A friend of mine who's a prospective movie producer asked me to act as music supervisor for his (yet to be finished) diploma project. He needed some authentic country and 50s old school rock'n'roll for the soundtrack. Unfortunately there wouldn't be a budget – and he would need the worldwide rights for an indefinite amount of time for all kinds of media (DVD, television, cinema…). Confronted with this task I of course turned to the web – to Last.fm and Myspace to be precise.
As I'm neither to familiar with country nor with 50s rock'n'roll Last FM's function to look for similar artists came in handy (beginning with Johnny Cash seemed like a good idea...) as did Myspace's search functions, the possibility to listen to several tracks and to contact the band. The seedy bottom of the internet seems to be good for something after all. In regards to presenting and discovering music it still has quite an edge on Facebook.
In short: There's a vast talent pool out there, pretty much all our needs were covered by (mostly) unsigned or young and upcoming bands.
All this – again – made me realize just how important these platforms became for music and which great chances they offer for both parties involved. Even though we didn't have a budget for the soundtrack what we could offer was a worldwide DVD-release which surely comes in handy in terms of exposing music to new markets – we got great tunes and the bands a chance to introduce themselves to a new audience, all without a middle-man or complicated license agreements.
Another example, even though in a completely different league, are my Australian friends from Operator Please, whose career certainly owes a lot to Myspace. Just recently, they were nominated again for two Aria awards (in one category they're up against Kylie!).
So keep on posting your stuff onto the web, you never know when some random German movie person wants you for the soundtrack of his flick.
-Jens
PS Check out the trailer for my friend's old movie "Die Schwarze Kolonne" (The Black Platoon), a spoof on comic adaptations with German soap actor Tim Sander.