After one

long weekend of brainstorming, planning and creation the new music

streaming website Locusic was finally launched in

October.

Locusic is

“an Internet radio service that lets you discover local music and

gives unsigned bands airplay in their local community” according to

the website www.locusic.com.

Last March,

at the annual Startup Weekend held in Des Moines, Jake Kerber, now

CEO of Locusic, went with an idea he hoped to build something

from.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“I pitched the

idea for what became Locusic,” Kerber said.

Startup

Weekend is a world wide group of leaders and entrepreneurs with a

mission to “inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and

communities” according to the website.

Once

Kerber’s idea was voted through, a team of four other individuals

interested in his idea came together to work on the

project.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>One member was

senior Lyndon Haselhuhn.

“What I

worked on was market research to see if there was another website

like this already out there, seeing if there were any competitors

and if it was something that people would actually want to use,”

Haselhuhn said.

While

conducting this research, Haselhuhn and the team had to make a few

phone calls.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“We called

different bands and different people who were influential in the

Des Moines music area and asked them what they thought about it,”

Haselhuhn said. “This helped us make a mini business

plan”

After a

weekend of working on the project for 54 hours, the team had

created Locusic.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“I had the

original idea and led the team during Startup Weekend,” Kerber

said. “The rest of the team kind of went their own ways. I said I

was going to go forward with it and they were all cool with me

taking it forward.”

Locusic is

like Pandora in that it is an online site that streams music.

However, unlike Pandora, Locusic only plays local bands and

artists.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>It has a wide

variety of genres—from rock, pop, soul to classical music. There

are local artists such as North of Grand, Bright Giant, The River

Monks and Dead Horse Trauma.

Kerber said

that it is easy for local bands to upload music to

Locusic.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“If they are

within 50 miles of Des Moines they just register for a free account

and they go to the account settings link under ‘My Artists’ and

they click ‘Create an Artist Profile’ and just start going,” Kerber

said. “They just upload their MP3 files and it is all pretty much

just automatic.”

Kerber has

certain expectations for Locusic’s future now that the website is

up and running.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“I want it to

be nationwide and I want everyone to pretty much know about it,”

Kerber said. “I want it to help a lot of local musicians all over

the place if not nationwide and even beyond that.”

Haselhuhn

thinks that once Locusic spreads outside of Iowa it will grow more

quickly.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“I think it

would actually spread better in other areas because while Des

Moines has a decent local music scene it is not as big as it would

be in California,” Haselhuhn said.

Haselhuhn

also has his own hopes for Locusic.

“Since I

helped start it I hope that it grows, maybe eventually it will even

become a mainstream site like Pandora and get acquired by someone

else,” Haselhuhn said.

Junior

Angela Auchstetter likes what Locusic has to offer.

“mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:”>“I listen to

Pandora a lot so I think Locusic is a great idea,” Auchstetter

said. “You never really hear about local musicians.”

Locusic can

be listened to online as well as downloaded as an application on

your phone to listen to local music on the go.

“The player

is only accessible within 50 miles of Des Moines,” Kerber said. “If

you live within that region you can use the player and that is the

only place you can upload music.”

There is also an invitation process on

the website listeners have to go through after signing

up.