"It was the rockers in Scandinavia who first noticed it." stated a source in the tracking department at WireonFire.com. Interest in the Jeff Watson site popped up in Finland and Norway, followed closely by Japan; as the finishing touches of a major redesign were completed. ?Now that Jeff’s site is up, fans and artists can see some of the latitude we provide in our design process. Jeff Watson had the content and we were happy to put it up.? Our source went on to say that the entire WireonFire site has now been given the same treatment.
Like its sister station Radioimac.com, WireonFire has completed its site wide redesign and the initial reports are great. The new look presents a smoother, cleaner, interface with many artistic overtones.
The streamlining of the design brings out a more elegant display with faster loading pages. This serves two purposes; first, a more pleasant web experience for the listener and second, to make room because content is on the rise. As the WoF artists get the content mills cranked up, they're bringing this content online.
New features on individual pages are tailored from the artists input and design schemes. Drop down menus are expanding territory for lyrics pages, multiple band listings, extended discographies and even just the random thoughts and musings of your favorite artists. Interactive correspondence between artists and fans is also on the rise. Look for responses and announcements from the artists as well as chat and moderated chat.
What were starting to see is a new way to coordinate a community, in this case music fans, and also how much fun it is to have that interaction. New artists are coming online this month and it will be exciting to see how they find new ways to express their art and relate to their listeners.
WireonFireReports: Staff
Press Release: 01/31/02
WireonFireReports: Macworld Expo/NAMM
Dateline: Los Angeles
"Tanned, rested and ready." That was how founder Daniel Ryman described himself and the rest of the WireonFire crew upon their return to the Bay Area. After two major industry shows in as many weeks, Macworld and NAMM, the Fireites are probably grateful to be home safe. Yet ‘safety first’ is not our working motto.
Following the lead of major corporations in the industry, we too say, “Innovate”. With the wind in our sails we engaged in the time honored voyage that has been played out since business began. That is, taking the product to market.
Oh, the flesh pots of Egypt never displayed such wares in such abundance, musicians and instruments from all corners of the globe. Thousands of vendors, buyers, musicians and hangers-on crowded the floors. They made such a din of white noise that oddly, one could focus still onto the sound of the little guitar from Spain, or the mandolins from Vermont, exquisite.
So, amid that noise and tumult the WireonFire System found its voice and spoke to the world.
That’s it, no triumphant return, we didn’t sign Sony or The Rolling Stones.
Well we did check the site traffic to see if the shows helped... This Just In...
WireonFireReports is pleased to announce our site traffic topped 70,000 hits in the month of January! An all time High. See you at the shows!
To all of the great people we met at the Macworld and NAMM shows we send our regards and to all our new listeners we say thank you and Tune in soon. New Artists are being added Too!
WireonFireReports: staff
Press Release: 1/1/02
WireonFireReports: RadioiMac 2002
Dateline: San Francisco
Just announced today was the release of the 2002 update for RadioiMac.com. The streaming sister station to WireonFire.com, RadioiMac plays live streaming audio of the artists and musicians on the WireonFire network. The main features of the station will remain the same, listeners will be able to hear their favorite artists for free, either in a non genre playlist format or on a station dedicated to a musical style or specific artist. Another hallmark of the RadioiMac network is never requiring the listener to sign up, download, e-mail, prepay or qualify themselves in any way.
A guest at the site can select a player and play, or move easily throughout the network to find music (and soon video) on any of the sites pages. The redesign takes on a classical look with silver tabs and colorful categories and as always showcases the music and not the technology. With rock solid performance built into the system it’s what’s under the hood that counts, built on Macs and powered by Mac OSX Server this one is for Go and for Show. Just in time for the new year RadioiMac presents the best in live streaming audio with a cool new look. Direct your browser to Radioimac.com and let it play.
WireonFireReports: staff
For Release December 14 2001
digital.forest newsletter 02
* In this Issue...
* digital.forest Spotlight: The Wire, It's on Fire!
An innovative new company, WireonFire.com has launched a cutting edge commercial web environment, created especially to address the promotional and sales needs of the professional artist, band, or musician. It's an inventive marketplace for music with a streaming media network, a multi-media web site environment, a web-hosting service, and CD e-tail catalog.
WireonFire.com is an unprecedented way of doing business for musicians, empowering artists to promote themselves worldwide. The Artist-driven system is designed to give the working musician access to all the features and services that record companies used to provide, while allowing them to retain control over their own music.
The WireonFire 'system' consolidates web and music business details into one monthly package. Web-hosting and wired sites are only the beginning, they also combine streaming audio and video, secure e-commerce, accounting, shipping, promotions, event calendar, fan-mail, media services and more. All of this is topped off by a network of web-radio stations that play streaming broadcasts of the artists music 24/ 7. It's starting to sound like the Golden Age of Radio all over again.
