MUMBAI: MyBand.co.in - India's largest portal for independent music bands has tied up with leading venues across the country to launch MyBand Nights to promote music bands. The first event kicks off at Rattle and Hum in Hyderabad where MyBand will present Cheese the Band from Kolkata for a live Rock performance.

This is a unique happening in India's music scene. Apart from being a portal with just a web presence, the MyBand team has traveled across all the major cities to meet up with bands and artists to understand their needs and requirement. Speaking from Hyderabad, MyBand founder Debashis Dey says, "The bands were surprised to see us visit them as most websites don't even reply to the emails coming from the users." He added, So far we have interacted with over 200 bands from different parts of the country across different genres and have identified the true need of these bands- all they need is a proper platform and exposure to showcase their creative talents....

MyBand was launched in February 2009.The band has been getting a steady stream of visitors since its launch and in the last month witnessed the page views going up by eight to nine million, he says. To start off, MyBand promoted itself heavily through Facebook, Google and even Myspace.

"we studied various websites and figured that most offered fancy page designs and were more inclined on the social networking theme. Our main focus, however, was to make the portal user freindly and uncluttered. One of the main features is that the songs can be heard even from dial-up connections as the uploaded songs get automatically converted into low bit-rate streams." 

This only comes as a good news for the Indian Rock scene. A while back, MySpace india too launched musiccentral.com - a website within their website solely catering to Indian rock bands. To this, Dey is quick to retort, "They are catering to establised band who already have albums under their name - I don't really think they are into 'discovering' an artiste. That is one way we donot want to go." Perhaps, that is also one of the reasons why MyBand is focused on making the event accessible to all,"We are trying to select venues which are not too high end as they become unaffordable for the youth - our target audience," says Dey 

Bands for MyBand Nights would be selected from the rating process and charts on the website from a diverse genre like rock, metal, hip-hop, blues, fusion, jazz etc. Cheese the Band will will be doing the opening act for MyBand Nights at Rattle and Hum which opened recently on Februray 2009 at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad. "This event is self-sponsored," says Dey, admitting its very difficult to get sponsors for live acts. Our motto is to help artists in any way possible - be it connecting a vocalist, a guitarist a drummer with a group or be it a copyright issue or presentation to a label. A dedicated team is always at work on the fanpage to address questions... Debashis said. Myband Nights will happen over a period of 5-6 months and will travel to cities like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Banglore 

You can catch Cheese the Band performing live Rock at the first Myband Night at Rattle and Hum, 4th Floor, Jaya Chambers, plot 1102, Road no 36, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad on 17 July.