Zoom-in Online

Every wanted to play music with someone who is not in the same room as you? An old friend who moved away? A songwriting partner who is touring with another band? Maybe even teach your old elementary school music teacher a thing or two about blowin it out on the alto recorder?

Well now you can...

Ever wanted to just find a jam right now that you could participate in? No pressure to play but the possibility always there? Bust out that conga in the corner and just wail with some strangers? Play some music with some people but it's 3:00am in the morning and everyone's asleep?

Well people are awake in other time zones, and now you can...

Ever get tired of listening to what's on your iPod and want to just listen to other musicians jam out or rehearse or perform, and just browse the possibilities and stick around for what suits you? Are you a real fan of live music and want to check out something that's totally hip? Now? Rockin? From the comfort of your own home? Any time of day or night? Want to rate and share those performances with others? Like to cheer and jeer in real time with other music fans?

You guessed it - now you can...

Lightspeed Audio Labs, a developer of real-time, Web-based music collaboration technology, has been working on what they are terming an Industry-Changing Music-Based Social Networking Internet Portal Site and it's called JamNow. I mean, frankly, coming from a musician, phrases like JamNow make me smile. I'm like, "ok, cool, let's do it." I immediately start looking around for something musical to pick up and start workin' it. These guys have created something that might be really successful if it can deliver on the promise, and the website beta is up and ready to be played with.

The focus of the destination site is to bring a musical collaboration model to a web community experience. You can create an account, and then you create a "jam" and invite others to either participate or just listen, and you can open it up to fans to just drop by and check it out - but the magic is that musicians can be in separate locations and still play music together in real time. The company has created their own network (as I understand it) and the "lag" or "latency" —according to co-founder Mark Malek—will be virtually unnoticeable to the vast majority of the site users. He warned that it's not a "true professional multi-location recording studio application" there are still some realities about distance and network traffic and myriad other factors that would force someone attempting to achieve a 100% latency free state of musical communication to spend big bucks to build their own "closed" system. But this venture seems to be ten times better than anything we have been able to use before, anywhere. I'm very excited to check it out. There are virtual sound rooms where musicians and fans can gather, play, talk (with voice and text) to each other, and engage in some internet-age jammin'.

From the release:"One of the unique features of JamNow is the integration of community functionality within the music collaboration process, providing users – artists and musicians of all experience levels – with the ability to invite and communicate with friends, fans and other jammers. Unlike other services, artists now have the ability to talk with other musicians and their fans in live “virtual” sound rooms as if they were physically on stage or at a concert."

Sounds pretty hot. When can you try it? If you're lucky enough to live in the Rock Triangle, today! If you're not, you can still listen and check out the being a fan aspect!

The press release says: "'Rock Triangle' Beta
The beta launch of JamNow, which runs through the summer of 2007, will initially target what Lightspeed executives are calling a 'Rock Triangle' – a geographic area from Boston in the North, Charlotte in the South, and Milwaukee in the Midwest. Musicians anywhere within this triangle – whether in New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, or anywhere between – will be able to use the service to jam and perform. Additionally, fans outside the Rock Triangle will be able to listen to music available on the JamNow site.

“We chose to launch the beta program around this 'Rock Triangle' for the simple reason that these are major cities with a significant music influence,” explained Jim McDermott, Vice President of Business Development at Lightspeed Audio Labs. “JamNow will add additional regions to the beta beginning with the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas areas during the summer of 2007.”

I'll be using the beta, and once I have a real "first look" experience, I'll post all about it here. They have an ambitious mission, and with a social networking system in place, they hope to provide musicians and fans a like a way to interact with each other that we have never seen before. If you want to sign up during the Beta, just go to JamNow.com and create an account. I just created mine, look for me on JamNow under the username T_Howe. They are in beta remember, so the site is a little funky, and every once in a while it goes down so they can patch something or reboot. Let's jam! (err... now!)