DesignersMusic.com: Find & Share Great Music with Other Designers

by Jonathan Longnecker

First off, let me say that we’re psyched to finally be able to share this project with you. We believe that side projects don’t work unless you’re passionate about them. Well, guess what? We love music and we love design. They go hand in hand, really. So we decided that there should be a place where designers can find new music recommended by other designers: DesignersMusic

Go play with it now or read on below for details!

The Background

Like I said, Nate and I love music. We started designing because our band needed a logo, t-shirts and a website 12+ years ago. Yeah that’s a long time. We’ve continued to make and produce it and are always on the lookout for something new to listen to. We’ve created DesignersMusic to do just that.

The original inspiration for the site was the memories of walking through a CD store and picking out albums based on how cool the cover art was. Don’t tell me you didn’t do it! So the main view of DesignersMusic is just that. With a few benefits of course

Quickview

When you hover over an album, an info box pops up with the full album name, artist, artist website, the designer who submitted it and what company they’re from. There’s also a listening preview so you can decide quickly if it’s the style you’re looking for. And the link to the detail page, of course. We think it’s great to browse and find awesome new tunage in that nostalgic fun way.

See it →: Go to the the main music page to try it out.

Job Categories

To further help you find the music you’re looking for, we’ve added job types that you can tag when entering a new album. So if you want to see all the music that other designers listen to while making “Stupid Client Revisions” it’s as easy as selecting it from the dropdown menu.

You can also view by list layout if you don’t have time to “browse” the catalogue. We won’t be mad, we promise.

See it →: You can access this from just about any page that has music on it. The main music page is a great place to start.

Album Detail

After some feedback from beta testers, it was obvious we needed a detail page for each album to allow you to favorite it or tweet about it. Really just a page that you could link straight to an album with.

Here you can see other albums by the same artist, who submitted the album and who has favorited it.

See it →: Go to the Little Rooms (shameless plug) album page.

Profile

Egad! Another profile? Relax, we’ve kept it down to the bare essentials. Just enough info so you’ll get credit for posting up your music. The cool thing is, anyone can check out your profile and see what you’ve added and favorited. It also serves as a nice place to check back and see what you’ve favorited when you’re ready to buy some new music.

See it →: Check out my profile page. Right now I have the most entries, but I dare anyone to beat me!

Content

We’re hoping to post up some really interesting content to the blog on a regular basis. Nate and I are even planning on recording one song a month and giving them away for free throughout the next year. The RSS feed will serve as a sort of all-purpose dose of every album that gets added while Twitter and the Newsletter will focus on music we find especially interesting and awesome. Plus any cool interviews we might snag. You never know

The way I see it, music helps us get through everyday and every task; the least we can do is share that inspiration with others. So go check out DesignersMusic and let us know what you think!