Message from the team & news on Jamendo

 

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      CommentAuthorOtophone
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010
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    sylvinus wrote: the french community as a whole is *not* outraged. a few frenchmen are very attached to the language but we have to be pragmatic here.


    Jamendo is based in Luxembourg.
    As I know the official langages from Lux, are french german and letzeburgish, not english.
    I would be logical to communicate in french and german...not in english.
    This has nothing to do with french people who could be this or that.
    And what means "pragmatic" for you?
    Is it about the fact that you are looking for money, for fonds to help and they could be based in New-York or London, perhaps?
  2.  permalink
    http://www.saab.com/

    We should recommend to set up the site in swedish to Saab... :wink:

    Jamendo is an internet company, not a luxembourgian. If you want to establish a wide communication base for such a company, you should prefer a widely-used language.
  3.  permalink
    Up-to-the-minute news: Meeting Jamendo - Mangrove to happen shortly!

    Sylvain keeps his word keeping me updated.... :smile:
  4.  permalink
    :thumbup:
    •  
      CommentAuthorOtophone
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010 edited
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    frank.harper wrote: Jamendo is an internet company, not a luxembourgian. If you want to establish a wide communication base for such a company, you should prefer a widely-used language.


    Do you speak (and write) chinese, or spanish?
    Parles-tu chinois ou espagnol?
    Kannst du chinesich oder spanish sprechen?

    Ce sont deux langues largement utilisées.

    Oooh and great thanks to Mangrove !
    For contact or information: Mangrove Capital Partners 31, Bd Joseph II L-1840 Luxembourg Phone: +352 2625341 www.mangrove-vc.com

    Do you think that , when they meet at the" bistrot du coin" they talk in english?
    lol.
    •  
      CommentAuthorpan
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010
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    oh, otophone, you are a joker, right?

    here is your applause: :cheer::clap::thumbup:

    whats wrong with english? frank is german and speaks another language to get understood, so what is your problem?
  7.  permalink
    Otophone wrote: Do you think that , when they meet at the" bistrot du coin" they talk in english?

    Got me. Been under the false impression they'd talk in chinese....

    :crazy:
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      CommentAuthorhjfischer
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010 edited
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    frank.harper wrote: Been under the false impression they'd talk in chinese....
    Please! It's about saving jamendo. If they are talking chinese with each other :shocked: damn man!
    •  
      CommentAuthorOtophone
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010
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    pan wrote: so what is your problem?


    I have no problem. Not with english nor with german or french.

    It is the problem of the french speaking employees who loose their jobs.
    And also the french speaking Jamendo users, who don't understand why mister Sylvinus gives news here and not there (french forum)
    Those poor guys are now obliged to translate automatically this forum to know a bit more about the financial adventures of the bosses , lol !
    •  
      CommentAuthorfritznet
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010
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    frank.harper wrote: Got me. Been under the false impression they'd talk in chinese....
    :bigsmile::bigsmile::bigsmile:
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      CommentAuthorhjfischer
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010 edited
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    Otophone wrote: It is the problem of the french speaking employees who loose their jobs.
    :confused: Why using a forum when you can address them directly?

    Otophone wrote: Those poor guys are now obliged to translate
    There is a translation into French of the whole thread, unfortunately even with our jokes :shamed: http://www.jamendo.com/fr/forums/discussion/32795/messages-de-la-jamendoteam-et-commentaires-version-francaise/
  12.  permalink
    I think we all have problems understanding each other. It isn't only the language itself, it can also be national cultures, customs, misunderstood words, and the huge fact that we do not see facial expressions as we speak. How do I know what someone means, exactly, unless I also hear the tone of their voice, or see their body language.
    If I am standing face to face with someone, I often still don't completely understand.
    Sometimes we are too hasty with our words and don't re-read or edit properly. Then we are surely misunderstood.

    I think that Sylvinus is doing the appropriate thing by picking one language to use for his missives to us. He will have to be very careful with his words, as the head of a company, and it would be difficult to do if he had to translate everything and make sure they are the words he meant.

