My Project Proposal

For my Final Year Project I propose to create a social networking website called “Prelude.com”. This website is going to bring musicians from around the world together via the world wide web. The main aim of the website is to allow people all over the world to create music together in a kind of “online band/group” situation. This can range from string quartets to heavy metal and rock bands to rap groups. The thing that makes my site unique, is that it allows people to be involved in a music project from the comfort of their own homes, meaning you could have a rock group with a singer from Canada, a drummer from China, and Bassist from Zimbabwe and a Lead Guitar player from County Kerry!
“Prelude.com” will require you to register/log in before you can access the website you will need to enter certain details of the genre of music you play and what you are looking for through the site. Once this process is completed, your personal page is automatically created, and will hold all the details necessary for other like minded musicians to find you.
The personal page that is created will hold details such as your name, date of birth, genre of music that you play, a list of people who have specified that they are looking to form a group in the same kind of situation as you have, any uploaded samples of audio/video that you have supplied and your country of residence.
“Prelude.com” will contain a forum where all members can chat and discuss their experiences of the website, along with other music related and general topics.
There is going to be a song of the week competition. This competition will allow groups that have formed via the website to upload their finished music tracks and put their music to the test against other groups who have done the same thing. This competition is not going to be genre-specific, and will allow members of the site to vote on which track is the best. Each week, the track with the most votes is linked on the home page of the website and named as the song of the week, every month each song of the week from that month is reviewed and one track will be named the song of the month, and at the end of the year, every song of the month will be reviewed via an online poll and a song of the year will be announced. This feature will provide a healthy atmosphere of competition and allow recognition for the bands who are meeting up through this medium.
I chose this subject as I have a very keen interest in all types of music and would like the opportunity to visit a website where I could form a group with similar people, listen to some original music and chat to people with the same interests as me at the same time. Another interest I have is playing guitar but am not very confident at performing in public, so to be able to form a band through a website and enter an online competition is very appealing to me.
This website will be aimed at people all over the world who want to create original music, chat on the discussion board about their similar interests or take part in the competitions.
For this project I intend to use a combination of PHP, mySQL, Dreamweaver and Flash along with the skills I have learned and perfected in my last few years of study.