And so it begins

Although the Mystonic label was "officially" started earlier this year, I actually opted to really promote the thing in December of 2009, with the launch of the Original Music Contest.



Basically, I was bogged down most days, and had limited time to find artists I was willing to invest with. I did find Coal Parker, and already had a relationship with James Aville, but in order to take the thing out of hobby land and into a viable business model, I would need to recruit far more artists, and quality material in spades. So I envisioned a contest that could use the power of the YouTube machine to help do some recruiting for me. I would offer to publish to Itunes and Amazon music, 10 mp3s a month, as determined by public voting.

Then upon further thought, I realized it should really be a viral situation. There were hundreds of videos being posted weekly of new original music, and thousands of songs being written and yet not posted weekly as well. The draw of a contest could cause plenty of good artists to post their material into the contest, at no risk, and possibly garner them a greater audience, even if the songs were already Itunes, or Amazon listed . (this will really become a factor when there are thousands of entries, later in 2010)

At the time of this first blog entry, 15 days into December 2009, there are near 50 video entries into the contest. I am already happy with alot of the music I am hearing. I hope to have 100 video entries in this first month. January should be much bigger, as many are distracted with the holidays and many will have empty calendars soon. I would actually like to have 200 entries in January, and am confident that will happen.

The model of selecting and voting will be an ongoing refinement, but the basic model of the contest itself is magic. It's raw, real promotion of talent. The constant struggle and goal is going to be minimizing the voting games, popularity contests, and other mischief and elevating the deserving tracks to the top of the heap in a way that involves as many listeners as possible. That is going to be essential. Finding thousands of musicians with decent material is no problem, so finding hundreds of top songs every year should be easy. The challenge is finding tens of thousands of listeners and mp3 purchasers and connecting the tracks with them. While it does seem like a large order, I am confident I am the best suited to deliver it.

If you are a musician, please join in the contest, if you are a listener, please get ready to enjoy what I like to consider the Organic selection of music.

I intend to post at least twice a week here so please check back with us.

For the website, please click the link www.mystonicrecords.com

For the official contest/YouTube page, please click the link www.youtube.com/mystonicrecords