Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

How about adding a live chat feature on the Bandmix forum index? This could be a feature that only paid members could use? How about a Bandmix members' CD listing which lists various Bandmix members who have recorded CD's and a link to their respective websites or Myspace pages? This also could be part of a paid membership. Just a couple of thoughts...

Bob,
I can't answer for the folks at Bandmix, but what would be in it for them?

I'm not saying that the live chat is a bad idea, but the ultimate reason for Bandmix , as with all good businesses, is the bottom line.

You may recall some time back, there was some discussion about Bandmix's website builder "BandVista".
Craig said something to the effect that Bandmix should reduce their premium rates, include the website builder, and they would probably make more money in the long run.

I thought Craig was talkin' like a cheapskate at that time, but seeing how many regular free and paid members have gravitated to myspace for free, Craig may have had a very valid case.

I like Bandmix and know that it works as a service to contact other musicians. The forum is just a nice extra feature .

Howlin'

Frankly, you have plenty of free services all over the net.

What I find interesting is Facebook, myspace, twitter (social networking sites), where the goal of the sites is to connect people and applications / widgets to make the sites more accessible and user-friendly.

Those sites generate 100% of their revenue from advertisers, and rely on the traffic / popularity and frequency of visitors.

Also there are TONS of free online forums. The PBB type forums are slightly more user friendly and visually pleasant than bandmixes is, for what that is worth. What makes the bandmix forums so successful (in our eyes) is the fact that they are not busy enough to attract trolls and other undesirables, so we end up with mostly a tight-knit community. I can't say it's a bad thing, but I somehow think it was more accidental, based on the lack of commercial success of the site, rather than some planned 'super community' of great musicians.

I've laid out very well thought-out and forward thinking suggestions to making Bandmix a better place (a long time ago), without considering band-vista (since I haven't used it at all), but Bandmix owners seem to feel that this old and tired fee-based system is better, even though there are individual sites out there that do similar functions, for instance, I can find more people for bands using Craigslist, have 'bigger' forum conversations on Harmony Central, or 1000 other free forums, and there are about 20 other 'matchmaking / musician profile' services out there, like musician forest, indaba, etc..

I canceled my membership probably a year ago, for one, I didn't need a band anymore, and when I did, I never really found anyone through here anyways... So the forums (people) and the free profile (which I really can set up almost anywhere nowadays..) are all bandmix has going for it. But is it enough?

The quality of those I've contacted on Bandmix have been, in my opinion, superior to any other website. I don't know, it may have something to do with being a paid member. Maybe a little more serious musician pays the premium membership here. Perhaps a live chat or other new feature should be included with either a free membership or paid one. A lot of times when I go on the forum I see that one of the frequent contributors is also on the forum. It would be cool to shout out and start a live chat with people here. I private message some of you here (and appreciate your responses) and even talked with philby and ratsass a while back on the phone. Then some of you have been able to visit with others here in person. That's really cool.

IRC has aways been free. You can get free IRC clients as well, KVIRC is a good one. Just open up a channel, call it band-mix and if people wanna chat, they can do it there. Much easier than getting BMix to add a feature I'm sure.

Chris

Chris4Blues wrote:IRC has aways been free. You can get free IRC clients as well, KVIRC is a good one. Just open up a channel, call it band-mix and if people wanna chat, they can do it there. Much easier than getting BMix to add a feature I'm sure.

Chris

IRC, KVIRC, sorry what's that? As you can tell I'm not up on these websites...

fisherman bob wrote:The quality of those I've contacted on Bandmix have been, in my opinion, superior to any other website.

That's because we, as musicians, are, by definition, a higher class web-rat than your usual, run-of-the-mill, porn-peruser.

philbymon wrote:That's because we, as musicians, are, by definition, a higher class web-rat than your usual, run-of-the-mill, porn-peruser.

There's a difference???

Why, of COURSE there is, Jeff! We also find the best free porn, don't we?

I like the ideas of expanding the features offered to make it worth more, & o/l chats & CD's are worthy ideas, bob. Let's hope they listen.

IRC is Internet Relay Chat. I've used it quite a few times. Basically you log onto any of dozens of IRC servers all over the world, join a chat room (called a channel) or create one. The server sits there online 24/7 most of the time and relays whatever you type to everyone else logged onto the channel so that they see it in a matter of seconds, usually almost instantly. If t hings are busy it may take 3 or 4 seconds, but it's the next best thing to a phone call.

Most chat rooms can call IRC granddaddy, it was the original chat program back in DOS days. Now you can get chat programs with automatic smilies, PM (private messing, for the uninitiated), video, sound, profiles...just about anything you can think of that might be useful, someone has added it to a chat program. But they all started with IRC.

The basic difference is IRC requires a "client", like mIRC or those already mentioned, and the use of a few commands is occasionally helpful. And if you want to check it out and go join a channel, be sure and learn a bit about "netiquette". Some of the IRC old timers will ban you forever for being a jerk. Also watch out for trojans, NEVER accept any file sent to you by someone you do not know, especially someone who is not currently in the channel you are in. NEVER....can't stress that strong enough.

I used to accept them then zip them up and send them to a friend, also using a Linux box, who would open them up in a compiler to see how they ticked...the people sending them didn't know I was on a Linux machine, so Windows viruses and trojans would not run, or that they were immediately being sent to a programmer for inspection...I used a different nick every week or so and accumulated quite a collection of malicious files. For instance I had over 20 different copies of the Klez virus in a quarantine folder, 20 or 30 copies of Bad Trans, several others too, at least a dozen trojans, just about every spyware program known at the time...and no, none of them were EVER allowed to get out into the wild. I finally deleted them all...

The point is, be careful. IRC is a great chat platform, but it does have a rather large dark side, constantly searching out the uninformed...do not ever accept any file from a stranger.

EDIT: Forgot to add, this is the link to mIRC, one of the oldest and very popular IRC client

http://www.mirc.com/

Full Moon To-Night and you can tell..lol

Do you think a place that allows spam like this will even hear your suggestions? This person has been at this for weeks now.

http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=11133
http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=11132
http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=11131
http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=11130
http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=11129

Of course you could ask

There obviously should be a "report this as spam" tab on here someplace that gets responded to IMMEDIATELY. But I guess there's another feature Bandmix should add...

Don't hold your breath.

With all the spam bots we see every week, I doubt that anything will change quickly.

"The lights are on, but no one is home".