Boston: The Hidden Hub of Music and Technology

OurStage
Headquarters: Chelmsford, MA
Year Launched: 2007
CEO: Ben Campbell

OurStage is like YouTube meets MTV, with voting. Bands submit their music videos to one of about 20 channels separated by genre. Members of the site listen to “battles” between bands—pairs of music clips—and the winners of each battle ascend in the overall rankings. The top bands in each channel ultimately compete for a monthly $5,000 grand prize.

To keep the judging from turning into a pure popularity contest—where highly ranked bands tend to get more popular, because they’re the only ones that get noticed—OurStage has developed two patent-pending algorithms that mix up the content to be judged in each channel. Each video in a channel is guaranteed equal exposure across many user sessions.

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Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/