As newsworthy as any new music launch, Radiohead is revolutionizing the music industry by (not selling) their new album (launching Oct 10th) at a price of your choosing. Tom Yorke does it again, and now Radiohead is using their influence (and trusting a loyal fan-base to abuse the power of the web) to throw a rock 'n roll style monkey wrench into the gear-box of the industry's corporate machine. Kudos.... More
Bandpush is a strategic publicity campaign that helps to increase awareness for independent artists, record companies and corporate partners in Canada. Basically, musicians compile a demo and submit it for their next event... while Bandpush gathers support from sponsors and drums up the brands together with the tunes. We really loved this textural site design using yellow and distressed brown tones. It also has a perfect complimentary use of typography. The nicely layered page features a mix of aged, distressed and uneven textures to make this page simply touchable... stroke it. Love it.... More
Salbourg is young, fun, weekly dance party based in Vancouver... and while the site is quite bare and serves mostly as a calling card and repository of party flyers (albeit some pretty cool ones with hand-drawn fonts), we really liked the simple collage single-page design featuring a skull, lipstick and lace dreamt up by 19 year-old art, print and web designer Jesse Kanda (see link below).... More
Been a while since we've posted ANY music band sites... They just all seem so similar and blah... and to be honest, this one doesn't totally rock us either. We're just big fans of collage design right now, and anything that has animals and plants instead of guns and skulls is definitely "in". We also liked the gold type on black colors... and when you mix a space-scene background with cut-out palm trees and an Ipaka... it's a little silly, but, at least you have something different.... More
Having already survived its first year, Liveroom.TV is the new site of the first-of-its-kind free online music venue. Liveroom brings gigs and shows from the best new indie bands & artists right to your little computer screen (and in widescreen too!). They record all the bands at the Liveroom studio in North London, and then mix, edit and broadcast the (mostly) unsigned bands over the net. Cool music, in a cool online package—with nice little collages... power to the music!... More
Hunh? What's this? A new MTV.com that's all about music and the videos? What a concept! Actually, the site is extremely well conceived... A one-stop black metallic video playing jukebox that lets you view more videos during lunch break than are aired on MTV over the course of an entire month. Real simple (and smart) navigation lets you search video and TV content by subject or category in a single click, while the show news and extra content (also all in video format) is neatly tucked away. After 10 years of trying to muck around with the web making content appear "cool", they finally got it... It's all about their ultimate content; the music videos!... More
"My Life" is a very interesting music site design with some great Flash elements, UI, navigation, and branding. Revisiting this album which originally came out in 1981, this is the first time complete and total access to original tracks with remix and sampling possibilities have been officially offered online. Lots of thought has been given to how a user will listen to music while surfing, with attention given to both the music play downloads and meta navigation. Excellent all around web site housed in a nice grid-based design.... More
A site for the indy rock band The North Atlantic that uses full-sized industrial photographs with a navigation merged with the bands orginal artwork to create an gritty atmosphere that fits the music extremely well. We liked the way the main navigation (on the right) pops up differently for each page, yet is still completely usable and recognizable - regardless of different placement and artwork (...the left navigation icons are also nice, but those take you outside of the main site to affiliate sites and blogs). Overall, a very tenacious portrayal of a modern American wasteland sets the right tone for this rock band with punk influences.... More
A French record label with an interesting '9-Quadrant' design... It's edgy and distressed, yet clean, with lots of open white space... Palass uses a Flash-derived navigation to scroll beyond your browser screen edges and expose parts of a larger page design. And each quadrant contains a different 'magazine' style navigation with flippaple pages that contain the news, a scratchbook, videos and more. The artists inside include Emir Kusturica, Liquid Architecture and Arielle Dombasle. A hip, yet ultimately, nicely structured home for a variety of lables.... More
Just another really sick animated Flash music site from our falafel-eating, funky-faced, far out friend, Todd Purgason. But this time it's different - this time the site ain't anything you've seen before. So figure out what the hell a fugly fairy really is, and even torch her with a bow and flaming arrow by a belligerent french ferret. And hey, there's cool Easter egg stuff to download, like free MP3s from some bands, and a blog by Mark Hoppus. Did we forget to mention this was a site for Fuse TV? Have fun!... More
Warp records is the label site for a great many new electronic and independent-style artists. The design features a tight, dark style of flat, 'blocky' colors meant in many cases to imitate 3-D or a 3-D version of equalizers. The overall appearance can be a bit sparse at times, but allows for efficient updates from the database as this is a comprehensive site for many artists. Programmed by: Kleber.... More
As complete and through as possible, this graphic and architectural wonder leaves little room for improvement. The Flash-driven navigation is a showcase for an ever improving design team and their final solution for this amazing project. As deep as it is wide, Motown is the ultimate culmination of great design, Flash technology and interface development that represents the height of online design and the essense of great user interaction. What we loved best was the intuitive simplicity that solved the challenge of presenting an entire history of musical information with visual impact. Motown enables the user to decide exactly what they want to see and which moment of history to explore by providing dual complimentary navigations; historical and visual (by artist). Designed by:... More
