Create Virtual Bands With Kompoz.com

New online resource for musicians, Kompoz, has launched a platform for music collaboration online. The website works has social networking tools and technology to enable musicians including garage bands, independents, and professionals to create, collaborate, and mix their music online.

Raf Fiol, founder of Kompoz.com said, "We've leveraged the Web as a platform for creating a worldwide virtual music studio. It's a new approach to creating music, designed and engineered by and for a global community. Got an idea for a song? Record a track, upload it, then invite the community of musicians to add drums, bass, vocals or anything else. We provide the workspace and technologies to connect you with others, and to preview, mix, and publish your music."

According to representatives, Kompoz.com provides a framework for participation, characterized by open communication, democracy, and the freedom to share and re-use. Collaborations are based on the Creative Commons licensing models, promoting the sharing and re-use of the music created, while still retaining fundamental attribution and other rights for the original artists.

Visitors on the site can start by creating a project workspace, and add one or more tracks. One can upload MP3, WMA, or WAV files to the project while keeping track of the history and progress of the work. The project workspace will include a discussion forum where users can post ideas for the song, lyrics, chord charts, and more and others can post questions and replies. Users can upload either WAV (Waveform Audio Format), MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3), or WMA (Windows Media Audio). WAV and WMA files will be automatically converted to MP3 format for online (streaming) playback (the original format will be available for downloading and mastering).

Representatives say unlike other collaboration sites, which are based entirely on shrink-wrapped discussion forums software, kompoz is custom-designed from the ground-up for music collaboration. As such, kompoz provides professional project management features, such as Individual project workspaces for each collaboration, discussion forums for each project (multiple topics/threads), tracks uploaded directly to each project without using FTP, automated encoding of tracks for fast streaming playback, advanced search for projects by genre, artist, tags/keywords, license type, and more. Users can also create and share online profiles with the global music community, create friends lists and favorite project lists.

The website is free for users to visit and collaborate.