    If other people, on the forums, chose to interpret his words, and perhaps incorrectly, then it is the fault of the interpreter.
    Anyone will be able to translate to their hearts content and meanings and nuances will be a little different. But at least everyone is welcome to try.

    It is just a difficult thing making everyone happy and making everyone understand each-other perfectly.

    Barbara
  13.  permalink
    domnukem @ the french forum:
    De mon côté, j'ai une bonne image de la team qui fait au mieux avec les moyens/ressources qu'ils ont.

    domnukem refers to something Sylvain told me some days ago, the Jamendo team has had some meetings with artists and users in Paris. He now states his good impression of the team of being people doing their best with the ressources at their disposal.
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2010
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    ... says Otophone ( http://www.jamendo.com/en/user/Otophone ) who registered on Jamendo yesterday ?? Or is a fake account. Either way, what you say is null, sorry.

    Anyway, I have read the questions and will be answering soon, maybe in 2 batches (I want to be precise in the answers and have very little time as we are working 18h a day). in the meantime, thank you guys for compiling them. I feel this is a good way to re-establish a better communication and I promise to keep being very present on this thread.

    cheers
  15.  permalink
    Very happy you got the questions.
    We are expecting the answers, positive in any ways, I hope.
    Long live Jamendo.
  16.  permalink
    sylvinus wrote: I feel this is a good way to re-establish a better communication and I promise to keep being very present on this thread.


    Thank you and . . .
    sylvinus wrote: I want to be precise in the answers


    Thank you . . . that is as much as we hoped for . . .
    we appreciate your openness.
  17.  permalink
    sylvinus wrote: Either way, what you say is null, sorry.

    O.k., I'll forget about it. But perhaps you understand, it was a rather long time without any information (apart from the insufficient communication over months or even years), and the people who know about the problems (there are certainly hundredthousands who didn't sense it) are soaking up every bit of a flicker of hope that tells them that everything will turn out allright. Thank you for your promise, I trust you. And the more reliability that connection radiates the more we don't need any second hand information.

    I wish you the force to manage everything in a good way. For the benefit of Jamendo. And Jamendo stands for a company, a community, free music and a unique spirit.
  18.  permalink
    frank.harper wrote: But perhaps you understand, it was a rather long time without any information (apart from the insufficient communication over months or even years), and the people who know about the problems (there are certainly hundredthousands who didn't sense it) are soaking up every bit of a flicker of hope that tells them that everything will turn out allright. Thank you for your promise, I trust you. And the more reliability that connection radiates the more we don't need any second hand information.

    I wish you the force to manage everything in a good way. For the benefit of Jamendo. And Jamendo stands for a company, a community, free music and a unique spirit.


    I AGREE AND DO TO. SILENCE IS DEATH. COMMUNICATION IS LIFE.
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeJan 22nd 2010
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    Finally got one hour for me, so here we go :)


    FINANCIAL STATUS/DONATIONS
    How much money is needed to maintain services? Donations are necessary/welcome/needless?


    "Maintain services" meaning the servers and the basic services costs south of 10k€/month, which is very average for a project our size. But then over that you need to pay the people & associated costs and there it's a gradient because the most people you have, the more work you can do. In that area the plan is definitely to scale back a bit but become more efficient so that we get to breakeven and to "financial independence" faster. With that in mind we might start a big donation campaign to get us there faster. That's a choice we have to make but it's a difficult one because then the community will have to choose between donating to the artists and to us. That's why in the meantime, the donations are of course very welcome but not "so" advertised yet.

    PERSONAL STATUS
    How many people will remain at Jamendo? Which positions are vacant?

    Currently most of the staff is still here, even if on notice. The plan is to save as many jobs as we can of course. But I don't know the number that will remain now. no positions are currently vacant.

    SITE STATUS
    - How can the known bugs and inconsistencies be fixed given the current situation, that is, whith fewer employees?


