January 22nd, 2011 was a milestone in the redesign and conversion process of Madtown Lounge to Local Sounds. It was the day we updated and rebranded the City Pages section as Music Scenes!

One of the major ideas behind the Local Sounds ecosystem is that local music should stay local to its own city or region, yet have the ability to network with other areas and have a ripple effect to promote everwhere. Live Locally. Promote Globally. Seem like a basic concept?

Here is the rough definition that we established for this idea: LocalSounds.com is a network of connected local music scenes that cross promotes areas from one region to another, allowing independent artists to reach farther with their music by creating their own network of fans and other artists from their home base.

So the goal with the Local Sounds Music Scenes is to have a city-centric landing page or homepage that summarizes and collects all the information from localsounds.com for a particular city and display it as a quick reference for fans and artists alike. For example, visiting the Local Sounds Madison music scene allows me to review the top shows or events going on today/tonight, the most popular artists in Madison (according to localsounds.com), the most popular venues in Madison (and where they’re located on the map), the most recent activity from Madison users on localsounds.com, recent news from Local Sounds, and the top album releases in Madison. Pretty nice huh?

We would love to hear some feedback from our users. If you have comments, concerns or other suggestions to help us make the new Music Scenes section even better, let us know! You can leave your comments below, on our Local Sounds Facebook page, or email us at suggestions@localsounds.org!

Local Sounds is proud to announce that it has merged with the popular Madtown Lounge website (www.madtownlounge.com) and are re-launching early in 2010.  We are excited to welcome its founder and owner, Allen McGuire, to the Local Sounds board of directors. Madtown Lounge brings several crucial aspects into the Local Sounds concept including social networking, merchandise sales, advance ticket sales for area events, a club calendar and more. Local Sounds will build on the database of artists and information that Madtown Lounge has successfully developed to create an invaluable archive that will continuously expand and develop.