1. What Happened to the Newsletter since October 2008?

The company that was providing the server for irishtune.info apparently went out of business silently in early November 2008. We were left high and dry for a few days until I set things up at what is now the current hosting company. The only thing that was lost in the process was this Newsletter's online archives, going back to the year 2002, and any individual subscriber settings you may have had, such as digest options, etc. Fortunately I was able to extract your e-mail addresses, and that is exactly who is getting this first new Newsletter. Now that you original subscribers have received this, I will now open the new Newsletter to new subscribers. The archives will have to start from scratch right here!

This new Newsletter does not have a digest option, but it does have a number of advantages:
* Less frequent and with less details. If you want more frequent updates and conversation, see the "Invitation to the Facebook Page" below.
* Online archive - easy to browse and search the archives even if you don't subscribe.
* RSS feed - you can get notified of new issues even if you don't subscribe.
* Portable - I can easily move this newsletter to a different server or to an entirely different mailing-list program for any reason.

2. Biggest Headline of the Past Year

... was the the public release of "my.irishtune.info" (My Irish Tune Info)

As you may have noticed while using irishtune.info this year, I finally turned "on" for public use the "my.irishtune.info" personalization features I had been building for myself and a small, private group of fellow musicians over the past several years.

In short, you can now use irishtune.info to track and maintain your personal repertoire, as well as keep track of your friends' repertoires. Think of it as combination of a slick playlist management and practice tool combined with a Facebook-like social network. Plus the data you contribute will form, in an entirely anonymous way, the basis for me to publish fascinating information about the global popularity of tunes and albums, the geographic distribution of the associated players, and trends over time.

I eat my own dog food. That is, all the personalization features I've added are things I find valuable and even crucial for my day-to-day life as a practicing traditional musician. I became addicted to the utility and power of the "Practice Machine" back when it was a primitive for-Alan's-use-only tool on my personal computer back in 2000, and I have been gradually refining it ever since then while I use it every day. You can depend on its reliability as much as I have for the past 9 years. I am positive that it has increased the quality of my playing and repertoire in many ways.

And the newer social-networking features are things I specifically designed to apply to one's local musical community. There is no ambition to "link up the world" here. This is about providing tools to strengthen the real-world musical community you live in, nothing broader. And nothing about you is shared with anyone other than with people you have manually, consciously identified as people with whom you play Irish music. Instead of silly "news" about what someone ate for breakfast, the news is highly focused on musically relevant events. For example, when a friend learns a new tune, you automatically get notified exactly what tune that was and where you could learn it, too.

Go ahead and create yourself an account. It's very easy:
http://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php

The only caveat is that you'll feel the meaning of the "beta" (meaning "not quite finished") label mainly in the lack of documentation and spit-and-polish. Everything works and is reliable, but it may not always be pretty or obvious. That will come ... along with many other planned features ... eventually.

3. Invitation to the Facebook Page

Even if you do not use Facebook, you can now follow updates, news, and user comments about irishtune.info here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/irishtuneinfo/19001127892

If you are a Facebook user, please "become a fan" of this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info.

4. News Summary

Yes, I did get some actual musicological work done, too. Since last November, I worked through 17 albums and 3 tunebooks:

Books:
Two more of the Vallely's classic tutor books, now back in print: Learn to Play the Fiddle  and Learn to Play the Uilleann Pipes, both generously donated by Niall Vallely.
Sully's Irish Music Book, another classic that is still in print, donated by Tony Sullivan himself.

Albums (most recently added first):
The Chieftains 5
The Doon Céilí Band, Around the World for Sport
Andy McGann and Paul Brady, It's A Hard Road to Travel
Past Masters of Irish Fiddle Music
Bringing It All Back Home. Volume 3
The Chieftains, The Celtic Harp
Gerry O'Connor, Time to Time
Vinnie Kilduff, The Boys from the Blue Hill
Martin O'Connor, The Connachtman's Rambles
Líadan, Casadh na Taoide. Turning the Tide
Cillian Vallely and Kevin Crawford, On Common Ground
The Hammers, From Distant Shores
The Bridge Céilí Band, Sparks on Flags
Máirtín O'Connor, Cathal Hayden, Seamie O'Dowd, Crossroads
Matt and Shannon Heaton, Lovers' Well
Brett Lipshutz and Randy Lee Gosa, Night and Day
Patrick Kelly, Patrick Kelly From Cree. Fiddle Music

Thanks to a number of people for donating some of the above CDs. Details on the Facebook page ...

5. Help Upgrade irishtune.info

This is not only the usual time of year for fundraising pleas, it also happens to be very timely for a server upgrade. Although I'm happy with the customer service and competence of the hosting company, you may have all noticed occasional brief outages throughout the year, which are primarily a consequence of living on a "budget" server shared with hundreds of other Web sites, whose owners are sometimes irresponsible or incompetent, causing outages for everyone else. The next level up in price would bring us a great reduction in the number of other Web sites burdening our server.

Please consider subscribing for US $6.00 per year, or showing your support in some other way:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

A very easy way to support irishtune.info would be to remember to use the "Go Shopping" links (to Amazon, CD Baby, etc.) from the above page as you do your holiday shopping this year ... no cost to you, while you send a cut of those corporate profits towards a good cause ...