The more I look at what’s happening on the Web, the more I love OurStage. I know what you’re thinking: “the dude is biased”. Yes, that would be true. Disclosure moment for those who don’t know, but I work here. That said, I wanted to share a recent experience/experiment of mine and get your thoughts. The experiment is the reason I love OurStage even more.

As a musician myself, I have the opportunity to test drive ways to spread the good word about my music to see first hand what works and what doesn’t. I find this extremely helpful for keeping me in the know. This weekend, I decided to go Widget! Widgets are these great tools you post all over the Web to attract people to your art. Think of them like those bug zappers, only without the death part.

So I invested some time (way too much) in building widgets and placing widgets and configuring widgets and pasting widgets and making widgets to track my widgets. And here’s what I decided: I can’t keep up. There are just too many widgets to place and places where widgets can go that one could devote a lifetime to widget mastery. As a music fan, I want my music handed to me from a chart (love lists), a friend, or a trusted source. I don’t want to go on some a widget safari hoping to stumble across some band’s widget on my friend’s Facebook page that I might like. And as I band, I’d rather spend my time crafting my music, rehearsing and building my fan base sans widget. Banners I think are great, like a little ad about you. But are we in the midst or “Widget Overload”?

Now maybe I’m wrong and Widgets DO work. In fact, maybe we need to give artists more widgets to use on OurStage and to place elsewhere. So I want to hear from you.

Artists and Music Fans: Do you love widgets and why?

I don’t love Widgets. I love OurStage and here’s why. We have a community of music lovers and music fans that come here for one purpose: to discover GREAT NEW MUSIC from TALENTED ARTISTS like you. And oh by the way, we’re helping bands in ways that widgets can only dream. Check out our growing pile of successes and testimonials for proof.

FYI, we’re working on an Artist Success Story Widget that will update in realtime with artist success stories and testimonials as we get them in. Until there, here’s another Widget. Bless ‘em all.

Anyway, that’s my take. What’s yours?