Dear irishtune.info Newsletter subscribers,
If you are curious about the growth and direction of irishtune.info, this update is for you. Thank you for your interest and support!
In this issue:
One year ago, when I first introduced the instantly playable audio snippets of each tune, about 13,000 out of the 16,000 indexed tune recordings were available for you to play. The manual work of precisely selecting the audio clips for each tune within every track of every album is still in progress, but now 16,300 clips are playable, out of the 18,650 tune recordings now represented in the database. That’s an increase from 81% to 87% of tune-discography entries getting that familiar “play” button. Plus for many of the existing 13,000 snippets, I went back and improved the quality of those by skipping over pre-tune introductory music and speech. For example: pipers who like to include the prolonged sounds of priming their instrument … ;)
I also recently expanded the availability of the “primary” sound clip for tunes listed on tune reports like the top tunes lists. Once the work of creating and assigning “main” incipit recording is closer to 100% completion, you will see the playable audio feature appear more thoroughly throughout irishtune.info, with an especially attractive goal of building that feature into the tune search results as soon as possible.
Right now there are only 219 tunes left for which a “primary” sound clip is not yet ready (so 96% done). I hope to finish that task earlier in the coming year ...
Since the last report, one year ago, irishtune.info has expanded its coverage by:
78 albums (for a current total of 650)
1 tunebook (for a current total of 57)
433 distinct tunes and songs (for a current total of 5,884)
You can browse exactly which albums and tunebooks were added to the database and when, by browsing our Facebook page (even if you do not have a Facebook account), at https://www.facebook.com/irishtune
Many of the added albums were either directly donated or funded by donors. Let me point out the detailed list of donors published at:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html#donors
This year I put a fair amount of work into updating some underlying “infrastructure” of irishtune.info which had little visible impact, but “future-proofed” things. A few things which did add immediate value to you included:
A new historical graph, Recordings per Year.
An improved tool for my.irishtune.info users to post profile pictures of themselves.
An improved tool for my.irishtune.info users to locate themselves in the world, plus the new capability to automatically recognize your time zone and behave accordingly throughout my.irishtune.info.
More and more people are using the personalized my.irishtune.info features. So far 935 people have created accounts, with 250 of those active this year, which is 20% more than last year. As you can see in “Top Session Tunes,” so far 386 people have entered at least some of their repertoire, and 36 individuals have entered repertoires of 100 or more tunes. This is giving us a better and better picture of global tune popularity.
A sample of where irishtune.info members are.
Go ahead and create yourself an account! It's very easy:
https://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php
Even if you do not use Facebook, you can get more frequent updates about irishtune.info on this public Web page:
https://www.facebook.com/irishtune
If you are a Facebook user, please "like" this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info and occasionally inserts our updates into your newsfeed.
If you prefer Google+, I also maintain a presence there for irishtune.info:
https://plus.google.com/101537645110486630257/
Do you wish a certain tune wasn’t missing from the index, or that a particular favorite album was included? Here’s how to do something about that:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html
Here are some reasons why irishtune.info needs your donations:
$180 / year: Basic fees I pay to keep the website alive and secure.
$100 / year: Amortized costs of the tech stuff I use exclusively for building irishtune.info
$200 (so far this year): other CDs and tunebooks already purchased exclusively for inclusion in irishtune.info - $25 of which comes from debts carried over from previous years.
Wish-list item ("thinking big!"): $300 / year to upgrade to a private server where I would be allowed to build much more powerful tune-search features.
Missing albums to acquire: you pick the album you want to see added, and either fund it with specific directions on what to get, or send it in directly. As always, used albums are just fine!
Please consider becoming a “Patron” for $5 / month, or a “Supporter” for $2 / month, or even just a “Fan” for $6 per year, or showing your support in some other way:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html
Finally, as you go holiday shopping in the next few weeks, please remember that a very easy way to support irishtune.info is to use the "Go Shopping" links (to Amazon, CD Baby, etc.) from the above page as you do your holiday shopping this year ... At no cost to you, while you redirect a cut of corporate profits towards this good cause ...
Thank you and best wishes,
Alan Ng
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