With tools like LinkedIn or Monster.com at the hands of
professionals, both potential employees and employers’ experience in job
searching has become much more streamlined. For them, the need to search through a
newspaper, or even a listings site like craigslist.org, has been virtually eliminated.
Why is it, then that musicians are still left in the dark; forced to trawl
through forums and listings in hope of finding like-minded individuals and,
more practically, a paying gig?
My entrepreneurial idea revolves
around a networking site designed specifically for musicians. Modeled more after
a professional networking site like LinkedIn, rather than Facebook or Google+,
this site would allow musicians to find work. This could range from filling a
spot left vacant by the departure of a musician in an established band, to finding
permanent work with a band, or even finding local musicians with like-minded
interests to start from the ground up. Though more tailored for
semi-professional to professional musicians, this network would be open to all
that are interested in use of the service.
The logistics would operate like
this: Musician A would create a profile on the site, listing some basic
information, like age and sex, his proficiency in instruments, styles of music,
and his area of residence. When Musician B used the site, looking for a
replacement for his band’s guitarist, he could access this virtual database of
musicians in his area, filtering by instrument, genre, and other parameters,
such as age or sex. With a sufficiently narrow search, Musician B would find
Musician A, contact him, and hire him for the spot. This could operate on
several different levels, from a young individual searching for band mates for
a new band, to a local orchestra searching for a new violinist. It would also
work the other way around, allowing individual musicians to search for work
opportunities.
This ties in directly with last
week’s lecture, as this would be a form of social network. Just like LinkedIn
or Facebook, this network would face similar challenges and concerns; ranging
from privacy issues, to streamlining the user experience and making sure the
site offers exactly what the user wants, without overburdening him or her with marginal
information.
As this idea fleshes out, some of
the these challenges will become more clear, and I will address possible
strategies in overcoming them, as well as addressing how certain elements of
the IT world could benefit such a service.
