Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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What does ArtistServer need? How can it improve?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 7:28 AM
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For those who have been along for the ride these last few years, you know by now that I'm always interested in improving ArtistServer, and always looking for ways to make the site more fun and easy to use.
I have my own list here of things I plan to work on, change or add, but what really helps shape the future of ArtistServer is the users and artists who speak up and share their opinions and ideas.
When I started planning a music community back in 2000, I spent a few months asking questions, gathering feedback and collecting ideas before I sat down to write a single line of code. Here we are today, in 2006 and I'm still asking the same questions, looking for more feedback and collecting ideas from the community.
In order for the site to evolve with us, these questions need to be asked every year, and feedback needs to keep coming in.
So, my friends, what does ArtistServer need? How can it improve? What do you need from a social media network? How can I help you?
If you are not sure what you need, nor have any ideas on what to improve, but want to get involved, here's what you can do... Visit http://www.musichostingservices.com/ - this is a comparisson site of the top social music/media sites. You'll see on the homepage a listing of all the sites which I feel are competitors. Spend a few minutes visiting a few of these sites and take note of what you like. If there's a feature of method of doing something that you think we should add to ArtistServer, come back here and post about it, and explain why.
If you want to post some negative feedback, but do not feel comfortable posting it to the forums here - click on the "private message" button to send me a message.
It might help if I listed a few of the planned additions - the following are planned for the next 12months:
Quote: 1. Mobile site - stage 1 out of beta [artist/member pages]
2. Site Layout - adjusting the site for 1024x768 resolution, new page layouts
3. Integrated Flash Player - embeded flash player in a few locations
4. Photo Tools Stage 2 - add to faves, slide show, rss, help, photo carosel
5. Video Hosting with VideoEgg.com API - with genres and tags - partnering with VideoEgg
6. Calendar/event system - for all artists and members
7. Groups - for providing access to content and grouping content
8. Suggestion System - analyzing history, tags, favorities, etc. to generate suggestions
9. Update RSS Feeds to 2.0 - for mp3 feeds, add Yahoo's media module
10. SNS API - stage 1 of the SocialNetwork Server API which allows for external developers to work with the platform
11. Widgets - JS and Flash for music, ringtones, videos, etc
12. Support for MetaWeblog API - Add/Edit Blog functions only - allows for external blogging tools
13. Content Transcoding - server setup to transcode mp3s to create LoFi versions of songs
14. Localization - support for additional languages
15. Send to Site - MoBloging - send photos and messages to your gallery or blog from your mobile phone
16. Fan Blogging - service allows fans to take photos of bands and post them to the band's site
17. Mobile site - stage 2
18. Documentation - development of a complete set of docs for managing the site for all levels, including demo web videos
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: What does ArtistServer need?
Monday, November 6, 2006 at 3:03 PM
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Hmmmmm...can't think of anything I miss on AS....
Well, as I mentioned earlier, there's gotta be a 'view posts since last visit'-option in the forums.....
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need?
Monday, November 6, 2006 at 3:57 PM
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A Bit Crusher wrote: there's gotta be a 'view posts since last visit'-option in the forums.....
it's in forums menu - there on the right: "New Posts" (when signed in). Although, it will appear to not work well.
The problem, is that the original forums software seems to be updating the data/time values for your session more often than it should. There may be some other way - or I could at least query the 25 if the other search based on date fails.
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: What does ArtistServer need?
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 11:17 AM
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Ah! Sorry, I didn't noticed it was there....
I'll check it out, although it might not work correctly.....
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Michael Chocholak
Joined: 01/14/04
Posts: 135
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 8:48 PM
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most of the things you've got listed there are beyond me - or at least are things I don't see myself using so I haven't thought much about them, but all the things you've done so far are very cool... so have at it!
Quote: 3. Integrated Flash Player - embeded flash player in a few locations
would this be optional? soundclick went to an imbedded flash player sometime ago. the plus is that it works fairly smoothly once they got the bugs out of it (although there were major mutinys when they first introduced it) and doesn't load up your system or bog you down when you are streaming like... wmp does. and it has built in links to your artist page, etc. the down side is there are a lot of places that don't allow flash to be installed on office pcs (hacker concerns or so I'm told). all those folks can't stream anything off of soundclick while they're at work - which, let's face it, is when a chunck of the music demographic listens to music. that's a lot of people that would be cut off. if it was a choice, but not a default, that would be great.
