Frequently Asked Questions: Your Involvement


2024 Support So Far

  • 3 persons donated 3 albums and 0 books.
  • 17 people gave $500 directly
  • Shoppers who started at links directed $42 to .
  • 1 albums and 0 tunebooks purchased.
  • Current available balance for expanding album and tunebook coverage, after subtracting operating costs: -$193.

How can I show my support for this site?

is an educational project that has bills to pay but has neither funding nor institutional support. Please help!

Go Shopping

Just start your purchase of any CDs or tunebooks by using any of the "Available" links throughout this site. Or simply start any sort of shopping trip right here, and these companies will donate around 5% of the price to , all at no extra cost to you:

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Get it on iTunes

By helping you find out where you can get recordings of traditional Irish music, I hope to also be rendering a service not only to the musicians who made the recordings but also to the tradition at large, which can only benefit when more people find out about great music.

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Annual Newsletter

Consider subscribing to the free Newsletter. You will receive at most 1 or 2 e-mails per year with updates about

Read past newsletters in the Newsletter archives.

Give Directly

You can send items or checks to:

irishtune.info c/o Alan Ng
509 S Prospect Ave .
Madison WI 53711
USA

Please also indicate whether (and in what manner) I may list you among the contributors to (see below). Please make checks payable to "Alan Ng."

Your shopping trips and donations have in recent years covered all of the operating expenses, and have acquired many CDs to fill coverage gaps, and those are legally the property of irishtune.info (which may someday get non-profit tax status). I have filed US tax forms for irishtune.info since tax year 2003 in order to show that I do not personally profit or get paid from income to irishtune.info. If you would like a copy before you make a donation, just let me know. You will see that I operate irishtune.info at a very slight profit (on the order of $10 per year) both to obey US tax law and to not personally benefit tax-wise from any financial loss by irishtune.info.

More ways you can support irishtune.info are listed further below on this page.

is a participant in:

Who has supported this site?

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the following individuals for making donations directly to . Any unexplained codes are albums detailed in the Discography.

2024

2023

2023 Support Summary

 

2022

2022 Support Summary

2021

2021 Support Summary

2020

2020 Support Summary

2019

2019 Support Summary

2018

2018 Support Summary

2017

2017 Support Summary

2016

2016 Support Summary

2015

2015 Support Summary

2014

2014 Support Summary

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

Earlier


Would you be interested in help from other musicians?

Sure, that would be wonderful! Here's my wish list:

  1. Support financially or by donating Irish CDs and tunebooks that are missing in the index.
  2. "Marketing" assistance, of this sort:
    1. Making clever, clear YouTube videos demonstrating cool features of my.irishtune.info.
    2. Writing reviews, blog posts, tweeting about irishtune.info qualities and features.
    3. Talking up irishtune.info (and proposing partnership ideas) to relevant organisations such as ITMA, CCE, TunePal, Journal of Irish Music, etc.
    4. Proposing research projects to musicology researchers who would make noble use of irishtune.info data.
  3. Technical expertise, either in the form of funding to hire, or direct contribution of labor, to collaborate with me to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of audio classification and tune identification.
  4. New or used CD issues of the following now-rare albums:
    • Music from Sliabh Luachra, RTE CD183, 1995
    • Paul O'Shaughnessy, Harry Bradley, Born for Sport
    • DeDannan, Anthem
    • Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection (CD, not cassette)
  5. A copy of these books:
    • The Waltz Book III by Bill Matthiesen
  6. Get some company to issue a commercial remastering on CD of Bobby Casey's Casey in the Cowhouse.
  7. Do the organizational and legal work necessary to get registered as (or included under) an IRS-recognized non-profit educational organization.
  8. Help me write a grant application so that I can spend more time working on the Tunography.

If you want to check out my employment situation (or lack thereof), see my LinkedIn profile.


Why do you need to have and keep an original physical CD package?

It's necessary for me to have permanent access to the original physical objects because for every new item I later work on (such as a tune on a CD, or a tune in a tunebook), I compare it against all other items that are already in the database. That's not possible to do - and to absolutely verify - if I no longer have all the objects at hand. This is an established practice in quality bibliographical work generally, called the "autopsy" method.

Another reason is that occasions arise later when I wonder if I made a data-entry error or a tune-identification error, so I need to pull out the original item again to make sure. Also sometimes sharp-eyed visitors such as yourself challenge my work and I need to have the original object at hand so I can reply with confidence, either confirming my work or confirming that the challenger is in fact right on. For a list of the cases when the challenger has been correct, see the next question!

So, in short, I really could not continue doing quality, "mercilessly accurate" work like this if I no longer had all of my original sources at hand.


Who has helped find errors in my data?

Out of the hundreds of thousands of readers of irishtune.info over the years, and out of the hundreds who have written me for various reasons, there have been a handful of alert and careful musicians who have found the following real errors or omissions in my work. I was able to independently confirm their discoveries and then corrected my data accordingly. Here I would like to gratefully acknowledge their assistance: