Don't Have A Big Music Budget.....Record/Upload With This Service

Lacking instruments, an empty garage, or musical talent? Don't worry -- an Internet connection is all you need, and I don't mean for Craigslist.

Germany/Silicon Valley based start-up Ujam is a free music-making website for the everyman. According to their site, they're "a cloud-based platform that empowers everybody to easily create new music or enhance their existing musical talent and share it with friends."

After taking about thirty seconds to sign up, you can start playing around with the sound editing tools right away. If you're feeling creative (and have a microphone), you can record vocals or an instrument, or even upload your own music to toy with. For the less-inspired, the site provides a menu of re-mixable “song templates” to get going with.

Though Ujam offers more advanced options for savvier musicians, they generally appear with a friendly warning along the lines of “if you have no idea what this option does, it's probably best to ignore it” that I found somehow soothing as a novice user myself. The program is clearly meant to be fun and accessible and will likely not be replacing professional equipment anytime soon. But still, I suspect that even a seasoned musician would enjoy tooling around with the “song DNATM,” changing the pitch and tempo, mixing in new instruments, and sending a friend a quick mp3 that could have been made while wearing pajamas.

In its infant alpha stage, Ujam is still working out its kinks. Tutorial videos and a function to lay multiple tracks at once are on the way. But even now, making a short track can take just a few minutes -- a refreshing break from work, possibly – and the site has enough options to entertain for much longer and for users to create more ambitious projects. Maybe by the time the beta version comes out someone will have put their Ujam on YouTube and hit it big.

Posted via email from Music Business Information