their music—so long as it’s in MP3 format— and they can send it up to 10 people at a time.
“It’s a good way to spread around what you are doing with your music. All the indie bands can send their music out without having to sending out huge files—and it’s free.”
For the past year, Van Sant and his mother have been working on building up the network, which at this time is 2,000 members strong.
“We have a band of the week and we promote anyone who sends their music out the most,” he explained.
“We keep a daily post of what bands are sending out their music, and we update our Myspace page to have more bands sign up and check it out.”
Once they’re better established they intend to make the service membership driven with ties to other music sites and labels, as well as some advertisement links.
Van Sant said that the types of music on the site vary from acoustic to hip hop, rap and dance.
“We have pretty much whatever you can think of— there are underground bands for every style of music.”\
To see what the site is all about, go to www.mp3musicgrams.com
kmichaels@kelownacapnews.com
