The music scene on Steemit is really getting interesting and growing fast.
It was 11 months ago today that I joined this platform and a few weeks into posting here I got the idea for Steemit Open Mic as a way for musicians to get their music heard and a place for them to meet and interact.
A Short History Of Steemit Open Mic
I saw other groups for art, photography, and food thriving on the Steemit platform and had the idea to start a contest to showcase live music.
Before posting about it I did a quick search to see if anyone started something similar. There were music tags of mostly people posting videos of artists that they liked or concerts they attended, but nothing showcasing live performances.
I did find this one post that inspired the idea further published by @sirwinchester and featuring @verbal-d titled, The Steemit Song - Original Music By Verbal D and it sparked the idea to start the contest.
So I published a post asking the community what they thought of a New Idea For A Contest - Steemit Open Mic Night and the response was very positive.
@kevinwong invited me into a private chat about the idea where he invited @verbal-d and @pfunk to discuss details.
We bounced around the idea of breaking it up into different categories and genres like rap, produced tracks, loops, etc., but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and easy for anyone to join.
It's also hard to verify a produced track as originating from the author posting it. A live performance with the performer saying they are playing this song for this contest is verifiable, similar to the way we verify people are who they say they are on Steemit.
By just pointing a phone camera at yourself and recording a performance anyone could enter.
Live music is something I can listen to every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. That's one of the reasons I started the openmic tag.
What is really exciting to me is how this contest has showcased some great talent here on Steemit and has branched out into other contests.
We knew that if Steemit Open Mic was successful it would spawn contests covering multiple genres like we first discussed and that is exactly what is happening.
But there was a lot of work to do and it would never have grown to where we are now if it wasn't for a lot of support from the community.
@pfunk has supported us with Steem donations from almost the very beginning and a core of very talented musicians contributed their music each week. The first 15 weeks or so the contest had about 12-15 entries per week as the word began to spread.
Soon we were getting coverage on Steem Talk Podcast and other radio shows, then a 4 time Grammy-winning artist entered, and as the contest grew so did the variety of musicians contributing each week.
Steemit Musicians Coming Together
@soundlegion created a compilation of music contributed by many of the artists from the contest that helped steemweave the community together even more and artists began to collaborate and submit songs they worked on together.
Open Mic Week 11 Get With The Blockchain --- by @the-blockchain who are made up of @Verbal-D, @SenseiTeeKay, & @Papa-Pepper
Musicians began to surround these projects and it started to take on a life of its own. All the while the contest kept growing and new musicians started joining in on the fun.
It was a thrill to be getting comments from new users saying that they joined Steemit because they heard about Open Mic and the support they got from their very first posts turned them on to Steemit in a big way.
You see, that was another reason why I started this contest, so musicians would onboard to Steemit to join us and the platform would grow. I started getting a lot of positive comments from people joining Steemit for the first time saying Open Mic got them hooked.
Then @JessamynOrchard started The Steemit Local Music Society on Discord that allows musicians to chat and share their projects with each other. Here's the invite code.
There you can post music related articles and there are chat rooms for multiple genres of music. It's an active group of talent on Steemit all in one place. There's a chat room to post Steemit Open Mic entries as well.
She started the original music tag too for people contributing their original songs.
She also started Steemit Musicians on Facebook to attract people to Steemit which is a great idea.
There are some cool Steemit groups on Facebook by the way, but also some that are trying to create an upvote exchange group. To me, those are a waste of time.
The best way to use Facebook is not as an upvote exchange but as a way to pull Facebook user's onto the Steemit platform and @jessamynorchard does a great job doing this.
Resteems to the contest began picking up and word of mouth spreads fast here. All of these efforts combined made Open Mic grow into a very active group of musicians and for I'm forever grateful to the community.
Music Is Universal
Music transcends language which is why it's such a perfect fit for an international platform like Steemit. Words describing music fall short of doing so.
@quinneaker expresses his support for Open Mic very well in his video, Steemit Open Mic Night Week 43 - Sunset Didgeridoo In The Trees Steemit Original. In his intro he shares why he supports us. Worth checking out.
There are many entries from all over the world in many languages. And the beat goes on.
New Music Related Contests
As we originally anticipated, if the concept worked, there would be new genres of music branching off into many directions and that is what is happening now.
Music-Trail
First came @music-trail, a part of the Steem Trail project that helps curate new authors posts around all kinds of topics. You can read more about them reading Guidlines For Having Your Post Curated By The Steemtrail Team For The Music Tag --- by @music-trail
Curie
@curie is another great project that supports new authors and has supported many of the new entries people submitted to Steemit Open Mic. They helped new musicians entering the contest get a good reward and begin to gain followers. I'm a fan of any group that supports musicians.
Steem Idol
Steem Idol, in it's 4th week, is a contest hosted by @vocalist-trail and you can enter Steemian Idol Call Out Heat 4 Enter Now --- by @vocalists-trail
It focuses, as the name inplies, on vocalists and singing.
Rap Challenge
The rapchallenge tag is for entering the Rap Challenge which is in it's 8th week now. You can enter this week at Steemit Rap Challenge Week 8 - New Prizes Hip Hop Is Alive Rap And Win Sbd --- by @rondonson
Karaoke Challenge
There is even a Karaoke Challenge coming to Steemit very soon (August 7th) hosted by @enginewitty that I'm looking forward to hearing and he's using winners from the Steemit Open Mic contest as judges. How cool!
Attracting More Musicians To Steemit
All of this activity around music on Steemit is good for the community but there's also an added benefit in attracting more users to the platform.
One of the reasons why we ask people entering our contest to say Steemit Open Mic at the beginning of their videos and titles of their posts is for publicity and to gain search engine traffic.
Every time someone includes both the words Steemit Open Mic in their title and in their video it helps gain traction on the search engines.
Each time someone sees a video that say it's for Steemit Open Mic it increases the likelihood of someone searching Google to see what it's all about and when they do they will see a bunch of entries like this.
The more entries entering each week with the same keywords creates a trend that will attract new users to the Steemit platform.
That's why I suggest to all the new contests coming into being to add the word Steemit to the name of their contest because as people make videos and say Steemit and as they title their entry with Steemit Karaoke Contest, or Steemian Idol, or Steemit Rap Challenge, more musicians will discover what Steemit is all about.
A search of music on Steemit yields Steemit Open MIc in the description of the first result.
If every contest did this music will continue to grow on Steemit and continue to attract more musicians each week. I love musicians and they usually have good stories to tell making for some very creative people coming to the platform.
Another tip I would share with the new contests coming on is to be consistent each week and give an upvote and comment to everyone who enters your contest. Support them and give everyone coming to your contest, both contributors and spectators, the best possible experience you can give them.
Making it fun and easy to listen to will have people coming back for more and easy to recommend to others. Have fun with it and help connect people together with similar musical interests that you meet along the way.
Networking is another added bonus to running a music contest and music has a way of bringing people together. so, bring people together.
Thank you everyone for the support and helping to build the music community on Steemit. Each and every one of you are what make spending time on the platform so special to me.
Do you know of a music contest not mentioned here? Please let us know in the comments below.