Que la musique sonne - Edgard Varese
You don't need a mouth to communicate, you don't need rules to create. Anything is a potential instrument. Play it. - MC
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 9:33 PM
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the embeded player would be an 'addition' to the current methods you can stream off of an artist's page - the links for streaming all songs via an mp3 player with m3u, or via a player that reads XSPF (yahoo's player).
and yes - you would have an option to turn it on/off. I try to give you a toggle for all the features so you can turn off what you don't like or don't need.
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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What does ArtistServer need? How can it improve?
Friday, November 10, 2006 at 6:04 AM
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>>> A Bit Crusher wrote:
there's gotta be a 'view posts since last visit'-option in the forums.....
>>>it's in forums menu - there on the right: "New Posts" (when signed in). Although, it will appear to not work well.
I did check it out, and it seems like that every new post in a thread is in the list of the last messages...
But that's not a big issue....
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naton rozenburg
Joined: 08/20/02
Location: Netherlands, where else?
Posts: 14
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RE: What does ArtistServer need?
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 1:19 PM
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There are so much options.. is there an option to sell your music a track, or an album? If there is, pleaze ignore this post..
and of course it needs good music, but i'm sure there's a lot of it. 
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 2:46 PM
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>>>is there an option to sell your music a track, or an album?
yes and no -
you can create a store item, and provide a link to where people can purchase it - but we do not have a means to handle selling music 'for' you, where ArtistServer would manage the transaction/money/payouts.
I'd love to offer that as a service, but with no staff and little revenue, it's a bit too risky for me to manage payouts to everyone. I've looked for a service which would handle direct payments to artists - but there isn't any out there. The only ones that do exist, require you to put the content into 'their' system - which isn't a good solution to go with.
Ideally, we would have a common 'shopping cart' - and each artist would get paid for the songs they sold. I hope to have something like this by the end of next year. If you find any service that would handle the payouts, I could certainly code up the interface for selling songs as digital downloads.
Thank you for the suggestion though - it is a missing service for the site.
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Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Saturday, November 25, 2006 at 8:19 AM
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What about a 'download all' button on an artists page.
It's a pain to have to click each individual track's download button when I find a new artist I like and they have a ton of tracks to download.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Saturday, November 25, 2006 at 4:33 PM
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Subtronik wrote:What about a 'download all' button on an artists page.
It's a pain to have to click each individual track's download button when I find a new artist I like and they have a ton of tracks to download.
the only way to offer that is to:
1. have users install a downloading application that will handle this
2. have users use Songbird - which is free and works right now
3. offer artists songs all in a podcast per artist - where you would again need to use a different app or extension that will handle pulling down files based on a feed.
My suggestion is to try out Songbird - it's basically a tweaked version of mozilla with a focus on music/media i think it's songbird.org - I'll have to check.
I don't think it's a good idea for ArtistServer to offer a client application for users to download - so in the long run, I'll most likely keep suggesting Songbird to people.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Sunday, November 26, 2006 at 5:47 PM
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Here's a
post on my blog about Songbird
The link to Songbird: http://www.songbirdnest.com/
and a screencast which shows some of the things you can do with Songbird
Give it a spin 
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Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 5:55 PM
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I'll wait for a firefox extension.
Btw, I didn't know you had responded to my comment until today because I'm still not recieving email notices even though I've made sure all of my settings are good.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 8:21 PM
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i'm getting them - but I think i just found out why you aren't...
the IP address for the server that is hosting the forums isn't set up with Reverse DNS - and your provider is most likely blocking all email from IPs that do not have Reverse DNS setup.
I'll talk to my ISP and ask for it to be setup, 
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Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Friday, December 1, 2006 at 3:16 PM
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Sounds good Gid, thanks.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 9:52 AM
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Subtronic - it should be fixed now
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Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 10:18 AM
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Yep, now recieving notices for threads I wasn't before.
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How...
Friday, December 8, 2006 at 2:16 PM
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I noticed that when you're not signed in to the forums, you don't see who currently is online...
A new visitor might think there's nobody online ever....maybe it's a good idea to change that...
Gideon?
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Friday, December 8, 2006 at 2:21 PM
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ok - done
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: What does ArtistServer need? How can it improv
Friday, December 8, 2006 at 2:28 PM
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Sonic Wallpaper wrote:ok - done
Great! I'll check it now.....
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