Part 1 : Listening to garageband.com and its "lyrical" success

Hi Neil, tell us, how do you prevent your employees from listening to music all day?
We don't!

What is the most enjoyable and fulfilling part of your job?
Calling someone up and telling them that their song got the best reviews from music lovers and that this has earned them a US$250,000 recording contract... well, that's a great telephone call to make.

We all feel very excited, and very proud, that we're involved in a process that's revolutionizing the way new musical talent gets discovered. And yes, along the way, we've helped make some dreams come true for some folks - and of course that's a wonderful feeling.

Can you tell us the background story behind garageband.com and its formation?
Jerry Harrison, as with every other A-list producer in the world, has hundreds of people sending tapes and CDs to him for consideration. He knows that he'd want to work with some of these acts, but the vast majority he wouldn't. He also knows that there aren't enough hours in the day for him to listen and give fair consideration to all these submissions, so the question becomes: how do you pick out the good stuff from the not-so-good stuff?

A friend of his, Tom Zito - now garageband.com's chairman - had the seed of an idea for using the Internet to filter the good stuff from the not-so-good stuff. He realized that if he could solve Jerry's problem he'd also be able to offer bands around the world an opportunity to have their work fairly evaluated, and maybe even earn a recording contract.

He took his thoughts to Amanda Lathroum-Welsh, an ex-colleague and then a director of research at Netscape, who designed the "LPE" - the "preference engine" which is now the heart and soul of garageband.com's reviews system.

And together the three of them built up garageband.com.

Why do you think there has been such an overwhelming response to garageband.com in the music and listener world?
Because every band that uploads a track to garageband.com gets the most wonderful gift: honest feedback from other musicians and music lovers around the world. It's very rare that a band has someone tell it to them like it really is (at least, not without throwing beer bottles).

And because we offer all bands a fair shot at a US$250,000 recording contract, of course.

Can you tell us a little about garageband.com's LPE system?
It's the system that ensures that every band gets the same chance to win, and that the best band emerges victorious at the end. It decides which songs get reviewed, when, by whom, what data is collected, how this data is processed, and how this affects a band's standing in the garageband charts.

Continued...