Parlor City Sound aims to help the musicians, businesses, and music fans of the Binghamton music scene thrive in harmony.
Welcome to Parlor City Sound, a site geared toward promoting and enhancing the Binghamton music scene and the other local music scenes of Upstate New York.
Our mission is to help foster positive growth within the Binghamton music scene, as well as in the many other music scenes of the underserved region of New York colloquially known as “Upstate.” But this isn’t as simple as writing about upcoming shows or pointing our readers toward new bands to try. To really push for growth, we wanted Parlor City Sound to go a lot deeper.
Through education, inspiration, and promotion, Parlor City Sound aims to help musicians, businesses, and music fans thrive in harmony. That means educating musicians and helping them grow professionally and creatively. It means promoting locally-owned businesses related to the music industry and helping them network. And for music fans, it means helping them find new artists and putting events on their radar so there’s never a quiet moment in Upstate New York.
Navigating Parlor City Sound
- The News section tells you about local, regional, and national music as well as upcoming events and releases
- A&R is home to artist profiles, reviews, and Q&A sessions with artists and acts
- Main Street is focused on locally-owned small businesses that cater to musicians and music fans
- The Guides section is jam-packed with educational resources for musicians and business owners
Our Musical Mission
Parlor City Sound aims to help musicians, businesses, and music fans thrive in harmony.
A musician’s voice is something that comes from within, but Parlor City Sound hopes to give that voice a megaphone. We want to interview and profile unsigned and indie musicians in Binghamton, in Upstate New York, and abroad. We want our content to help musicians grow creatively and professionally, network with other musicians and businesses, and connect with music fans locally and regionally to grow their audience.
A music scene needs infrastructure, too. That means helping locally-owned businesses—music stores, repair shops, venues, indie labels, and more—find new customers and build meaningful relationships with them. If your business can help musicians, music fans, or both, we want to work with you to interview you and help steer new clientele to your register. And did we mention we’re not charging your business for that?
A music scene without fans can’t get very far, so we want to help music lovers too. Parlor City Sound will tell you about upcoming live shows and events, new releases from unsigned and indie artists, and help you connect with the artists themselves. From attending a show to buying a t-shirt to totally immersing yourself in the scene, we want to help your love of local music flourish!
Our Binghamton Roots: helping the Binghamton music scene flourish
Parlor City Sound aims to promote music scenes all across New York, Northeastern PA, and abroad. But there’s one particular scene that we rather selfishly hope to help grow above all the rest. Sorry gang. We’re just being honest! The Binghamton music scene is bursting at the seams with inspiring talent, and Parlor City Sound predominantly focuses on promoting these brilliant musicians.
Binghamton—the Parlor City—is a city well known for its contributions to technology and innovation. The unofficial capital of New York’s Southern Tier, Binghamton has seen a local renaissance happening in recent years that’s obvious to all but the most critical of cynics. A movement of expansion, a rapidly blossoming art scene, and a renewed and growing sense of local pride—Binghamton has upward mobility now, and the Binghamton music scene has been flourishing as well.
We want Parlor City Sound to draw attention to unsigned and indie acts everywhere. But in doing all of that, we hope we can also give a solid platform to Binghamton musicians and businesses that might get ignored elsewhere. There’s no reason we can’t do both, right? We want to hear from unsigned and indie acts everywhere, but we’re especially interested in covering releases, events, bands, and businesses in the Greater Binghamton and Southern Tier regions. Big or small, we want to hear from you.
Parlor City Sound could use your help!
We like to think our website’s goals are pretty ambitious. But we’re serious about this website helping music scenes grow, and we’d like your help doing that. Here are some ways you could contribute to the cause if you felt so obliged:
- Share our articles on social media or elsewhere. It helps a lot!
- Pay for an entirely optional subscription. Our articles are free, and we’ll never force a subscription fee on anyone. But we do offer a subscription with a pay-what-you-want model, and that money could help us keep the lights on, pay writers, and more.
- Write with us. Currently this is volunteer work, but we’ll teach you some writing techniques and SEO basics, and your contributions could help local music scenes thrive.
- Tell your friends about us, especially if they’re musicians or small business owners we should be profiling. We don’t charge them for this, either!
We hope you dig Parlor City Sound, and if you’d like to see us cover anything in particular or if you’re a band or a business in the market for some free publicity, hit us up!