Tunected Builds Creative Community Through Music Video Creation Contests [Updated]

Tunected is an interesting new site that is focused on connecting musicians who need a music video with videographers through music video contests. The winning video typically receives some sort of prize from the artist and the opportunity to have their work showcased on Tunected.  However the intent of the site clearly goes beyond contests to creating a community of collaborators.

Tunected was launched in April with a team led by founder Martin Tüvi. He says he was inspired by two things. First he saw a Jason Mraz lyrics video for "I Won't Give Up."  Given that he'd always thought of music videos as videos that feature the musician, seeing one which meaningfully addressed the song without the musician inspired the initial concept of Tunected.

Soon thereafter a friend's band connected with a videographer by posting on a musician's forum. A videographer responded with a video that the band, their fans and forum participants all really got into. Seeing that process in action clarified how Tunected would operate.

Here's how it works:

1. "Musician uploads a tune in MP3 format to start a Music Video contest."

2. "Video Maker joins in and submits it´s own version of the Music Video."

3. "Musicians, fans, critics and Tunected team will choose their favourites."

The contests seem to be more a mechanism for connecting musicians and videomakers that provides a process, i.e. picking a winner, for choosing which video an artist will use for that song. The volume of activity is pretty low at this stage, so there aren't always a lot of videomakers, yet the process can be satisfied by one great video that an artist or band feels represents their work.

Folks at Tunected have already observed that the videographers who participate are less interested in the prizes than in working with musicians and gaining an audience for their work. That interest in collaborating and building audiences seems to be the real focus of Tunected with contests serving as a mechanism to facilitate that process.

Tunected is supporting participants by trying to find ways to help both musicians and videographers further their careers such as:

"connecting musicians and companies who might be interested in inviting these musicians to live concerts in the future"

"working together with different web platforms who might be interested in hiring creative videographers for web projects"

They're also developing an interesting way to promote artists and videographers on the site through Tunected Stories. The stories give folks a chance to talk about such topics as the background to their work or how they became artists.

Tunected is a work in progress with a lot of potential. If they can build a creative community focusing on collaborations between emerging musicians and videographers, then they have a chance to build something of value that can last.

Update: Please check the comments for one new user's recent experience.  Hopefully they'll sort this out but it's not a good look.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) maintains a business writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.