The 'wired' web-sites are engineered in an ever expanding 'Carousel' designed to work in concert with each other and also share traffic with the 'central' home page. This cross-pollination is one of the more exciting aspects of the site both for the artist and the listener. A guest at the site moves seamlessly from artist to artist, CD to CD, able to listen, watch, reply and buy, yes with just one click.
A "Featured Artist Page" bannered from the home page rotates at regular intervals and highlights a members content by increasing their exposure and web station programming. The Artist's Live Streaming Banners operate throughout the radio and web-site networks, insuring all of their artists excellent playtime and maximum exposure. Their sites incorporate lively colorful multimedia presentations built into every page, making an interactive experience with dynamic content on demand. The sites work in both narrow and broadband and in a variety of browsers and screen sizes. Try that with your average 'streaming-site'.
As if that's not enough, custom players are built for the artists that are emailable and not browser dependent. This item should put an end to those expensive promo packs that consume resources and never get listened to, you just send an Artist Player via e-mail and you know it got there and you know it could be heard. The player sits on the desktop and can be played anytime. With all the talk about empowerment and artist driven, for the working band this is where the rubber meets the road. There are also players embedded into each of the sites using the QuickTime plug-in.
Systems designer Daniel Ryman was able to use a few key technologies in a little different manner than usual to create the WireonFire environment. After much experimentation he engineered an extremely stable low bandwidth audio web cast with visuals. The result is a 20k stream that provides a smooth, steady performance of audio and video across the board. Perhaps you've heard those other modem web casts with graphics that cause the audio to skip... not these guys. Being a long time music engineer/ producer, with many years of experience in digital audio, Daniel picked QuickTime as the obvious choice for web casting multiple types of media. He also saw that having their own dedicated servers and taking advantage of technologies like OSX and Darwin Streaming Server would allow them to construct a web network in the way he envisioned.
Fortunately others were able to envision it as well.
"We looked at many ISPs and experimented with a few before we switched to BOPJET, now digital.forest | BOPJET. They proved to be a great compliment to what we do. With digital.forest | BOPJET's knowledge of QuickTime streaming in all media formats combined with great collocation services we were able to achieve a working balance of local control and remote technical services." Daniel went on to credit digital.forest | BOPJET's QuickTime specialists with 'helping us fine tune our network of web casts, sites and stations. Soon they look forward to flexing their live streaming video capabilities which will allow their members to web cast live performances.
So for the best in free new music on the web go to WireonFire.com or to RadioiMac.com. No sign-ups, no cookies, no hassles, just free streaming web casts that work, so people can find the music they enjoy and want to own.
For more information about WireonFire, please go to their website:
http://www.wireonfire.com/ or email info@wireonfire.com. If your company is doing something that might be interesting to the rest of the digital.forest community, please let us know at newsletter@forest.net.
WireonFire.com, the California based internet music network, received some favorable attention recently on National Public Radio. The site was mentioned by Rita Williams on Talk of the Nation as one of the latest and most innovative of the new music delivery systems.
WireonFire.com was highlighted among the other internet systems and companies in the discussion. The focus of this talk was the nature of the non-genre playlist. This inclusiveness being one of the hallmarks of WireonFire.com and it's sister stations AudioEmissary.com and Radioimac.com, an alert listener phoned to comment.
How Do You Hear About New Music?
Guests:
Jim Webb
* Started a CD mix club in Washington D.C.
Mark Jenkins
* Music Writer, Washington City Paper
* Music Critic, NPR and The Washington Post
Vin Scelsa
* DJ, Idiot's Delight on WFUV-FM, New York City (free-form radio
show)
Matt Bailey
* Senior Analyst, Webnoize (Internet research company)
It used to be the only way to hear new music was to listen to the radio or buy an album at your local record store. Times have changed. Now, new music can be purchased on-line from virtural record stores, downloaded to your computer's hard drive, or heard on the thousands of on-line radio stations. Guest host Steve Inskeep talks with music experts and critics about the differnet ways and places people find their music today.
Additional Sources Mentioned During the Show:
www.webnoize.com: an internet research company
www.poptones.com: an on-line music store
www.wxdu.duke.edu: Duke University radio station
www.wireonfire.com: on-line music source
www.liveoakmusic.org: Live Oak Music Festival
www.wxpn.org: to access DJ David Dye's World Café
www.wncw.org: a North Carolina radio station
www.mp3.com: an on-line source for music
www.launch.com: to create your own music home page
www.websterrecords.com: Webster Records
The Alternative
© 2003 WireonFire.com
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