Yes, that dark and mysterious cosmos of dementia is now approachable to even the most cyber-challenged among us, due to the efforts of two Steves who happen to share a love of music and a talent at shuffling bits and bytes. They launched their site in November and have worked most of the bugs out, as they've continued to add features and attractions including listings of events, venues, and spotlight presentations. After researching the available resources, he decided to team up with his co-worker, Wehr, to build a place that would suit the needs of his own band and many others confronting the same scenario. With that spirit, we set off trying to find a way to let people show it off a little bit, in particular trying to target groups that don't get a lot of exposure, lesser known names. Noting that a number of rock sites are already out there, the Steves intend to include everything from barbershop quartets, choirs, classical, opera, folk, rock, you name it.
Financing is pretty easy, too.
We're trying to create a site that isn't really commercially motivated, so there's a lot of things we offer for free. So far, Tuned In has got an events page that lists upcoming performances and links to a national music calendar service, so that anything posted locally also gets picked up for nationwide notice. Artists can submit their performances by phone, email or letter, and the listings are free. Can Flash's Nothing's As Real . Last month Woodstock's own Older Than Dirt was the prize, and Stiert notes that the response to the giveaway program has been so great, they'll probably bump it up to four albums a month in the near future.