classicallounge.com



The pianist Hugh Sung invited me to join a new social networking site for classical music: classical lounge. It's not surprising that more and more social networking sites are cropping up, particularly with the success of MySpace and similar sites. To be honest, I'm surprised MySpace has become so popular, given how limited it is with regard to generating a good Web page, but it's good that it has gained traction. I'm a bit suspicious of MySpace now that Rupert Murdoch owns it, but hopefully it won't be a civil liberties demon or another conservative front like Fox News.

Setting up a profile on Classical Lounge was pretty simple, and registration is free. Unfortunately, it is a bit of a closed community as one must be a member to view other profiles. I suppose that is both good and bad, but probably more bad than good. I'm waiting to see how populated it gets; I've been invited to various forums before, and many resemble the old eWorld in that they are virtual ghost towns. I suspect this one will be different. One thing I like is that unlike MySpace, which has a space limitation on the music files that it allows, Classical Lounge accepts links to one's own server. This means that rather than storing music files on their server, all I had to do was provide links to my own mp3 files. Unfortunately, and for reasons I don't understand, one can only list five works. But that's still sufficient to whet other people's appetites.

Unlike MySpace, Classical Lounge is more oriented towards online forums, which I think is really good. On MySpace, the only interactions are comments, private messages and instant messages (when not disabled). I'd like to see more of a forum approach, so Classical Lounge could be a really nice thing, perhaps rivaling Sequenza 21 (or not---let's see how it evolves).

Posted: Thu - August 17, 2006 at 06:13 PM          

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