    Well, as I said before, by being more efficient and generally smarter ;-)

    There will be some feature cuts. In particular the features that are both the least used and the hardest to maintain. For instance, announcing that we'll probably stop seeding torrents shouldn't come as a surprise. However, for each feature cut, we promise to provide a prior notice, and a backup plan (for torrents, I'd obviously say just click the "download" buttons on the website... same zips). When it makes sense we'll open source some components so that you guys can help and bring in new ideas.

    - Are there possibilities to involve engaged users, e.g. for translations (some non-french descriptions and texts are hard to understand or even misleading).

    yes. some of you remember the old community translation interface of jamendo. it may come back in some form so that you can 1) fix some errors, 2) contribute new languages!!

    - In the past the community lost engaged members. They were discouraged because their suggestions were ignored. We like to be involved in the process of defining priorities and to improve the site. How could this be achieved?


    maybe voting, both for features and for bugs ? I have no idea on how to setup that but if you manage to build a community supported tool that gives us each few weeks the top requested features and bugfixes, we'll definitely use that input. I haven't stumbled upon it but there may be a webservice of that kind already existing.

    COMMUNICATION
    - Are you willing to communicate with the community constantly? Do you realise the importance?


    yes and yes. I hope the time I dedicate here will gradually convince everybody of that.

    - We just established a core group of engaged users. That group will collect problems and questions throughout the forums and prioritise them. We will elect two members of that group to be representative (and substitute) of the community. They will convey all important issues to you. That means, you or your substitute should be available as often as possible for him. Do you agree?


    totally. should these people be moderators too or is that two different roles? There were a few other questions spread in the thread (chefgeorges or marieva), that could also give them a starting point ?

    - If there are problems, unavailable services or other urgent issues we need to be informed as soon as possible!


    you will. currently there are no particular "fires" I know of.

    OUTLOOK
    What are your plans as far as you're able to overlook? How about Mangrove and a sale of Jamendo?

    Our only plan is to choose a plan to continue :) There have been several of those presented to the board and we are currently very hard at work analyzing them and finding the right one for everybody. Once it's choosen there will of course be an announcement. But the fact that we've received several offers kind of guarantees the continuity of the service. So that's good news for Jamendo and that's why I'm a bit optimistic, even if I don't know 100% of what will happen in the next few weeks.

    --

    so that's it, thanks for compiling the questions, I will answer a second batch next week if you have more (sure you do), and I hope to have some good news to announce here.

    cheers!
  20.  permalink
    THANKS VERY MUCH and see you next week Sylvain.
    Nice to see more than a ray of hope.
    Cheers !
    •  
      CommentAuthorJ.C.G.
    • CommentTimeJan 22nd 2010
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    Thank you, Sylvain! I'm really glad to see your sincerity. J.C.G. will discuss your answers during the next few days...

    Frank
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      CommentAuthorbmccosar
    • CommentTimeJan 23rd 2010
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    sylvinus wrote: Our only plan is to choose a plan to continue :)


    Thank you indeed, Sylvain!

    Probably the fastest route to panic is seeing the things you love in danger. I've certainly been there over the past few weeks. For those of us who spread the word and mobilized the support ... reading this is much like seeing the rainbow after the thunderstorm.
  23.  permalink
    sylvinus wrote: maybe voting, both for features and for bugs ? I have no idea on how to setup that but if you manage to build a community supported tool that gives us each few weeks the top requested features and bugfixes, we'll definitely use that input. I haven't stumbled upon it but there may be a webservice of that kind already existing.

    www.uservoice.com
    A community I frequent uses this site...
    •  
      CommentAuthorMichikawa
    • CommentTimeJan 24th 2010
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    Thank you for the valuable information Sylvain! I haven't participated in the discussion but I just want to say that for me as a Creative Commons musician and producer Jamendo has been one of the most important services and environments ever and I really hope that things will work out! Keep up the good work!
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      CommentAuthorfcahoon
    • CommentTimeJan 25th 2010
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    I'm all for input from the community, but I worry that "voting for bugs" would favor tweaks to the existing design rather than the sort of major design changes I've described in my blog.


    It's the old problem of design by committee.

