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BLEND: A NEW ONLINE MUSIC COMMUNITY

Blend is a new online approach to track collaboration - join for free here...

Blend is a new way for musicians and producers to get together to find, share and collaborate on music projects in their native (source) format. Simply put, producers can publish their music projects in the native DAW file formats Ableton Live, Maschine, Pro Tools, Garageband, etc. There's no need to send over Audio Stems as the complete project can be saved and worked on by other users with the same software. However, if you’re not using the same software, you can still collaborate as the source samples are still available.

Blend at its source is a new online network. Look at it as a musician’s Facebook without the crap, where music creators can meet and explore a community of opportunities in the creation of music. Whilst other platforms such as Soundcloud and Mixcloud focus on the publishing of completed music, Blend’s focus is on creation and collaboration while projects are in progression — it aims to make the process of music sharing a more interactive and simple format. Blend has had a ‘soft launch’ over the last year where it has built a solid and tight-knit community. Thousands of artists from all over the world have joined them, along with some pretty big names and innovators. When you first sign up, you’ll notice that a certain Moby has posted a project up to be played with!

How does it work?
Blend is cleverly built on top of Dropbox for simple, fast and secure project-sharing. To publish a project, copy the project folder (from your DAW) to your Dropbox/Apps/Blend folder (which is automatically created when you sign up to Blend). Then visit the My Projects page in Blend and the project should appear at the top of the list. Click the row to open the publishing form, fill out the relevant information, and click Publish. This is then available for other producers and musicians to ‘Pull’ the project down to their Dropbox folders and start work on it before re-publishing it back to you with the addition bits. Voila, sweet harmony!

There are already a wealth of projects that you can pull from Blend if you want to get started quickly. Add to them, remix them, and also give feedback — a useful way to communicate with collaborators or other artists.

It's a free, invitation-only service for anyone — DJs, engineers, producers and musicians who want to work and connect with other like-minded folks, and as a special treat DJ Mag readers can sign up here for free

Happy Blending!