So you’ve just completed a music video for your band’s latest single. And now you’ve got to upload it where people can see it. Obviously, that means YouTube, it means Vimeo, maybe it means submitting to sites like Blank TV or Antville.
As of last month, it also means submitting to Brag.
Created by a pair of college roommates, Brag’s sole purpose is to be a place for bands and musicians to showcase their music videos, then let visitors rate them.
The idea for the site has been kicking around in co-founder James Mcanulty’s head since the mid-’90s when he was living in then-Soviet Russia, shooting videos of a lot of underground bands.
But “because of slow speeds available to average internet users,” Mcanulty explained, “it was not feasible. I then waited and procrastinated enough for the web to catch up and make some of things possible that we are doing and going to do with the site.”
In that same period of time, the cost of digital production also plummeted, so that by the time Mcanulty and his partner were ready to launch, they had a nice list of bands they were ready to reach out to in the hopes of populating Brag with content.
“ I had a good base to draw from,” Mcanulty said, citing both a number of bands he’d personally worked with over the years as well as several blogs and labels he’d discovered through research prior to Brag’s launch.
Thanks to that research, some invitations extended through Twitter, and word of mouth (“We are two people, and we have no ad budget,” Mcanulty said), the site is off to a very solid start, and the quality is as much a testament to the Brag founders’ curation as it is to the rising quality of independent music videos around the world.
“I think the results have been great,” Mcanulty admitted, and looking at some of the videos featured on the site (including the above video for Alcoholic Faith Mission’s “My Eyes to See”), it’s hard to disagree.
Brag is still in its infancy, and the team plans on rolling out some additional sorting features: best of the week, sorting by region, guest editors’ picks, “plus a few more surprises.”
All the more reason for you to get in on the ground floor, get some inspiration, and check out your competition.
