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SINGAPORE: New Singapore-based website Club Mosh is giving music fans a virtual meeting place to get connected to bands and musicians, and to buy music digitally.
"Club Mosh was developed to showcase music from independent musicians and to make it easier for fans to discover them," said Ms Sheila Francois, senior manager of Cellcity, the mobile content company that owns Club Mosh. "Our aim is to be an international digital label for independent artistes. By cutting out the middleman (record companies), we split revenues 50-50 with the bands."
Launched last month, the website's current repertoire is mostly taken up by local acts such as Allura and Monofone and regional ones such as Lipgloss (Indonesia) and Couple (Malaysia). There are also selected international acts from Switzerland, Canada and the United Kingdom.
"The site sells music for relatively-unknown bands," said Ms Francois. "It's not because these independent bands aren't good — I've seen their dedicated fan base. Unfortunately, their music's not reaching the masses. So, we can't look at just the Singapore market; we're looking at it from a global scale."
Fans can stream music for free or buy it from the website. Occasionally, some artists give songs away for free. Prices for the digital downloads, which come with digital rights management software, or digital locks, are priced from US$0.20 (28 cents) to US$1.
In comparison, songs from Soundbuzz, an online digital music website recently acquired by mobile handset maker Motorola, cost $1.99 each. Club Mosh also sells mobile ringtones and wallpapers from its artistes.
Music connoisseurs, dubbed Mosh Gods, have been appointed to review and recommend new bands worldwide. These include the likes of Bee Futon from Thai-based band Futon and local music veterans Patrick Chng and X'Ho.
"Club Mosh is a really good idea," said X'Ho. "It would help to instill a genuine pride in locally-produced music because, like charity, real interest begins at home."
The site plans to give visitors an interactive and dynamic experience. "Fans will have their profile pages and tagboards to leave messages for bands," Ms Francois said. "Bands will have their own fan-created pages. We're also thinking of letting fans jam with the bands in the future. And we plan to record concerts and let fans watch these video streams for free."
The website releases a weekly podcast hosted by DJ Jeremy Ratnam that showcases up-and-coming bands from the Club Mosh catalogue. "We can be a channel in Asia to distribute songs and content from international independent artists," Ms Francois said.
Club Mosh is planning an online band competition in which fans will get to vote for their favourite band, American Idol-style, in July. The winning band will walk away with US$5,000. It also plans to showcase bands at international music festivals in Jakarta and Sydney in the latter half of the year. - TODAY/fa
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