  26.  permalink
    orangeupurple wrote : " A smooth road is cared for . . . the people go forth with their tools and smooth the road before them . . . for all. "


    I choose the smooth road, of course, that means : be patient, we are not in position to decide, as far as Jamendo is concerned, the one I love to be specific.
    We have, through the petitions, showed our love and care for our platform.
    Frank Harper has succeeded to have Sylvain Zimmer answer to our anxiety, expressed in the very first list of questions.

    Now, we must understand that Sylvain Zimmer, his partners, and what is left of the crew, are trying to figure a way to have Jamendo kept operating, in financial terms acceptable and realistic, given the problems.

    Sylvain Zimmer is quite aware of the technical problems which irritated the Community, he's the father of Jamendo !

    Now, according to his answers, I suppose he has to figure out, not a new Jamendo, but a Jamendo which can be satisfactory to the artists and users, and will be financially viable. That is his problem, he is the Boss ! It is He who will decide in the end.

    So, it is - to my point of view - useless to set up lists of recriminations which do not seem - to my point of view - profitable and constructive.

    Sylvain Zimmer knows we are with him, that we love his creation.

    orangeupurple wrote: I was walking in to work, one hours worth of thought and prayer. I was thinking of you - Jamendo's Community . . . . World wide . . . an International group of people, all who deserve this wonderful site. And yes I pray for you . . .


    We are all creators, not only as musicians, but as human beings, men (and women) of good will. So, let us assume this position, as being positive, respectful, patient, available, a Community of Good People !
    This behavior is like preying. Let us show to ourselves, and to the world, we deserve such a friendly platform, to share our music, have supporting and constructive reviews, and make truthful, respectful and honest friendships.

    Thanks Barbara for preying for us. Our positive thoughts, expressions, and actions are beautiful prayers.

    Now, we wait to see what Sylvain Zimmer will have to tell us.

    Bless you all.


    Pierre-Marie Cœdès
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeJan 29th 2010
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    Thanks all for your support :)

    We've been working in our "war room" all week, and it has been quite a ride.

    I will definitely have good news to announce in the next few days.

    In the meantime, keep the questions/ideas coming, if possible about the future jamendo because that's we're talking about now ;-)

    cheers
  28.  permalink
    What ever good news you will announce, will be good news if it says the platform will endure, in any shape of form.

    If we can still upload our music easely, share it with listeners, with our fellow musicians, read nice and constructive reviews, have the possibilities to exchange through private mails, have good and relevant tags, and have a fast loading pages - as far as I am concerned - I will be very happy - as I was before !

    And in return, I you have the possibility to raise money from our works in order to have the platform work and pay the due interests to the artists, - as far as I am concerned, I will be happy !

    And if everything runs in a peaceful atmosphere... that will be very satisfactory.

    Thank you Sylvain. We are waiting for the "good news".

    Pierre-Marie Cœdès
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    .
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    DITTO :)

    LittleFingers said all for me!!?!!
    •  
      CommentAuthorJ.C.G.
    • CommentTimeJan 29th 2010 edited
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    Frank Harper for JCG
    sylvinus wrote: In the meantime, keep the questions/ideas coming, if possible about the future jamendo because that's we're talking about now ;-)

    Thanks, Sylvain! :bigsmile:

    The "... quite a ride" is true for us too. We will post an intermediate message within the next 24 hours.

    Edit: it will take some more hours ... :wink: ... our devotional working members are entitled to a well-deserved weekend, we'll get in touch on Monday or Tuesday.
    •  
      CommentAuthorbmccosar
    • CommentTimeJan 29th 2010
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    sylvinus wrote: I will definitely have good news to announce in the next few days.


    Much appreciated! Looking forward to it.
    •  
      CommentAuthorIvan1984
    • CommentTimeJan 30th 2010
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    Thank you for the update. I definitely know how I stand now. Jamendo for me, is about quality. A rare and vital characteristic these days.
    • CommentAuthorAdemoS
    • CommentTimeJan 31st 2010 edited
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    sylvinus wrote: Maybe voting, both for features and for bugs ? I have no idea on how to setup that but if you manage to build a community supported tool that gives us each few weeks the top requested features and bugfixes.


