Local bands and musicians took a hit in recent years as the Boston police tightened up the crackdown on basement and house shows across the city. But, it turns out the city doesn’t want to leave the area’s artists without a platform on which to spread their newest tracks and original songs. So they’ve come up with quite an intriguing offer, and posted it to the City of Boston website.
We don’t like to leave you hanging on the telephone – that’s why when you call Boston City Hall, you can reach a real person 24 hours a day at the Mayor’s 24-Hour Call Center. But if you’re transferred, you’ll hear a short clip of music. We think that music should be as uniquely Bostonian as you are.
Yes, this is going where you think it is. Touted ‘BOStunes’ – and first brought to our attention by Boston Tweet – the program is a new crowdsourced way to put local music on the air. Not just the radio air, but the dead air that you would otherwise hear when someone puts you on hold for infinity time while you’re transferred to a different office or department after office or department.
Is this the big break your Boston band has been waiting for? No? Well, it still couldn’t hurt.
The city is giving local artists until December 2 to submit original tunes to the transfer music “playlist,” after which we can say so long to the days of never-ending elevator music that makes us want to smash our iPhones, hardcore rockstar-style.
The submission rules are as follows, via the City of Boston:
- Follow & tweet @DoITBoston, our Department of Innovation & Technology, and use the hashtag #BOStunes, or send us a message viaFacebook.com/CityofBoston.
- Make sure to include a link where we can preview your streaming music, such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or Myspace. We’ll reach out to winners, who will need to be ready with a file formatted according to the following specifications:
- 16-bit PCM WAV file
- Stereo or Mono
- Sample rates of 48, 44.1, 32, 16 or 8 kHz
As for the additional rules, at least one member of your band or group must be living in Boston at the time of submission, and you have to keep it clean. Just think of your sweet, sweet grandma calling City Hall because she saw a vandalized mailbox on her way home from church. Would you want her to hear your dirty rock n’ roll mouth? The City of Boston didn’t think so.
While this idea is innovative at best and totally lamesauce at worst, you have to give the city props for creativity. They’re finally incorporating and acknowledging Boston’s bubbling bed of local music, even if it had to take a newly upgraded phone system to do so.
So what do you think? And, more importantly, what Boston-born song would you like to hear over the phone as you wait to hear about applying for a resident parking permit? (Don’t say ‘Shipping Up to Boston.’)
Image via CityofBoston.gov
