irishtune.info Newsletter 2010
Date: November 25th 2010
Dear irishtune.info Newsletter subscribers,
Here's issue #2 - a year later! Maybe this will be just an annual newsletter after all, not 2 or 3 times a year. This seems like a good time of year because: 'tis the season to support your favorite good causes.
Irish traditional music is a community. irishtune.info aims to support that community. Likewise, it needs *your* support. It is yours to use, and as such, it is "ours." Noone else but you is supporting it, and my work is always absolutely unpaid. This year we are on track for our worst-ever year of financial support -- in fact, we are currently going into debt! On the other hand, we can be grateful for the record number of people who donated a record number of traditional CDs that were missing in the database. (Thank you!)
Topics covered in this issue:
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my.irishtune.info Growth
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News Summary
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Invitation to the Facebook Page
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Reasons to Donate to irishtune.info
1. my.irishtune.info Growth
A year ago, we first saw the personalization features begin appearing for public use. For example: track your own repertoire, practice it efficiently, track your own album collection and see, for any tune, which sources you happen to have in your collection. Also, a raft of social-networking features let you track you and your musician friends easily track each other's activity regarding your newest tunes and music acquisitions. I have put a fair amount of work this year into improving and adding features.
Slowly but surely, the number of musicians around the world who are using these features is not just growing, but accelerating. To date, 357 people have created free accounts, about half of whom have at least started entering their repertoires. 108 of them have indicated their geographic location, which gives us a fascinating map:
A sample of where irishtune.info members are.
Go ahead and create yourself an account! It's very easy:
http://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php
2. News Summary
Yes, I did get some actual musicological work done, too, especially thanks to the seventeen generous donations of one or more CDs to irishtune.info over the course of this year. (
See who gave what.)
Some overall stats: irishtune.info now covers 494 albums and 52 books of Irish traditional music, i.e., 22,645 separate tune recordings and transcriptions. I have determined that those 494 albums contain just 4,911 musically distinct tunes. And (only) 2,178 of those tunes can be found at all in any of those books. We are rapidly approaching the milestone of documenting 5,000 distinct tunes! (N.b.: Generally about 13% of the total tunes are actually songs, an area of research which is only superficially addressed in irishtune.info.)
You can browse exactly which albums were added to the database, and when, by visiting our Facebook page.
3. Invitation to the Facebook Page
Even if you do not use Facebook, you can follow updates, news, and user comments about irishtune.info on this public Web page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/irishtuneinfo/19001127892
If you are a Facebook user, please "like" this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info, and which inserts our updates into your newsfeed.
4. Reasons to Donate to irishtune.info
How to donate:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html
Here are some reasons why irishtune.info needs your donations:
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$75 / year: Basic fees I pay to keep the existing Website alive.
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$150 / year: Amortized costs of the tech stuff I use exclusively for maintaining irishtune.info:
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Wishlist: $24 / year to improve global access to irishtune.info by renting a dedicated IP address, so that rogue or hijacked sites who also live on our low-budget shared server won't cause irishtune.info to get "blacklisted." (We got blacklisted at least twice in the past year, according to reports from two different customers of UK Internet service providers).
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Wishlist ("dream on!"): $500 / year to upgrade to a "private" server where we would be allowed to install powerful and fine-tuned tune-search features, and build many other exciting technology upgrades.
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A budget to buy CDs and tunebooks that you think should be added to irishtune.info. If you donate, let me know which CDs or books you want to see added!
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Used or new CDs that are not yet covered in irishtune.info.
Please consider subscribing for just US $6.00 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 month, 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 send a cut of those corporate profits towards a good cause ...
Thank you and best wishes,
Alan Ng