    If you're looking for a community-supported tool that collects votes for ideas...I'd strongly suggest IdeaTorrent.

    http://www.ideatorrent.org/

    IdeaTorrent is currently being used for many large-scale projects and is GNU-licensed, which assures no monetary cost to use it.

    I've voted for and submited ideas to, many sites using IdeaTorrent (Blender, Ubuntu, etc) and it's consistently been a very organised way to collect ideas and keep track of their reception.



    For collecting information and solutions for bugs, I would suggest Launchpad.net

    Here's a feature summary:
    https://launchpad.net/+tour/bugs



    Best of luck to all Jamendo staff, keep up the great work guys!
  35.  permalink
    @AdemoS
    Thanks for that hint! Interesting tool, but seems to me that would end in a mess. Different languages, duplicates... in view of that huge bunch of issues my feeling is forwarding problems and wishes to Jamendo needs to be more coordinated and structured to be helpful for Jamendo and to really get the things going.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfcahoon
    • CommentTimeFeb 1st 2010
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    I do think that Jamendo needs a real bug tracking system for *bugs* as opposed to new ideas.


    A bug in this sense is something that was already working is claimed to already work, but does not -- the recent issue of new album tags being broken is a good example. Having a centralized place where we can all read about progress on the bugs which concern us will give us a level of feedback I think we all want and are very frustrated not to have.


    New ideas, on the other hand, are different. Someone at Jamendo will have to come up with a synthesis from all of our ideas and create a roadmap document describing where they actually plan to go. Without such an overall vision, picking and choosing various new features to implement from our suggestions will lead to a mess.


    As an only half-serious side note, since Jamendo has marked its previous major upgrades with a change in color theme, perhaps we can pick a new color to talk about the next major revision that will have all the wonderful new things we want? It would just serve as a code word and the site admins may or may not choose to use it. I propose "Jamendo Green".

  37.  permalink
    fcahoon wrote: Having a centralized place where we can all read about progress on the bugs which concern us will give us a level of feedback I think we all want and are very frustrated not to have.


    I agree - and a centralized place where people can complain and read other's complaints - People feel like their out in the ozone by themselves when they are frustrated about problems - no responses etc. Life is full of glitches, but some of the musicians drift away when they feel like they are shouting into the wind. The forums don't really cut it in many instances. Just feeling frustrated myself for one of the musicians who isn't getting answers or help in his situation.

    Barbara
    M^^W
    •  
      CommentAuthorJ.C.G.
    • CommentTimeFeb 1st 2010
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    frank.harper for JCG

    To me working in an IT department you're preaching to the choir making arguments for a bug tracking system. But from my experience I perceive two major problems. The first is the inhibition threshhold for users, the other one the administrative effort for Jamendo. I guess the most promising approach will be the one with as less as possible effort for the community and the company. This evening we will send a second set of questions to Sylvain. I will add the question regards of a bug tracker because of being mentioned several times. But the efforts of JCG and Jamendo are heading towards a JCG Jamendo group (for complaining) and a blog for JCG at jamendo.net including the possibilty to set up polls by which the community may prioritize bugs and wishes. It's just a beginning, we will see how to improve if our conceptions want another approach. :wink:
    •  
      CommentAuthorJ.C.G.
    • CommentTimeFeb 1st 2010
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    frank.harper for JCG

    Hi Sylvain, here we are with some further questions:

    How about the statistics? There are so many inconsistencies, how and when will the numbers be comprehensible and trustable? This is an important issue, there are rumours about manipulation. And medium-term we need to discuss the conception regards of picturing popularity.

    Shares/Donations. Some artists want to be payed off periodically (e.g. every 3 months) regardless of the actual balance. Some users don't trust paypal therefore holding off regards of donations.

    Sometimes the site is really slow, it takes minutes to refresh a page (esp. the forums are affected).

    There are lots of broken or false links (e.g. links to accounts on the donation page).

