Calling the city about your garbage pickup isn’t exactly an exciting experience. But the City of Ottawa has plans for its 311 line. It wants to turn this robotic voice and saxophone muzak…
…into this:
The city is inviting local bands to submit 20-second clips of their songs, to be entered into a contest. The prize: They get to be featured as music on the city’s 311 hold line.
“Anyone calling 311 gets put into a queue,” said Caleb Abbott, program coordinator for community arts and social engagement with the City of Ottawa. “Generally there is some messaging on there, it could be about garbage removal or something like that. And when the music turns on, at that point, a couple of seconds into your phone call, what is currently muzak will become local music.”
Abbott credits Ottawa’s mayor with the initiative. “Jim Watson wanted it,” he said, laughing. Abbott had heard of similar projects before, in record stores and music shops, but he doesn’t know of any other municipalities with similar initiatives.
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There are a few rules: artists must live within 150 km of Ottawa, must submit original songs, and the songs must not contain “profanity or discriminatory language.”
Submissions will be featured on the Ottawa website for public comment. And after that, a team of judges connected to the local music scene will narrow the submissions down to 20 songs, to be featured throughout the year – with a few played each quarter.
The judges will have to come up with an appropriate set of songs, considering all the different kinds of people who will be contacting 311. “If a senior calls and they’re met with hardcore punk rock, those are considerations,” said Abbott. “Even the punk rockers don’t want to hear punk rock at 8 a.m.”
He said the community has been supportive though, and expects that musicians will probably not be submitting their most hardcore songs, even if Ottawa does boast a thriving punk scene. “I think it’ll be okay, is what I’m saying.”
And it seems local musicians are interested. Even though the contest was only opened Thursday morning, by the afternoon, there were already about 20 submissions. “They just started piling in right away. And they just keep coming in every 10 or 15 minutes,” he said.
If a caller likes what they hear, they can visit the City of Ottawa website for a list of currently-featured bands. Artists will also be paid a licensing fee for the use of their work. The city is hoping the program will be up and running by mid-February.
If the 311 initiative is successful, said Abbott, the program will likely be expanded to other Ottawa-run phone lines. Of course, it could expand beyond that.
“Do you think Toronto would do something like this?” he asked.
What do you think? Would you prefer to listen to local bands when you’re on hold?
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