• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank
• 08/29/2007 - HostMySite.com Limits ColdFusion, Does Not Tell Customers
• 08/14/2007 - New Song: Chocolate Rain - Sonic Remix
• 08/03/2007 - If You Use Open Source, Leave the License and Credit
• 07/31/2007 - Add Links to Profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and More
• 07/23/2007 - SocialNetwork.in API Promotes Cross Site Networking

• Microformat: xfn
  URL: http://gmpg.org/xfn/
  Where: xfn is now used on each artist and member's Friend page on ArtistServer.
  
  About: XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become a rapidly growing area of the Web. XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a 'rel' attribute to their links.
  
  
• Microformat: hcard
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
  Where: At the bottom of each artist and member's homepage on ArtistServer.
  
  About: hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies, organizations, and places, using a 1:1 representation of the properties and values of the vCard standard (RFC2426 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt)) in semantic XHTML. hCard is one of several open microformat standards suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.
  
  
• Microformat: rel-license
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license
  Where: Each song on the site carries a rel-license microformat on ArtistServer.
  
  About: Rel-License is a simple, open, format for indicating content licenses which is embedable in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.
  
  
• Microformat: rel-tag
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag
  Where: Everywhere you see tags being used, the rel-tag microformat is assigned to the link.
  
  About: By adding rel="tag" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink is an author-designated "tag" (or keyword/subject) for the current page. Note that a tag may just refer to a major portion of the current page (i.e. a blog post). e.g. by placing this link on a page.
  
  

• Microformat: geo
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/geo
  Where: Inside each hCard, ArtistServer outputs the artist or member's geocoordinates if they are known.
  
  About: geo is a simple format for marking up geographic latitude longitude information, suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. geo is a 1:1 representation of the "geo" property in the vCard standard (RFC2426 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt)) in XHTML, one of several open microformat standards.
  
  
• Microformat: enclosure
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-enclosure
  Where: Each mp3 download link on the site carries an enclosure microformat on ArtistServer.
  
  About: RelEnclosure is a simple, open, format for indicating files to cache which is embeddable in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.
  
  
• Microformat: adr
  URL: http://microformats.org/wiki/adr
  Where: Inside each hCard, ArtistServer outputs the artist or member's City, State and Country.
  
  About: adr is a simple format for marking up address information, suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. adr is a 1:1 representation of the adr property in the vCard standard (RFC2426 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt)) in XHTML, one of several open microformat standards. It is also a property of hCard.
  
  

Yes, I'm still here - I've been bypassing the blog for more than a month now, and it's time to get back into it again.

Let's begin with some stats and data for any of you out there that are curious as to how well ArtistServer.com did in 2006. I spent this morning pulling data from various places and have compiled a comprehensive look at ArtistServer - covering traffic, revenue, visitors, mp3 stats, and more. Certainly, there's room for improvement and growth, but the numbers aren't bad considering there aren't any full-time employees, nor funding, and we stopped advertising in June 2006.

This year will be interesting, as I see us growing at a faster rate than in 2006. We'll need to upscale again, adding more storage, 2+ additional servers, and moving to a load-balanced solution.

In terms of new tools and features on the site, I plan to add Video hosting (most likely partnering with VideoEgg.com), expanding the Photo tools and options (like adding RSS feeds for photos), offering 'widgets,' and finally building out the mobile version of the site (which has been in beta for a year now).

I hope 2007 will bring some opportunities for ArtistServer, and the platform it runs on, SocialNetworkServer. I spent the last few months of 2006 talking to some people about launching a company around the platform. Unfortunately, the potential investor wasn't the right person, and the team that was forming has had difficulty getting all on the same page. Fortunately, nothing was signed, I still owning full rights to the platform, and I found out this was the wrong situation before it went too far. The good thing about the experience, is that I finally sat down and wrote out the whole plan for my platform including 20+ diagrams, which will make it easier to get things rolling on the next potential investment.

Ok - on with the stats!

Hopefully the formatting isn't too messy... if it is, and you are viewing this in your RSS reader, try viewing it on my blog instead.

