After all the umming and ahhing about what online community I would like to further involve myself in, I finally decided to fully engage in the music community – even more specifically the Melbourne music scene. This making the most sense as my blog so far has focused on this interest of mine, as demonstrated through posts Recently Played and Record Store Day 2016 Finding this community wasn’t difficult, as I have already to extents immersed myself in this online music culture with the help of online and social media. The simplicity of such a task is further asserted by Otway (2012), when he states, ‘finding [a] community is easier today than it ever has been’. However as also supposed by Otway (2012), there are ‘no pre-made maps to the location of yours’. With this sentiment, I asked Annie (an avid music indulger) for directions. Her directions led me back to a site she had shown me before – TasteKid.

TasteKid is wonderful and acts as a great place for a community of music appreciators to assemble and share music/bands/artists. This site, ‘provide[s] a continuous and instantaneous stream of  information from an enormous variety of sources’ (Murpie & Potts 2003), sources that not only include other members of TasteKid from around the world, but also Youtube, Facebook, Tumblr and Wikipedia. All of these worldly sources, allow TasteKid to act as a ‘global village‘, as it creates ‘one world connected by an electronic nervous system’ (Murphie & Potts 2003). I needed to become a member of this village, so as recommended by the site, I ‘[hung] around a bit longer, and create[d] a taste profile’.

Setting up this profile, I went nuts adding numerous bands and solo artists to my ‘likes’, so as other users of the website, who may tumble across my profile, can discover similar sounding musicians to ones they already listen to. To further enhance my contributions to the TasteKid community, and to advance the promotion of the Melbourne music community, I started to add local Melbourne artists who were absent from TasteKid’s database. For example, at the moments faves – Fortunes.

There were however issues with Tastekid’s services of adding a new artist/band; and further limitations in communicating and contributing with fellow TasteKid profiles/community members.

As encountered while adding Fortunes., TasteKid wouldn’t allow me to write a bio, or share a link or Youtube video, to demonstrate the music created by this band. Therefore not only did this limit my authorship as an online music contributor, but also reduced the possibility of gaining more attention to my profile and reaching a larger audience. Another limitation of this community-bearing site, is that those with a profile cannot directly communicate with one another, through means of a ‘messenger’ like medium. By only being able to ‘like’, ‘dislike’ and recommend artists, and not directly talk/comment to other members, I feel as though TasteKid limits your contribution and involvement to its recommendation engine and community. This was disappointing as I have so far been satisfied with the performance of this website.

Compared to other online, social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, I think TasteKid is limited in reaching a specific audience, and becoming involved in the online music community. For example, I have contributed and received more attention through means of Instagram posts about live music performances in Melbourne (e.g. City Calm Down post, and Groovin’ The Moo 2016 post), by ‘tagging’ and ‘checking in’ methods. (Look  left). I will be sticking with social media from now on.

REFERENCE:

Murphie, A & Potts, J  2003, Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Print. 11-38

Oatway, J 2012, Mastering Story, Community and Influence : How to Use Social Media to Become a Socialeader Wiley, Hoboken. 97-109. ISBN: 9781119943457.

TasteKid <https://www.tastekid.com>