MySpacecide

Another glum story about MySpace. It seems that not all the members on there are as active as others. In an article about people killing-off their MySpace personas and pages, there is a story about a weblog which lists MySpace members as they die. Makes for morbidly compelling reading.

Tom, again!

After last week's T-shirts having a go at myspace Tom - a more forlorn T-shirt, also related to Tom's auto-friendship on myspace.

YS Server Outage tonight

We will have a scheduled outage of the YourSpins server tonight from 20:00 GMT. This will hopefully be only for a couple of hours while we change servers.

The reason we are moving servers is so that YS users will have greater bandwidth, speed and reliability. The daily traffic to our poor, little steam-powered server is way too much now that Microsoft and others are sending large numbers of visitors our way.

We are upgrading to a super server with flashing lights and fans and everything. This should see us through the next surge in usage when we open for beta too.

Have a good weekend!

AOL's Myspace killer?

When you spend enough time reading about social networks and online communities, you will eventually come across someone proclaiming a 'Myspace killer'. However, if anyone were to do this, then why not AOL?

AOL may be preparing to launch a Myspace-type social network called “Head On” sometime in the next few weeks, says Dave Winer.

This went from rumor to “confirmed likely” in posts and comments by Jason Calacanis and Jordan Running (also here) (both now at AOL). A comment in the last link suggests that the new service will be open to non AOL members.

Keep an eye on this, and MSN's promise to open up their Messenger service to allow some kind of social networking too.

Great paper on music communities.

Not sure how long this link will be active for, but there is a good paper on Online Music Collaboration Communities which I happened across whilst kind of browsing through Google. Seems to be up-to-date too, worth a read:

This paper will explore online music collaboration communities, and the social interactions that happen within them. Collaboration is the act of working jointly with others on a common project, and is inherently a social act. For collaboration to occur there must be some type of communication channel set up to handle the shared information.

Easter holidays

We've been allowed to bring our games into class today as it is the last day of term. Tomorrow we will be out of office and will return on Tuesday, after the Easter celebrations. But don't worry, we haven't really gone away, and when we come back we should have some good news for you people signed-up to beta testing.

Until Tuesday!

Plugging-in to Microsoft.

A few hours ago the Digimpro Windows Media Player plug-in went live on Microsoft's wmplugins site. We are also a featured plugin on their homepage as I write this.

This is tremondously exciting for us as a whole raft of people are going to be able to discover us from here. Once they have downloaded the plug-in, they can also download free tracks in the di format and create their own personalized versions of these tunes.

Downloads seem to be coming through at the rate of 1 a minute. Sounds good, but at this rate the entire population of the planet won't have a copy until 2200! Not 10'o'clock, but nearly 200 years. Clearly if we are bent on world domination, we need to be quicker ;-)

Seriously though, it is a nice filip to have before we open YourSpins to the world.

Sasha/Spooky Winners!!

Yes, at last! After many missed deadlines we have listened and re-listened to all of the entries for the Sasha/Spooky remix competition for 'Strange Addiction'. Apart from being surprised at the diversity of styles and even composition in all the entries - the overall feeling was how uniformally high the standard of entries was. It was truly difficult to pick a winner - but we have!

A shortlist was sent to Sasha for him to pick the winners, and the winners are:

First Prize:
Gilberto Cornejo Ramirez for his Gcr Remix

Second Prize:
Santiago Rionda for his Sasha vs. Lifeform Electro Rmx.

Third Prize:
Zack Dell for his MuZack Mix

All the winning entries are available as mp3s here.

Gilberto wins an iPod loaded with a Sasha back catalogue.

Future competitions will be held on YourSpins. Make sure you are signed up for when we go live!

Tom is NOT my friend

Funny piece in this Wired News article about companies piggy-backing on MySpace's success. I particularly liked the end about the $18 T-shirts stating 'Tom is NOT my friend'. Order one here!

5-star award for Motel***

Congratualtions to long-time friends of Digimpro, Motel***. They have just won the Quartz Electronic Music Award for best Electronic Track with 'Sofa'.

You can listen to Sofa here, and also check out the official website and blog.

If you want to make some of your own remixes of Motel***'s work, go to YourSpins and download the free di track and Window Media Player plug-in.

Félicitations!

Digital music tops the charts

In the UK, the current number 1 is Crazy by US duo Gnarls Barkley. This hit the top spot in the charts on the strength of digital sales alone.

Maybe not so surprising, but this figure in the BBC news story brings home where the future of singles sales are. From a peak in 1997 of around 75m sales of physical singles, in 2005 that figure came down to just over 20m. However, digital downloads are showing very strong growth in the short period they have been counted by the charts' compilers, now overtaking physical sales for singles in the UK, at least.

Whither the CD single? It can't be long before those shiny discs are looked upon with the same fondness we show for 7" vinyl and cassingles.

People want their music instantly & they want it mobile. That means digital, baby! The next move seems to be from dedicated mp3 players to mobile phones that can do it all...

Optimizing music for sport

The world of sport & fitness has long had its links with music. But it seems that this is attracting the interest of scientists now as well. Why not have a personalized music system that optimizs your workout? Indeed, why not make the tracks you like into more pumping versions for the gym and more chilled-out versions for when you get home.

It's another application of DI's proprietary technology that we can't wait to offer you!