Totals for 2006
===================================
Total Unique Visitors: 316,241
Total Pageviews: 1,271,169

Registrations (2006)
===================================
January 	684
February 	544
March 		625
April 		601
May 		532
June 		420
July 		482
August 		479
September 	498
October 	539
November 	513
December 	517


Total Account Upgrades
===================================
50

ArtistServer Revenue
===================================
Upgrades	+1,907
AdSense		+1,000
Donations	+138
Adwords		-525
Equip		-500
Colo/Bandwidth	-5,700
----------------------
Total: -$3,680


Top 10 Member Country (2001-2006)
===================================
United States 	9,342 	41.35%
United Kingdom  2,174  	 9.62%
Canada  	1,168  	 5.17%
Germany  	774  	 3.43%
Australia  	571  	 2.53%
Brazil  	392  	 1.74%
France  	343  	 1.52%
Poland  	313  	 1.39%
Sweden  	304  	 1.35%
India  		287  	 1.27%


Top 10 Countries by Visit (2006)
================================
United States	116,153
United Kingdom	34,358
Germany		17,166
Canada		15,529
France		8,372
Netherlands	7,854
Australia 	5,925
Japan 		5,803
Italy 		5,694
Norway		5,602


Top Pages visited by Unique Views (2006)
================================
http://www.artistserver.com/index.cfm		112,568
http://www.artistserver.com/music.cfm		39,172
http://www.artistserver.com/charts.cfm		15,487
http://www.artistserver.com/area.cfm/area/1	11,923
http://www.artistserver.com/genreview.cfm	9,894
http://www.artistserver.com/join/index.cfm	9,068
http://www.artistserver.com/artists.cfm		6,948
http://www.artistserver.com/ringtones/index.cfm	5,571
http://www.artistserver.com/gallery/index.cfm	4,444
http://www.artistserver.com/area.cfm/area/9	3,613	


Top 5 Web Browsers by Visits (2006)
================================
Internet Explorer	199,811
Firefox			87,409
Safari			12,144
Opera			8,766
Mozilla			3,905


Screen Resolution by Visits (2006)
================================
1024x768	160,732
1280x1024	58,603
800x600		32,048
1280x800	15,741
1152x864	14,115


Connection Speed by Visits (2006)
================================
Cable/DSL	231,425
Dialup		33,770
Unknown		31,970
Corporate	19,075


Stream/Downloads (2006)
===================================
These totals do not contain the data for songs that were deleted during the year.

January
Total Downloads:  	8,771
Total HiFi Streams: 	29,576
Total LoFi Streams: 	1,363

February
Total Downloads:  	7,040
Total HiFi Streams: 	24,477
Total LoFi Streams: 	2,194

March
Total Downloads:  	17,575
Total HiFi Streams: 	29,467
Total LoFi Streams: 	2,427

April
Total Downloads:  	11,827
Total HiFi Streams: 	27,034
Total LoFi Streams: 	2,054

May
Total Downloads:  	18,200
Total HiFi Streams: 	25,427
Total LoFi Streams: 	2,002

June
Total Downloads:  	12,657
Total HiFi Streams: 	20,568
Total LoFi Streams: 	1,656

July
Total Downloads:  	10,248
Total HiFi Streams: 	21,209
Total LoFi Streams: 	1,328

August
Total Downloads:  	12,279
Total HiFi Streams: 	23,445
Total LoFi Streams: 	668

September
Total Downloads:  	12,348
Total HiFi Streams: 	24,820
Total LoFi Streams: 	988

October
Total Downloads:  	18,646
Total HiFi Streams: 	29,463
Total LoFi Streams: 	1,485

November
Total Downloads:  	19,423
Total HiFi Streams: 	28,992
Total LoFi Streams: 	1,691

December
Total Downloads:  	18,662
Total HiFi Streams: 	28,103
Total LoFi Streams: 	2,753

Click here for a chart of additional data.

If you are going to republish my stats somewhere, please let me know.

ArtistServer.com, adds a new feature for both artists and members, a map of your fans and friends.

Below, you will see a screenshot of the new "Friend Map" that was added to everyone's friend page. It displays the distribution of people who have added you as a friend on ArtistServer.com. The maps are in Flash and interactive. When you click on an icon, a popup container/bubble displays who it is, their message, and a link to their site on ArtistServer.com.

One of the interesting things about seeing this distribution on a map, is that you can see how a band could organize their tour based on the most likely route through the clustering of fans and friends.

