Why should you have to happen upon a certain day\’s newspaper to find out one of your favorite bands from the 90\’s grunge era (yes, that\’s officially classic rock now) is having an impromptu concert down at the local college. If you\’re like most people, your schedule doesn\’t exactly permit for searching all the local rags for what music is coming to town. You just want to know when your favorite band happens to be around. Well do we have something for you. The Music Channel on the Zipper is your source to local music from the people that know it…locals like you. Let\’s check it out Pearl Jam or Toni Tony Tone comes to town (if you\’re into that kind of thing…we\’re not judging).

It\’s real easy and at the same time real powerful. Download your free version of the Zipper app for Itunes or Droid markets. There will be two selector pinwheels (which are familiar to anyone with a smart phone) up top right away. They will be set to the default \”All\” settings…one for Location and one for Channel. Location is pretty self-explanatory but Channel is the one we want to look at. By clicking on the button, it will bring up the various options such as traffic, news, gossip, sports, and the one we want to concentrate on, Music. Click on Music. This will filter all the Zips or local news posts to only those that have been tagged with the Local Music Channel filter. In a matter of seconds, you just stumbled on the best source of local music information available. Why does this matter?

In the world of Ticketmaster and StubHub, you can always find the biggest stars and their tours. You can also keep track of your brother\’s band through his Facebook posts or at least those that appropriate (not to mention legal) to post. What about that vast area in between these two…good local music. It can be small clubs and bars or even the local bands that make good as they\’re blowing up. Local music. Hidden gems of musical ability that are hard to find and that\’s the main problem we aim to solve with the Music Channel on the Zipper. Making the hard to find local music stand out in real time. Imagine if you could get the information from everyone in your area about great local music. You would constantly be plugged in to the scene but let\’s face it. You don\’t know everyone and you\’re not even sure you would want to. There\’s some strange folk out there people. That\’s fine. We don\’t need to \”Friend\” everyone. We don\’t want a relationship with them but with their INFORMATION. That\’s the Zipper in nutshell. Everyone\’s local music info becomes ours and our local music info becomes there. So what\’s fair game on the Music Channel?

Obviously, any kind of live music event of any scale just screams for the Zipper and it\’s local Music Channel. You can structure a given Zip or thread around a certain band, a certain place, or event a certain event depending on how you want to do it. Ultimately, Zip readers will \”vote\” on what they want to see with their Thumbs (both literally and figuratively) so play around with it. Tickets for sale or a desire to buy tickets works well and again, would probably fall underneath the event Zip. Keep in mind this is real time so it constantly evolve with new information. If you\’re at a show, you can even snap pictures of the show for a particular Zip and list the songs they played. Musical instruments for sale and music lesson are also fair game in the local Music Channel. Rezips allow a perfect way to critique and comment on wares and the Thumbs give a quick litmus test based on other\’s experience. Local music is about to meet the Zip and our ears will never be the same!

Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about local news and local gossip smart phone apps.