HeavyAsHell.com – social media for rockers

HeavyAsHell.com is a new social media site for those about to rock.  The site fills a gap in the social news community for fans of rock, metal, punk and other guitar-based genres.  HeavyAsHell.com announced its public relaunch on March 1, 2010, and within 24 hours broke its own traffic records.  I would describe it as Facebook meets Digg for music lovers, and it is well worth checking out.
 
HeavyAsHell aggregates the best stories about “heavy” music from around the web. It sprung from the negative experiences founder Mark Carras had with other news aggregators that buried or denied stories about harder genres, literally shutting out fans, journalists and bands from the benefits of social news. While the site will provide a haven for certain types of music, says Mark, “Heavy is in the ear of the beholder. Johnny Cash covering NIN’s “Hurt” is heavy.”

There are two registration levels at HeavyAsHell. Bands register an account with basic information to create a page that will catalogue all its news. Everyone else – fans, writers, bloggers, site runners, labels, publicists – register as users. Users are essentially site editors. Users can submit news, reviews, videos and photo links that they find on the web. They can comment on content, and can vote on posts which in turn will position the story higher on the site. These various activities accumulate “sins” (points). There will be benefits to being an active sinner.

Starting March 1, HeavyAsHell will be giving away more than $10,000 in prizes to the top registered users. Each week, the top user will win $1000 while the second place user gets $500 and the third place $250. Additional prizes will be provided by Nuclear Blast America, Prosthetic Records, Rock Ridge Records, the band Mongrel and others. Users will be ranked automatically by their submissions, comments and voting activity. Full Rules and Conditions will be posted on the site at http://www.heavyashell.com/contest/.