The long awaited photos area/section of ArtistServer is now open for beta testing. This new area of the site adds features and functionality you find on top photo management and sharing sites like Flickr. Both artists and members on ArtistServer can now upload hi-res digital photos, have the site create multiple sizes, organize their photos by category, tags and photo sets, and more. Anyone signed in at ArtistServer can post comments, and we provide a means for site viewers to grab links to photos for sharing. There's category browsing, tag clouds, Creative Commons license support, and there's even a cool little page layout option which allows you to set what size of photos you want to view when browsing.

http://www.artistserver.com/photos

If you find any bugs, please send me a support email on the site (contact link is at the bottom of every page on artistserver) with info about the error. Like what browser you were using, kind of image file, file size, etc.

I don't have any directions written up yet, so here's an intro to get you started:

To upload a photo - sign in, enter the MyAccount area, then from the menu, click on My Music/Media, then select Photos. You should see 2 columns - the one on the right is the upload form. You'll find some basic directions on the form.

The photos section and tools ONLY supports JPG files. So if you have BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG, etc., you will need to convert your image before uploading.

Photos can be organized into 'photo sets,' where each photo set has it's own settings.

People can post comments on photos if they are signed in.

The site takes your uploaded photo and generates popular sizes for you to use:

• Icon ( 60 x 60 )
• Thumbnail ( 100 x 75 )
• Small ( 240 x 180 )
• Medium ( 500 x 375 )
• Large ( 640 x 480 )
• Desktop ( 1024 x 768 )
• (orig size) Orig
  

Artists and Members can turn the Photos link on or off in the MyAccount area, under My Site > Settings, which is where you control all settings for your account.

I decided to launch the photos area before I completed all the items on my 'wish list.' The following is what to expect in coming updates to the new Photos area and tools:

• add photos and photo sets to favorites
• ratings filter - to hide content based on a rating
• RSS feeds for photos
• photo carosel - shows icons of photos, allowing you to preview what is 'next'
• additional photo access level: hidden, except for friends
• directions and tips
• Flash slideshows
  

I hope you all have fun with this new addition, and as usual, this update is brought to you at no additional cost.

Help support ArtistServer, and please consider upgrading your account. For artists, it's only $40/yr, and for music fans, it's only $12/yr. If you haven't joined ArtistServer.com, give it a try, there's a lot of great music here, a friendly and supportive community, and a great set of tools/toys to play with.

1. Site Skins Updated - the header bars for song titles, etc now support a background graphic, which is currently a slight bevel. This only applies to the common areas of the site, not artist/member pages. If you are not familiar with what Site Skins are, visit the site and click on the skins button on the top right corner of the site, and select a different skin for the site.
2. Favorites - I updated the favorites widget - it now has a better layout on the listing of items in addition to using people's icons, etc. If you haven't used the favorites tool, you are missing out - by using it, you customize ArtistServer's homepage to meet your needs.
   After you signin to the site, you'll see the favorites widget display on the homepage, if you don't see it there, add something to your favorites, like an artist, playlist, genre or song, then return to the homepage. You can also click on the favorites button at the top of the site and a popup window with your favorites will display - with this, you can take music from ArtistServer with you as you browse the Web.
3. Song page - I fixed the layout on the song page (each song has a song page). In Internet Explorer, the page layout was off a bit and is now cleaned up.
4. My Account Menu - The menu in the My Account area has been condensed so there are no longer any multi-level sub menus. Single pages on artist/member sites were moved under the menu item "Web Pages" - this includes: homepage top and side, Store side, links page, and your contact page.
5. My Account Buttons - all the buttons for view, edit, delete, etc have been updated and should be displaying a 'mouseover' action (image highlights green) for better feedback.
6. Homepage - the site's homepage was rearranged a bit, not too much of a change, but a better use of space. 

I have a few other ArtistServer developments underway including:

• Music Widget - for songs or ringtones
• Tell A Friend - a means for people to tell freinds about the site, a song, an artist, etc
• Photos - yes, I'm still working on the photo sharing system - I found a few bugs today while trying to break it, so I'm still holding off as I beta test it some more. I also decided to leave out a few features for this first release - most importantly, the ability to watch the photos as a slideshow using an RSS feed. I felt it was better to just get it out there instead of making it do EVERYTHING before I release it.