    On Jamendos home and maintenance pages always the same artists/songs are introduced. To be fairer this should be changed more often, perhaps based on the top 100 song list. Another idea would be an artist-independent Jamendo theme song (how about a contest?).

    Ogg streaming is off for weeks, there was no announcement and many users miss them.

    Many users are bothered by the friendship request notifications. Nobody really needs them. Please switch them off or add corresponding configuration options for accounts.

    How about setting up a bug tracker to collect bugs and wishes?



    Looking forward to your reply....
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeFeb 2nd 2010
     permalink
    Hi. Great to see that the questions focus on the website itself ;-)

    J.C.G. wrote: How about the statistics? There are so many inconsistencies, how and when will the numbers be comprehensible and trustable? This is an important issue, there are rumours about manipulation. And medium-term we need to discuss the conception regards of picturing popularity.


    Statistics at the scale of Jamendo is not a trivial issue anymore, we compile each night millions of items, historize them, etc. So it takes some time for the whole system to be fairly stable (another bugfix was done again last week). As for manipulation, well, I can't find any reason as to why we'd want, or have any interest in doing that.

    As for bugs, we're ready to deal with any issues starting from now, if we can have *specific* examples of inconsistencies. We'll also remove some stats panel that are not used very much to simplify the interface.

    Speaking medium-term, we'd like to have the ideas of the community on what features to add/remove to the stats, and where to take inspiration. I quite like youtube or facebook insights. Any other sources of inspiration ?

    Shares/Donations. Some artists want to be payed off periodically (e.g. every 3 months) regardless of the actual balance.


    We validate manually each payment to the artists, to double check that nothing goes funky. It's a process we're not willing to automate currently, it's just too dangerous to have a bug add a zero in the payment or something. So on our site, it's manual. That's one reason we pay artist by bursts, when the total reaches 100 in one currency. Other reason is smaller paypal fees (they have a fixed fee for each transaction).

    If we had to pay 5000 artists manually each 3 months, it would take us a very, very long time. But I don't think it's that big of a deal. Each month we pay more and more new artists because of new jamendo pro revenues or jamendo collectors. Most fairly popular artists now reach $100 in a few months.

    Some users don't trust paypal therefore holding off regards of donations.


    What's the issue with paypal ? How would these users want us to send the money ? Paypal is used by millions of people every day, I trust them maybe more than my own bank.

    Sometimes the site is really slow, it takes minutes to refresh a page (esp. the forums are affected).


    Seems to be an issue with the watchwords. We'll investigate that.

    There are lots of broken or false links (e.g. links to accounts on the donation page).


    I'll report that

    On Jamendos home and maintenance pages always the same artists/songs are introduced. To be fairer this should be changed more often, perhaps based on the top 100 song list.


    I agree it's an absolute shame the featured artists list is always the same. That will be changed. The maintenance page I frankly don't care

    Another idea would be an artist-independent Jamendo theme song (how about a contest?).


    Well you can do that witout our help

    Ogg streaming is off for weeks, there was no announcement and many users miss them.


    We've lost an ogg harddrive and are currently re-encoding them from the FLACs. However, the *extremely low* popularity of the Ogg files doesn't really give us an incentive to give that task a higher priority. The usage ratio OGG vs. MP3 for 2009 was 99.5/0.5 ; That would be fine if Ogg took 0.5% the disk space and the costs, but takes even more disk than the MP3s, and the same energy to encode/maintain.

    So, should we continue supporting Ogg ? I'm a strong supporter of open source but in this case, with the MP3 patents soon expired, the Ogg usage abysmally low, the impossibility to use Ogg either in webpages for everyone, or in any *popular* mobile device... well it's frankly hard to justify continuing ogg support. If it's just to give us a good image in the community it's stupid.

    So I think there are 2 possibilities :
    - Too few people care and we drop ogg support
    - Many people care about Ogg Vorbis and we setup a donation system to continue Ogg support, possibily on a community-managed server.

    Up to the community now!

    Many users are bothered by the friendship request notifications. Nobody really needs them. Please switch them off or add corresponding configuration options for accounts.


