New Liverpool website is the ‘Yellow Pages’ of the music industry on Merseyside

A new website’s been launched in Liverpool to showcase the mass of talent that’s active and available in the city.

MusicSeen will list all the information on the local music scene and make it easily accessible for listeners, musicians, and industry professionals across region to find it in one central place.

With more than 3,000 musicians already included Connor Di Leo and Nina Himmelreich, who are behind the site, say it’s the ‘Yellow Pages’ of the music industry on Merseyside.

And it will enable people to find ‘all the amazing new music’ being made in the area and allow musicians and professionals to connect with each other.

Connor, 28, and Nina, 29, both originally from Germany but who became friends while studying at LIPA, began working on MusicSeen together a few years ago, but its inspiration began before that for Connor.

A former drummer in rock band Black Stone Cherry, with whom he toured from the ages of 14-19, Connor, who moved to Hertfordshire when he was a young boy, says the experience opened his eyes to the downsides of the music industry.

And studying Entertainment Management at LIPA focused his thoughts on ideas to try to make it better, especially locally.

Connor says: “I stayed in Liverpool because I preferred it to London, and I used to have an apartment in Concert Square where I started filming bands and holding music sessions and jam nights for local musicians.

“It built into a bit of a cultural hub and my apartment became the centre point of a music community which I called it The Zoo-niverse, giving it a name which helped people see it as a thing, rather than just my apartment.

“But it was just a bubble of a few musicians and I wondered how I could represent the whole of the music scene, and not just represent it but represent and sustain musicians too.”

Connor scoured the internet and spent hundreds of hours building a database of musicians in Liverpool, and commissioned an algorithm that tracked any of the musicians on the database if they were on Spotify, identifying new releases and putting them into a playlist on Spotify.

“What I realised is that if you go to YouTube or Netflix, or any of the big content providers, even Spotify, and type in Liverpool, nothing localised comes up, it’s not how the platforms are built. So I thought why can’t we have a local Spotify-type play list that’s not editorial or biased, it’s just everything that’s happening locally.”

Nina, who studied music at LIPA and has gone on to get a Masters in Music Industry Studies at Liverpool University and is currently doing a PhD in gender equality in the German music industry, got on board not least to see if there was a way to amplify marginalised voices, like women.

MusicSeen’s music tab lists all new releases coming from local musicians, and has curated playlists, highlighting music by female, non-binary, trans and other gender expansive artists as well as music by global majority artists, in addition to moods and genre playlists to help audiences engage with the local music they want to listen to.

It links to artists’ socials and music, enabling fans, artists, and professionals to discover local music, and to find collaborators.

An events calendar makes it easy to find all music related events going on, and there’s even a map to help you get there.

While there are hopes it’s something that could be replicated in other cities, Liverpool was the obvious place to start. Not only did the pair want to stay in the city they loved and where they’d begun their careers but, says Nina: “The city has such a vibrant music scene. Compared with other cities it’s much more active, and Liverpool has that special something about it when it comes to music, it’s bred into it culturally, historically and now.

“It’s a huge part of what makes the city what it is.”

Connor adds: “The size of Liverpool helps, there’s a lot going on but I can realistically get a database with almost every artist based in this city, whereas if I tried it in another city it would be a huge endeavour. You’d need proper resources for, not just the volunteer hours Nina and myself, with help from a couple of others, put in.”

With no bias towards any genre, the criteria for musicians being listed on MusicSeen is that they must be geographically based within the boundaries of Merseyside: “If you leave, nothing personal, but we won’t include you anymore,” says Connor.

The hope is that people looking for artists for gigs or events can find them, and that it will encourage people to travel to Liverpool for music.

Nina says: “You can easily find events, so you can listen to a band’s music on the website and then go and see it.” “It will support the local music scene and help it to stay as strong as it currently is,” adds Connor.

Future plans include a ticketing system which will cost less than major ones around now and plough half of profits back into the community, a tipping system for artists at venues, a video platform on the website, and a conference to bring everyone together in person.

Connor concludes: “We are trying to create that place that if you want to know something about the music scene in Liverpool, it will be there.

“That’s the greater goal.”

For more info on MusicSeen click here.