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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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ArtistServer.com 10yr Anniversary
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3:39 PM
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Happy Anniversary to ArtistServer - 10 years of providing support and services to musicians and bands throughout the world.
10 years? What?!?! 
How did that happen?
It all started back in May of 1999 with a post to the Electronic music forums at mp3.com stating that I was going to build a music site for electronic music.
05/20/2000 - ElectronicBBoard.com Launched - The first stage of this site was launched as a forum
05/22/2001 - ElectronicScene.com Beta site Launched
08/01/2001 - ElectronicScene.com First Mp3 streamed from the site
12/05/2001 - the site went live - under the name ElectronicScene
05/2004 - ElectronicScene.com nearly shuts down due to high traffic load, little revenue, and no funds - join form removed, all paying memberships cancelled
mid 2004 - ArtistServer opened - includes all of ElectronicScene, as well as all music genres
09/26/2004 - Join Form on ArtistServer & ElectronicScene reopened
04/22/2005 - ElectronicScene shuts down, redirecting traffic to ArtistServer.com
11/2005 - Time Magazine lists ArtistServer as "One of the Top 20 Music Sites Online"
2/15/2006 - Account Upgrades made available again, first time since 5/2004
Not much drama happened between 2006 and 2011 - mainly just adding features to the site.
3/2011 to now - Traffic really picks up - multiple iOS mobile apps are launched as 'free music download' services which are basically the Safari browser with some customizations, and ArtistServer as one of the default bookmarks, this has brought us huge waves of traffic to us - and finally enables me to pay the hosting bills
===========================
To celebrate our 10 year anniversary - I plan to do the following:
* creating a new default skin for the site
* release some site design changes I've been working on
* adding a caching server to the front end of the site, to help boost performance and allow us to take on more traffic
* increasing the song quantity for account upgrades - going from 300 up to 500
* increasing the song quantity for free accounts - going from 5 to 7
I'm also looking to do the following:
* lower the account upgrade from $40 down to $25 per year
* those with active upgrades will have a period where they can cancel their current upgrade, sign up for the new upgrade, and I'll provide a prorated refund covering the number of months left on the original upgrade.
I've never adjusted the fees for the site, so I need to do some checking and testing to ensure all is well with the change before I make it live. The new rate will make us even more competitive, and affordable.
Is there anything else I can do for you?
===========================
In closing, I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone - I've greatly enjoyed this opportunity and experience.
Please share your ElectronicScene / ArtistServer memories to help us celebrate this site.
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DJ Gerard
Joined: 11/09/01
Location: Dublin , Ireland
Posts: 6
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RE: ArtistServer.com 10yr Anniversary
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 4:56 AM
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Happy Anniversery ! 
The special 10th anniversery mix can be found here :
http://forums.artistserver.com/messages.cfm?threadid=A2235BE6-1143-DBB3-C6E96E1AA3535652
Cheers!
DJ Gerard
www.artistserver.com/djgerard
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Brillman
Joined: 10/08/02
Location: Norway
Posts: 136
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RE: ArtistServer.com 10yr Anniversary
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 6:04 AM
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Sonic Wallpaper wrote:Happy Anniversary to ArtistServer - 10 years of providing support and services to musicians and bands throughout the world... 10 years? What?!?! How did that happen?... Is there anything else I can do for you? =========================== In closing, I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone -
Yeah, Happy 10th Anniversary!!!
10 years really went quick so i suppose time flies when your having fun? 
I joined a little later and moved from mp3.com in 2002. I loved it from the minute go. The services, the vibe on the boards and the quality of music just seemed to be amazing. Also i liked the fact that this was a dedicated electronic site with much less commercialism incorporated, i.e. ads, take over´s , horrible pop ups, graphics, etc. I don´t want to start that old flamed debate but i much preferred the original name Electronicscene ;-)
Anyhow thank you Gideon for making all this happen and not giving up during the ups and downs! As for the question "is there anything else i can do for you?"   This is so typical of you Gideon! Always trying to do your best to keep the machine rolling
Just keep it going, at least for me that´s more than enough! 
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Wintermut3
Joined: 08/29/01
Location: Austin Texas
Posts: 35
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RE: ArtistServer.com 10yr Anniversary
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 5:23 PM
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Sorry to be so late chiming in on this, life gets crazy Wow, it seems like yesterday back at mp3.com when we were all there and I think it was you Gideon that was upset when mp3c started adverting on our pages without any regard as to whether or not those advertisements were representative of what our image as artists and individuals and mostly how we wanted our fans to perceive us as Artists . My apologies if it wasn't--ever since I turned 45 this year, my memory has been getting worse  But it was around that time remember your post announcing the declaration of creating what would quickly be ES(Electronic Scene) that I remember first learning of Gideon and the bb. I loved ES because it was basically artists for artists--I love all my fans, but I especially love to get review/comments from Artist and Artist Fans
I have loved watching ES and AS grow and have always used this site as a barometer to gauge my own music and musical direction. The love Gideon has for this site really shows. There have been shaky times but none of those were for want of your dedication to ultimately _us_ the artists. To me this place is a sanctuary of music and musical integrity and it has always been a place I have not only looked upon as the home of the Wintermute/Wintermut3 "catalog" it is the largest collection of all the music I have ever made. Mostly it is a place I am and have always been proud to share with fans and friends. In short, Thank you Gideon for creating this site and giving us a home...
