700+ Bands and 2700+ Tunes

More than 700 bands. Over 2700 tunes.

This makes MidEast Tunes (mideasttunes.com) is one of the largest Arabic music sites in he world.

Founded in Beirut in 2010 by an organization called MidEast Youth, the site is another of the myriad efforts to leverage social media as a tool for progressive social change in the Arab World and beyond.

I first learned about the web site from a column in Common Ground. The author describes the site thus:

It showcases the work of independent artists from across the Middle East, allowing them to submit and update their profiles on a website and mobile application that allows users to stream music as they discover new bands. Mideast Tunes aims to unite “young people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the Middle East through music”. The website promotes bands and musicians “that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene” with the belief that “music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way”.

Whether the site will survive or will eventually collapse into ephemera like so many others remains to be seen. In the meantime, it is an amazing resource for those who enjoy Middle Eastern music (and I use the term Middle Eastern because there’s music in Persian and other regional languages, not just Arabic), as well as those who want to explore it.

UPDATE: The site did not fade away but it did change it’s name from MidEastTunes.org to MidEastTunes.com, The text and links above were updated accordingly on Nov. 29, 2018.