    Totally agree. Maybe in 2005 a friends system made sense on Jamendo but now with Facebook connect, twitter & co, we don't need that anymore. So we'll probably turn most of the friends features off. Which of those features would still be useful ? (Private messages? with an antispam daily quota? recommendations?)

    How about setting up a bug tracker to collect bugs and wishes?


    We have our own internal bug tracker, but it also includes the security issues so I don't think it would be wise to open it.

    I've tested uservoice.com a bit, could the community first vote for features and bugfixes there, and we'd take the top voted, insert them in our own tracker and start working on them ?

    cheers
  41.  permalink
    Well, all this is very nice and makes sense.
    But what about the main issue ? Jamendo's existence ?
    Is the financial situation stabilized ?

    sylvinus wrote: I will definitely have good news to announce in the next few days.


    Yes ?
    •  
      CommentAuthorAIIR
    • CommentTimeFeb 2nd 2010 edited
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    ECG wrote: Many users are bothered by the friendship request notifications. Nobody really needs them. Please switch them off or add corresponding configuration options for accounts.


    sylvinus wrote: Totally agree. Maybe in 2005 a friends system made sense on Jamendo but now with Facebook connect, twitter & co, we don't need that anymore. So we'll probably turn most of the friends features off. Which of those features would still be useful ? (Private messages? with an antispam daily quota? recommendations?)


    I find this misunderstanding regrettable. From my point of view, Jamendo community suffers from a lack of social functions, it's not reasonable to cut them totally -- one check box "do not send me friendship request notifications" would be sufficient.

    Sure, there is another way, *probably* meant in the answer -- all social functions could just be taken away from Jamendo and outsourced somehow. I've even suggested such solution facing the supposed Jamendo's collapse. However, if Jamendo is still alive and fine -- I'd rather prefer to see it more social instead.

  43.  permalink
    These are very good news! Thanks sylvinus.

    Please don't underestimate the power of Ogg Vorbis and the stream of FOSS users it gave you. I am sure a lot of the publicity Jamendo got was because of its "openness".

    The low usage is explained easily because MP3 is the default and Ogg Vorbis is quite hidden (and Ogg Vorbis downloads are officially torrent only). The bigger filesize is because Jamendo once decided to encode them with a very high bitrate instead of something similar to MP3...

    archive.org offered hosting so I think Ogg Vorbis should not be an issue. I am very willing to help with a community effort on this! I would be up for the task too if you will not work with archive.org. Surely we could manage to cover the costs.


    Statistics/"Top" Albums:
    If you are using the "rating" (one can get from the API) directly then there still is the issue with older releases getting higher rankings no matter what. I once explained that but cannot find the forum thread anymore.




    Please for the love of god make the search function use an logical AND finally. it is useless as it is. :neutral:

    As for the watch words, there once was a bug if a user did not set any watch words. The frontpage would show some weird stuff. If that still exists it might be related to the trouble. Just disable something if there are no watch words (or something like that :D ).
    •  
      CommentAuthorzeland
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     permalink
    sylvinus wrote: However, the *extremely low* popularity of the Ogg files doesn't really give us an incentive to give that task a higher priority.

    My analysis of this is because 'WE HAVE NO CHOICE". It's either MP3 direct download or no music. The less principled will succumb to MP3 downloads.

    sylvinus wrote: The usage ratio OGG vs. MP3 for 2009 was 99.5/0.5 ; That would be fine if Ogg took 0.5% the disk space and the costs, but takes even more disk than the MP3s, and the same energy to encode/maintain.

    Reverse the roles. Offer OGG as direct downloads & put MP3 up as shitty torrent downloads that don't work 99.5% of the time. I bet you, you would see the same 99.5/0.5 split in favour of OGG. People want their music & they want it NOW! Not 2 hours later. Not tomorrow. Not next week.

