Giggem Adds Audition Management Feature To Music Industry Matchmaking Platform

Giggem, dubbed a "music industry matchmaking platform," recently launched to connect musicians and others in the music industry. Today they add the ability to create and manage online auditions to find bandmates. Designed to ease the filtering process, Giggem offers a big improvement over listing in the classifieds and going through the sometimes painful process of offline auditions.

I spoke with Giggem founder and CEO Emir Turan last week about Giggem including this new feature. It turns out that he's an accomplished musician who's been playing for 22 years and has worked with multiple bands.

His inspiration for the new Audition feature comes partly from his own experience of auditioning musicians with which to work. Even if you've only seen a band audition in the movies, you know it can be a tedious, time-consuming process of sorting out appropriate players. If you do it face-to-face, you often find yourself in the position of quickly realizing that someone is a poor fit and then having to deal with the awkwardness of wrapping up that encounter.

Of course, today you can post an ad online, request links to SoundCloud and social media profiles and cobble together enough information to filter out most of the musicians who won't fit. But managing auditions online via email and links to various sites is also an awkward process, especially if you get a wide range or large number of applicants.

Giggem's new Audition feature will allow you to post a basic description of what you need while giving you the option to make the audition call public or private by invitation only. But since you're posting your audition on Giggem rather than on
Craigslist, in addition to listing the audition, Giggem then notifies
members of your target audience.

Giggem Audition Requirements [Click for larger version]

Musicians respond to your initial announcement by first applying to audition which allows you to filter out those who don't seem to be a good fit based on their profiles. You then invite the rest to audition using the process shown in the above screenshot which includes completing a specific musical task.

These helpful tools will make it a lot easier for musicians to conduct auditions and also for musicians seeking opportunities to find auditions that fit their interests. While you'll still probably need to meet and play together to make your final decision, Giggem will ease the pain of identifying the best applicants and to possibly even narrow them down to the best match.

Giggem's Long Term Plans

I also spoke with Turan about the larger vision. He said Giggem is currently targeting the U.S. and UK with a focus on musicians. They are also welcoming others in the music industry but feel they need to build a base of musicians first before actively recruiting others from managers to labels to venues.

Ultimately the goal is to create a platform for everybody in the music industry to be able to find each other, make music together and conduct business.

It's a big goal but Turan says they have an enthusiastic team and a long-term commitment, which is definitely what it will take for Giggem to bring together the music industry.

Giggem should be aided in this endeavor by Emir Turan's own combination of business experience and passion for music.

[Auditions thumbnail courtesy MTAPhotos.]

More: Free Musician, Music Industry Matchmaking Platform Giggem Launches

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.