There are countless tools available to bands nowadays, especially when it comes to delivering your music on the internet. The focus of this post will be Bandcamp.com, which is by far the most impressive service I have ever seen for musicians.

The short version of what Bandcamp does is simple; they host your music files and allow fans to play it and download it in a variety of ways. Big deal, right? There’s a million ways to do all that. Bandcamp has gone far beyond what bands can expect from any other services. I’ll try to break it down is a simple way:

• Your band uploads full quality masters (aif. or wav.) and artwork.
• Set your price. Any price works, including $0 and even “pay what you want” options.
• When a fan downloads a song, they have just about every format option available to them. Several flavors of MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and more. It’s all seamless, Bandcamp does all the file converting for you behind the scenes.

In addition to all that, your songs are available to listen to in their entirety right there on your site, lyrics and liner notes are all included, and you can even choose to add bonus content to your album. This can be PDF artwork, videos, or pretty much anything you want. They also give you embeddable widgets to post all over the place.

Maybe they can explain it better than I can. Here’s an overview video straight from the Bandcamp site.

THIS SERVICE IS FREE! There is absolutely no good excuse for any band to not utilize this. The pages are customizable to a degree, but they all maintain a basic, well designed layout that benefits both the band and the fans.

What about physical CD’s, or vinyl? Yeah, Bandcamp can help you there too. Check this out:

Big Terrible are using the service as are tons of others.
http://bigterrible.bandcamp.com/

Seriously, all bands need to take advantage of this. GO!
www.bandcamp.com

The fact that Facebook and Twitter have turned Myspace into a relative ghost town isn’t news. But it is still surprising to see how the once dominant social network continues to shoot itself in the foot. The one specific area where Myspace still has an advantage over all the others is music. It has a robust music player, and profiles designed specifically for bands and musicians. Over the last few years, it’s become an absolute necessity for bands big and small to have a presence on Myspace.

Among the best features of the site for exploring new music, was the local search tool. You entered a zip code to browse bands within a certain proximity of your location. You could even filter the search results to certain genres. I used it often, and it would return a list of local bands that I would have never been exposed to otherwise. When the time came to start digging through all the bands in Philadelphia for articles on this site, I had trouble finding that browse function that I had used so many times. I clicked and clicked, and all I found was a typical Top 10 style mainstream music chart. Barf.

I contacted Myspace directly to see if I was just overlooking it somehow. The official response was:

Thanks for contacting MySpace Music. Unfortunately, you are no longer able to search for different regions any longer. You can however, search for band names, songs and albums…

How beat is that? I don’t know the band name or the song name, because I want new music! With a database of thousands of bands in bigger cities, it seems utterly foolish to have no way to find them.

Currently, Myspace shows no interest in bringing this feature back, and to my knowledge there is no other tool with anything close to the power and simplicity of what they had in place. Am I out of the loop or what? Hit the comments sections if you know of any good tools like this. And by all means, send thoughts on this issue directly to Myspace. I think the local scene can only benefit from having a proper discovery tool.

In 2006 Fabrizio Siciliano “& Company” made an album as The Writing Birds. The result was a beautiful, moody collection of twelve songs called ‘Camillia’.

According to the limited information available, the band performed live several times between 2005 and 2007, at which point it just kind of… stopped. There’s no blogs or articles to be found mentioning who else was in the band or why it ended. And considering the fact that the group doesn’t exist anymore, it’s only relevance to today’s scene would be as a source of inspiration. But a great one, since it’s way better than most of what’s out there.

Camillia is perfect for those lazy, late-Autumn Sunday afternoons. It conveys an almost somber tone, but not to the point of depressing. “House of Stones” shuffles forward innocently enough with cute glockenspiel accents, until an unexpected buzz-saw synth bass turns the mood dark in a hurry. “Will All the Pieces Ever Mend” serves as the only misstep in my opinion. It’s a fine song on its own, but it kind of interrupts the flow of the album as a whole. But hey, having a song placed incorrectly in a tracklist isn’t the worst thing a band could do.

The record is peppered with several instrumental tracks, the most interesting of which may be “Collapsing Star”. It finds the perfect blend of traditional instrumentation and electronics. To create one of the albums highlights, Fabrizio shares vocal duties with Box Five frontwoman Mary Bichner on “We’ll Survive”. Hearing the duo take subtle breathes between vocal phrases goes a long way to further humanize what is already a stunning example of genuine songwriting. This is a truly timeless album that deserves to be remembered even if The Writing Birds never come back to life.

Have a listen: myspace.com/thewritingbirds

Welcome to Philly Rock Blog!

We hope that you’ll soon find this site to be a valuable source of inside information on everything related to Philadelphia’s original music scene. There’s plenty of room for debate about whether or not there is much of a “scene” in Philadelphia at all these days, but one thing Philly is not lacking is potential.

The last few years have seen most of the important online resources for our scene disappear or change focus away from our area. The bands, musicians, venues, promoters, and fans all deserve a site dedicated solely to this scene. The time is right.

The best way for everyone to help is to communicate with us. Hook up with us on Twitter and Myspace, and keep the music and information flowing. If there’s a band you think should be covered here, let us know. And bands, by all means send us your music! But beware, we owe it to the readers to be honest. One thing we will not do here is kiss ass.

So have fun! Join the forum, tell some friends, and get the ball rolling.