I'm always surprised at the differences represented by all of the various music hosting sites online. No two, however alike, are exactly the same. Each strives to present their own approach to representing those who are musically talented. Some host online contests that allow listeners to choose what artists they like best. Some help artists seeking performance opportunities. Others specialize in helping artists sell their music and still others lean more toward social networking fans with players, players with lyricists or players with other players. Many offer all of the above and more.

In January, I posted the video of my song "Just Another Passerby", that was recorded during my performance at the Historic Everett Theater last November (11/18/11), at one such site, where artists compete with one another for the attention of listeners and viewers. There are supposed awards for such competitions but I have no illusions about winning. Generally, the production value of my recordings is rather low-fi and I like them that way. In this day and age, where so much digital flash is readily available for players to indulge in, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors to compete with. It's especially challenging for someone like me, who eschews that plugged in digital approach to offering music.

In competitions like this, that categorize the genre of music one can present but often offer a lot of latitude in other factors pertaining to an artist's or band's presentation, one can find that they're competing with all manner of approaches to the theme. Therefore, it's always amazing to learn that my solo acoustic endeavors, playing finger style bottleneck slide Blues and offering my own original songs have actually managed to successfully compete and win in such contests. 

The video of my song "Just Another Passerby" was entered in the Pro Performance Video category for 'live' performance videos and was viewed well over 700 times in January and won the rank of being among the top 40 videos viewed. I guess that I must be doing something right.