Lets have another 10 please
WM
Wintermute  |
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Synerdata Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Next Decade at ArtistServer.com
Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 12:43 AM
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I echo what Wintermute said, where I remember the mp3com controversies which led to the announcement that this site was being built, by artists, for artists, with altruism, and I remember the entheusiasm which seemed to fill everyone when all this was still new.
To the young, ten years ago is like ancient history, while to those of us who have been here that long, it can seem like only yesterday. It happened that any small-business dotcom that actually survives beyond fad and initial notions of imminent grandeur and wealth, constitutes undeniable success just by virtue of longevity and staying power as an establishmen on the network and global scene, where many a dotcom has made money, but in only being in it for the money, has vanished.
I find that we, the people, the artists, modern civilization, have all evolved a lot in ten years, and that it's a different world out there up now, and the views of artists have evolved also. Sites like this appeared as the Music Industry was commiting industrial suicide, and back then, artists viewed the advent of such sites as the resolution of an old problem, and the solution to having a career in music without needing to be "approved" by the competition, and it seemed back then, the sky were no limit.
It's different up now, with a whole generation having grown up in ignorance of the old industry model, who can not even comprehend what the Music Industry was like back in the 1980's, when anyone could get signed, and there was vibrant competition, and music was still considered important in general. Up now, network enabled artists is the norm and music download sites are nothing new nor exciting, and music has become fungible and temporal and virtually disposable, and being "famous" is no longer a part of the average "successful" music "career". The music business has changed and diluted so much that it is not even recognizable as such.
There is a big difference between a get rich quick scheme, and a labor of love, between a bottom line of profit, and a bottom line of community service above all. This site is no different in my view for Gideon, than Wintemute's ongoing project(s), or those of any of the artists here who have continued through so much and for so many years, where the site it'self is like a part of Gideon's own music project(s), and where the dedicated artists do not cease procucing their art if they are not getting rich making it. Each individual artist brings their own contribution to the site and the community, apart from which, there would be no reason to come here, and in this, we are all helping Gideon and taking part in the building and develoment and sustaining of a community and community service we all benefit from.
There is little thanks in such work, neither for the artists producing great music, nor for those who work on the infrastructure, in some cases, numb after years of attending to such, for it does become more difficult to work with the same passion as we had a decade ago. There is much to miss, from the halcion days of mp3com and ElectronicScene, much of which we would never see again in the course of mankind's evolutionary progression.
The internet gave us the ability to bring our work online, to share with others, and each could do as much as they can, and so some sing, and others write midi files, and others code the community sites which present and host the media, running the venues, and we do it because of what we are, not because of what we want, or hope to achieve together.
It might be hard for some to imagine a site like this one day becoming the biggest on earth, and indeed, it should not be considered a realistic expection where it has settled in to be upon the border between obscurity and established regard and continued relevance and presence, but while a falling star may burn brightly, like mp3com and so many others, and then be gone, they were not real stars, just rocks falling from the sky, and the real stars are those which remain consistent in the proverbial sky, which travelers can rely upon to be there, and to guide them through the otherwise ever-changing network landscape that is the world beneath the stars.
ArtistServer.com is a bright star, always there, a moral consistency in an ocean of sleeze and pop-up money harvesting, and trampled rights, and temporal, fly by night sites.
I have put a lot of work into a lot of presentations at a lot of sites which promote themselves as artist services. In most cases, such sites sold out to the competition which then destroyed them, and all the work I had invested in my presentation's at such sites, and like many artists, I got tired of making new presentations for the future only to see them wiped out in service to the competition instead of to the artists they were supposed to serve... Not so at ArtistServer.com, which is artists serving artists.
Thank you Gideon for all the hours you have spent coding away in solitude for the community, for all the money you have spend maintaining a poor community's meeting place, for the sensitivity you have shown for the hearts and feelings and concerns of the artists, and for persisting despite not having yet been able to retire wealthy from this work of love. Because of it, thousands of artists are heard, and countless music fans have discovered them, and CD's have been sold, and mouths have been fed, and silence has been replaced by music in the lives of so many.
These are our times, and this is the culture of our times, and of our kinds, and here is the art of our times, which reflects them, and all the concerns of our hearts, our dreams, and our hopes, and our wishes.
Here is looking forward to another great 10 years of ArtistServer.com!
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