    Don't you start with the argument about MP3 being the more prevalent codec. Xvid, Theora, mpeg4, h264, AAC, APE, FLAC, OGG, etc were never part of the default codes available on the Windows platform. The fansubing sceeen (and not to mention the pirating screen as well) has proven more than enough that if people want to watch/listen to something, they'll make the one-time effort to install the required codes.

    sylvinus wrote: So, should we continue supporting Ogg ? I'm a strong supporter of open source but in this case, with the MP3 patents soon expired, the Ogg usage abysmally low, the impossibility to use Ogg either in webpages for everyone, or in any *popular* mobile device... well it's frankly hard to justify continuing ogg support. If it's just to give us a good image in the community it's stupid.

    "strong supporter of open source" & "it's frankly hard to justify" should never appear in the same sentence. Supporting open standards is about principles, and being principled is not stupid!

    If you want to be "clever", just put the FLAC files for up for download. The OGG crowd would be more than happy.
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     permalink
    zeland, you don't have to lecture me on open standards. I've put my dollars where my mouth is, and since 2005 *several* thousand euros (plus human costs) have gone in ogg support. So yes, I'm a strong supporter, I don't have to prove it anymore. But I'm also managing a tight budget, we have had to fire people here. We just can't continue paying for features nobody uses. There used to be direct OGG downloads on Jamendo, when the orange version was released. Less than 1% usage despite the high visibility, AND we found that more than 50% of these 1% actually downloaded both versions, to be able to play something on their iPods. We had a well-advertised http://ogg.jamendo.com/ , nobody cared !! Despite repeated mails, we never appeared in http://www.vorbis.com/music_links/ . So at one point, we just can't take it anymore.

    The Chilling Spirit:
    hey that's a very interesting graph. let me hack a few scripts together, I'm going to generate things like that automatically to help us fine-tune (well, let's just say "tune" ;-) our rating formula.

    do you mean the "search" function of the API or of the general website ?

    watchwords, I might turn that off for a while until we've got time to fix them
    •  
      CommentAuthorhjfischer
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010 edited
     permalink
    Actually, the question about ogg was merely concerning the streaming not the torrents downloads. For streaming, which usually is at low bitrates, the sound quality of mp3 is poor (i.e., around 128 kbit/s and below). But perhaps this is just what the folks are used to nowadays.

    Anyway, sorry if I'm slow at understanding, but does the answer mean there will be no ogg streaming anymore? If so, shouldn't such things be announced to the community, perhaps by using kind of a status page like sourceforge does it? If things just stop working, folks usually are confused - is it my system, my player, is it the connection or whatever, or is it just that jamendo stopped supporting it.
    •  
      CommentAuthorsylvinus
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     permalink
    hjfischer, there was a hardware failure so we still have to recover from that. no decision has been taken yet but if there's no large support from the community we'll turn it off.
  48.  permalink
    Nice technical exchanges.
    But what about the main issue ?

    WILL JAMENDO CONTINUE TO EXIST ?

    Or are we just struggling to see if it is possible to have the platform in existence, and have the end of february as a dead line to say Yes or No ?`

    A straight answer would be most welcomed.
    •  
      CommentAuthorsam vimes
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     permalink
    Hi all,
    i'm a big fan of open source and free software, but i really don't care, whether my music is .ogg or .mp3. The important thing for me is: The music itself is free. When you can save costs, if you drop ogg-support, do it and help free music and jamendo. In the future, i think formats like MusicDNS or similiar are a big chance for jamendo (because you can "put the community in the music", as far as i understood it).
    Thanks to sylvinus for answering the questions of the community!
  50.  permalink
    sylvinus wrote: if we can have *specific* examples of inconsistencies


    Some examples:

    http://www.jamendo.com/en/albums
    above the table: "Discover the 30186 albums ..."
    table header (all albums): "Browsing 29969 album"

    http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Frank_Harper: "Classics Set I" - 46 reviews
    http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/58166 - 50 reviews

    http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Frank_Harper: "Heavenly Walk" - 36 reviews
    http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/51292 - 35 reviews

    http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Frank_Harper: 29 fans
    http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Frank_Harper/admin?edit=artist_stats: 6 adds to favorite (none from Aug to Oct 2009)

    Up to now there were two kind individuals donating to Frank Harper (thank you!), but on the donations page and in my stats the first one is missing.

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