Philosophy
There is a cycle that repeats itself. A website is established, it grows, it grows to big and needs to be funded. it is monetized in some way and it grows some more. from there, one of two things happens, The designers get a god complex and make major changes without consulting any of their users causing their site to implode or the site is bought out by a conglomerate and soon it’s mission is changed.
Each time this happens, a community is lost or damaged beyond repair. This is because the goals are not clearly defined, for example the major question, why am I making this website? is not answered. You should know the answer before you start.
There is a common endlessly repeating theme that is present on the Internet, the repackaging of other peoples work. This is what the common music site does. Imagine the complexity of capturing all the music available on the Internet and duplicating it real time to your audience on your site. It is not possible. At least 300 new music CD’s are created per day in the world. the mass of music files and the server load they would create would bring any server to it’s knees.
The solution, use multiple servers. but how can you place a website on multiple servers and not go broke? well, you can do it by linking. Most artists have a web presence and as I said before, they don’t need to become a web site manager. When a website like T61 or Last FM puts up their music and a user profile they are really not doing them a favor and all you have to do is look at the pathetic royalty payments generated on some sites to see that.
Each time an artists website is accessed the traffic is recorded so each time you visit their site directly, you drive them up in the website rankings and allow their artist site to appear number one in the listing for them on the Internet. just google your favorite artist and look at how much competition they have for their own name.
This is why I have decided to take this site in a totally different direction. My goal is to drive traffic to Artists websites so they rise to the top of search results. I also want to encourage people to support the artist and not a website competing with them for their own music. This approach is 100% scalable. and it should lead to better quality music available for sampling.
My dream is much bigger than this website, It is about live music, Artist assistance, A community music label, many many things all focused on helping the people that make the music find fans and helping listners find Artists to discover.
To do this takes a community. It means you bring your favorite artists to the site, link to their pages, tell them what we are trying to do and support them by buying their music. There are musicians working everyday pursuing their dreams, making beautiful music, lets help them succeed!
Steve