• 05/31/2009 - 18 More Social Sites Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/25/2009 - Run Your Own Remix or Music Project at ArtistServer.com
• 05/22/2009 - AudioBoo.fm and YouNoodle.com Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/06/2009 - mp3tunes.com - no option to close your account
• 03/17/2009 - How to run a Remix Project
• 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

While I haven't been posting to my blog, I have been jamming on a lot of work, took a week vacation in Kauai with my family, worked in the yard a lot, had a 5yr anniversary with my wife, and hammered out five updates to ArtistServer in the last two and a half months.

Here's a summary of the last five site updates - I posted these on our forums, but I'm sure this is still news for most people:

1. 05/02/07 - New "Local" section on the site

If you are signed into ArtistServer, and click on 'Local' from the main menu, you'll see a page which lists content and people from your local area. This is based on your setting in your profile.

If you are not signed in, you'll see a listing of countries, along with a count of how many people we have in that country.

Each page displays new photos, music, store items, and ringtones, plus a listing of recent visitors to the site that live in the currently selected region.

Country Listing: http://www.artistserver.com/local.cfm
Viewing all of the US: http://www.artistserver.com/local.cfm/country/United+States
Viewing all of California: http://www.artistserver.com/local.cfm/country/United+States/state/California
Viewing San Diego: http://www.artistserver.com/local.cfm/country/United+States/state/California/city/San+Diego

Later on, I'll improve this area so you'll also see listings of events for the selected region (most likely using the services and data from http://www.Eventful.com). Let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback.

If your location is not correct - make sure you are signed in, then check your profile (under My Account) and see if your Country, State, and City are set correctly.

Keep in mind that the Cities and non-us states are entered by the site members and artists - so there are many errors like: LA and L.A and l.a. when all of them should be: Los Angeles

2. 06/02/07 - Another Year, A Present For You

I have a present for all the artists on ArtistServer, your total song counts have been raised!

• Freeware Artist account: your song count was raised from 3 to 5
  
• Upgraded Artist account: your song count was raised from 200 to 300

Why? Because we made it through another year!

We have 2 anniversaries around here, one is the date it all started, and the other is the date we first went live. We first went live on 12/05/2001, and it all started back in May of 1999 with a post to the Electronic music forums at mp3.com. Ah the old days...

The first stage of 'this' site was launched a year later (5/2000) as ElectronicBBoard.com. And another year later, on 05/22/2001, the beta site for ElectronicScene.com went live.

There's a short timeline here: http://wiki.artistserver.com/index.cfm/History

Thank you for all the music, memories, and friendship!

3. 07/09/07 - ArtistServer Now Offers ID3 Tag Editing

Depending on what you use to encode your mp3s, you may or may not have your ID3 'tag' set in your mp3 file.

An ID3 Tag is a set of information that is included in the mp3 file and is displayed by mp3 players by default. If no ID3 tag is present in the file, mp3 players usually attempt to figure out the artist name and song title from the filename.

At ArtistServer, we've always served your songs to people with both your artist name and song title, but until today, we didn't have a means for you to edit the ID3 tag within the files. When I encode 'my' mp3 files, I usually open them in WinAmp and fill out the ID3 tag info, but I'm sure a lot of artists out there are not doing this, most likely because they are not aware of the ID3 tag nor how to set the information in the tag.

No problem... we can help!

When you view the listing of your songs from the "My Account" area of the site (this is where you'd go to upload or edit your songs), you'll now see a new option/button for "MP3 ID3 info" - click on the 'edit' button you see, and wait a few seconds for the server to complete the process.

The server will take your artist name, song title, description, upload year, and genre, and write them directly to the mp3 file. Now when people download your mp3, all the important information is saved along with the file.

For best results, do not stream your mp3 before or during the time you click on the edit button, as the process could fail.

4. 07/16/07 - PayPal for Classified/Store Payments

ArtistServer now supports "Paypal Accounts" - to enter your PayPal Account information - visit the My Account area, and edit your Profile.

After entering your PayPal Account Email address (you'll need a PayPal account), you can then edit your store/classified items, and set them to be sold using PayPal.

Site visitors will click on the cart/buy now button next to your store item, and be sent to PayPal along with the price, money type, and item title. PayPal handles the transaction, you receive an email that a payment and order has been made, then you send the purchased item.

ArtistServer does not participate in the sale, nor take any percentage from your sale.

As an attempt to keep 'spam bots' from extracting your email address from the PayPal buttons, I've added a script which converts your email address into ASCII special characters.

5. 07/17/07 - Tip Jar Option for Artists

ArtistServer now provides a "Tip Jar" option for all artists. To use this new feature, you will first need an account at PayPal, then follow the steps below:

1. Add your PayPal account email to your profile on ArtistServer (in the My Account area)
2. Edit your Site Settings on ArtistServer (also in the My Account area), and turn your Tip Jar on (it's the last item in your site settings, bottom of the page).

Now when people visit your artist page, they'll see a "Tip Jar" button like this on the side of your page:

All donations made to your Tip Jar go directly into YOUR PayPal account, not ours. ArtistServer does not collect money for you, nor does ArtistServer take any percent or fee from the donation - it's all for you!

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.