These days, artists usually release their works in many different places online. There's no easy way for the average fan to tell exactly what is being released, or what is already out there. The current solutions are less than ideal for both fans and artists.
- Artists can maintain official sites, but this process is labor-intensive, and requires fans to check each site regularly for updates. This is time-consuming for fans, and easily leads to them losing track of artists.
- Artists can maintain a regular email list, but this is process is also labor-intensive. It's also difficult to provide full coverage without exhausting fans. For example, an album release surely deserves an email, but what to do about more minor releases such as a new cover released on YouTube, a live recording on the Internet Archive, or a Spotify session?
- Modern social media and weekly discovery tools have an important place, but no method for comprehensively displaying releases, making it difficult to tell exactly what's out. This is a particular problem for the new and local artists who are the future of the industry, as they lack the marketing budget increasingly needed to cut through the noise. This results in fans frequently missing out, and creates psychologically unhealthy incentives to endlessly search for updates.
Sparkmesh creates a chronological feed that ensures fans never miss out on a new release or event announcement of any kind, without having to spend lots of time searching various sites to figure out what's going on. It also creates a fully sortable and filterable archive for each artist, title, and tag on the site, so it's easy for fans to catch up any time or explore new artists.