On the 15th of every month of group of 22 music bloggers around the globe (myself included) participate in a thing called the Music Alliance Pact or MAP for short. On that day every month, each member of the group posts a list of 22 mp3s on their blog, one for each country represented by MAP, accompanied by a description and a link to the artist’s site. It’s a simple idea which was started by Jason Cranwell, a Scottish music blogger who wanted to share his recommendations with others beyond his own internet space.
“I wanted readers to get out of their comfort zone and open their ears to things they might not otherwise listen to,” says Jason. “As each individual blog’s regular readers would usually download and listen to that author’s recommended songs, they would be more likely to download the MAP songs too, even though their source was another blog entirely.”
The group functions as a collected group of trusted music sources who take their local knowledge to a global level of exposure. For example, an Irish artist could potentially reach an estimated audience of 250,000 people in one day if their song was chosen to represent their country in a given month.
“It gives artists who deserve increased exposure a unique platform to get exactly that,” agrees Jason. “A lot of the time the musicians who are chosen by the blogs are unsigned, so it can be a very rewarding and beneficial to their careers”.
At the moment, MAP includes music blogger representatives from countries like Spain, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Brazil, England, Portugal, Peru, Iceland and the US with more planned. “I’d particularly love to get an African nation on board,” Jason says.
Every month the grab bag of 22 songs throws up a mixture of brilliant and bewildering, only serving to highlight how contrasting tastes can be. It has had real-life effects in its short five month lifespan, helping a promoter in Hanoi, Vietnam book an act recommended by the Singapore blog I’m Waking Up To last month.
It’s like the Eurovision of music blogs with decent tunes, a worldwide cachet and thankfully, no Terry Wogan complaining from his pulpit. The initiative has generated interest from NPR in U.S., MTV Romania, an Argentinean newspaper, German Rolling Stone thus far but it’s really about that one to one connection between a music lover and an artist and if that artist is from Peru and the listener is in New Zealand then all the better. It’s a great example of how the net can be used to spread good music globally and without an advertising budget.
Try out MAP for yourself - http://www.nialler9.com/tag/map
Fri, Feb 20, 2009
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