Brum Music Map

15 June 2009
By Jon Bounds

Please help us, and the Birmingham Music Archive build up a “music map” of Birmingham. We’re looking to map anything; bands, singers, musicians, promoters, managers, venues, record shops, music shops, hangouts, anything that has a “place” and that place in in Brum (or nearby).

There are lots of reasons for doing it, mainly that it’s great to have a record of such stuff — we could use it as the basis of research, art, or displays or, well tons of stuff.

But there’s something special I want to do with it (’tis a secret) , and I want to be able to do it before the end of the month. June is, as we’ve been going on about, Birmingham Music Month — and it would be great to have a load of this done come July.

So, we’ve created a Google map, and started to add stuff to it — and we’d like you to help as much as you can.


View Birmingham Music Map in a larger map

How to add stuff to the map:

You’ll need to have a google account, get one or sign in and then pop along to the map itself.

To add things, first you need to go into ‘Edit’ mode. Click on the button:

Birmingham Music  Map - Google Maps
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Click the Placemark button. Your cursor changes into a placemark icon with an “X” crosshairs. The crosshairs indicate where the placemark will fall.

Birmingham Music  Map - Google Maps

Move the cursor to the appropriate location. If you want to dismiss this placemark, press the Escape key.

Click your mouse button to place your placemark. It should bounce into place.

Add a title (name) and description (if needed).

Birmingham Music  Map - Google Maps

Change the icon for your placemark by clicking the icon in the top right corner of the info window. Here’s what we’ve been using so far:

woman_icon = a woman — promoter, band member, manager, solo artist, anything

venue_icon= a venue, gone or still open

media_icon= media — did they show, record, write about, release music?

man_icon= a man — promoter, band member, manager, solo artist, anything

hangout_icon= a hangout — not a venue, but associated with music in some way. eg. recording studio

band_icon= a band — you have to conceptualise where they’re from. eg. Black Sabbath are placed on the location of the cinema from where they took their name.

Birmingham Music  Map - Google Maps = a shop, tunes or instruments…

Click OK to save your placemark.

Click Done in the left panel when you are finished.

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4 Responses to Brum Music Map

  1. The Big Paws - Brum Music Map on 15 June 2009 at 8:23 pm

    [...] There’s some help and instructions over on BiNS. [...]

  2. [...] music pop it on there. The map is here and if you need a bit of help to use it there’s a little more info here. [...]

  3. [...] at the two and saying one is alive whilst the other is dead.  You only have to take a look at the BiNS Brum Music Map to realise we’ve got a great thing going on.  But that great thing isn’t well [...]

  4. Birmingham Music Map - jon bounds on 5 November 2009 at 11:04 pm

    [...] personalities, shops, companies, collectives and hang-outs. We opened a public Google Map and asked people to contribute. That map is still open for contributions, but the first result of it is now produced — an A1 [...]

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BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds, a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer. You can hire him to work on your stuff, or follow him on twitter. There's also the odd bit of stuff from Danny Smith.

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