u/tristandamron

Hey there!

My name is Tristan Damron. I'm a gigging singer/songwriter and software engineer here in Portland. You might have seen me at one of the many open mic nights around town, or at one of my shows... but likely, you've never heard of me. I've been fully immersed in the music scene both in SoCal and Portland for about 3.5 years, and one thing I've always struggled with is how the larger music scene tends to be a bit insular; it can be hard to meet people outside of your bubble. Don't get me wrong: I've got a wonderful little group of musician friends here, but I want to connect with as many people here as I can. I can only guess that I'm not alone in that.

I wanted to take a stab at solving this problem, so I created a social media website for musicians called Songbook.live. Sites like Instagram and Facebook have really let me down over the years by algorithmically filtering my content, making it very difficult to find other artists outside of my immediate circle. I designed Songbook.live to solve this problem with the following design tenants:

• No algorithm.
• No engagement farming (no likes on posts, no followers/friends, no stream counts).
• No AI generated content (if you post AI-generated content on the site I'll immediately ban you).
• No global competition. Your feed is tailored to your city. When you sign up for an account, you'll choose a city. All of the content you see on the site will be from users in your city. Functionally, everyone in your city is already your friend!

Despite these design restrictions, the site has a bunch of features that you can use:

• Photo, video uploads.
• Direct messaging.
• Posts + comments.
• Music uploads.
• Email notifications.
• Snazzy looking profile pages.
• A radio player at the bottom of the page that shuffle plays music uploaded by musicians in your city.
• Separate accounts for venue owners to register their businesses (might be good for helping artists manage and book gigs?)

The site is still in Beta, but I've been showing it off to my friends at Starday, Covert Cafe, and Laurelthirst and there are about 15 users on the site right now. If you're interested in joining, I'd love to see you on Songbook.live! Here's a link: https://www.songbook.live/

If it's not your thing, I still want to expand my circle. Here are my links, if you want to stay in touch/meet up at a show or open mic:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tristan.damron.music/

Songbook Profile: https://www.songbook.live/artist?id=6

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5zeaAnYC73fyBPxhtCNZXl?si=SEIK3-koRLGOIDuaWdLGhw

Thanks all, looking forward to meeting you (: