FanCovers.com – YouTube For Amateur Musicians

There are more YouTube clones and copies on the web now than I care to keep track of. FanCovers, however, offers the same simple service with a twist for music fans. "It is a community of amateur artists who want to share their work with the world. We provide a free service that lets users upload their very own videos, performances, and creations."

FanCovers.com recently launched its beta service which still needs some upgrades and modifications, but it could potentially provide amateur musicians with a way to reach an audience.

The primary mission of the site is to allow amateurs to upload their own "cover versions" of popular songs. One such example is the cover version of Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" by whyDNA.

Although the current selection of song covers is limited, I was able to get a good feel for the service. It provides many of the same options and features as YouTube, such as the ability to embed a video into another website or blog. Also, it keeps track of how many views each video has received.

One feature that I found interesting is the way videos are tagged. Tags are not used in the normal web 2.0 sense, which involves adding various keywords relating to the video. Instead, the feature is called "Instruments played" and it allows the artist/user to input what instruments they used while performing on the video. Other users can then search by these instruments to find, for example, all the videos in which the artist used an acoustic guitar.

One thing that irked me throughout my entire experience was skipping during video playback. On YouTube there is the occasional skip or hiccup in playback due to buffering, but it is usually only because the video is still loading. On FanCovers, my connection was able to load entire videos quickly, but I still had to put up with interruptions every 10 seconds or so. I am not sure if this is just me, or if this is the case for others too, but it should definitely be fixed.

It would also be nice to see search-friendly URLs for each user's profile, similar to the method that is used by YouTube. It is much easier to remember http://www.youtube.com/user/MoTv1 than it is to remember http://www.fancovers.com/profile.php?ukey=O7R57557NV.

If you find a specific artist whose music you like, you have the ability to subscribe to that user and receive updates everytime they upload a new "cover" video. On the homepage there is a section where the most popular users are displayed, which is determined by the number of subscribers each user has attained. Also, the left side of the page is reserved for featured users and videos.

As more talent finds out about this service, I am sure that it will gather more videos, as it currently only has about 3 pages worth of content. It would be amazing if record executives and the music industry discovered FanCovers. It could give some individuals (who truly are talented) the big break they are looking for, although YouTube would probably provide a bigger audience.

Overall, I found FanCovers to be a pleasing site that is deserving of feedback from its users to provide exactly what the people want. With a little bit of time and patience, I could see FanCovers become the budding amateur musicians community that it wants to be.