State of the Strut

RAJ

So as many of you have noticed, this site has been having technical issues the past week or so. Bottom line is the server is overloaded and my host wants me to upgrade to a server class that is just not economically feasible. Let's face it, the ad revenues are not coming in, and if I were to upgrade the server, I would be losing about $300/month.

The biggest culprit, I'm guessing is the mix section (seeing the rest of the sections did not take off like I imagined it would). Bottom line is, I'm faced with an ultimatum to upgrade or severely scale back the site.

What are your thoughts on this, it would be a shame to rip down the rest of the site, but at this point, right here seems to be the bread and butter.

It's kind of sad, as I poured a lot of heart and soul and resources to big up the rest of the site vs. it just being a boring old forum. But at this point I can't be coming out of pocket like woah.

Grandfather

Dam, maybe you can get mixes linked from peoples soundcloud accounts. The default color scheme matches the strut theme too.

RAJ

Grandfather said:

Dam, maybe you can get mixes linked from peoples soundcloud accounts. The default color scheme matches the strut theme too.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Or have divshare or some other site host them for a meager fee.

edulus

strut fund-raiser? public radio style once a year?

RAJ

edulus said:

strut fund-raiser? public radio style once a year?

We used to do that in the old days. Right now, I feel bad raising money for here when there are tsunamis and shit going on in the world.

dj_cityboy

man i would be adding some paypal "donation" links, my buddy does this with his site and he catches mad traffic daily and monthly, his server costs are well over $300 per month, by having a donation tab, he cuts a signifigant amaount of what he pays per month, mind you it doesnt fully cover all the costs, but it covers a big portion of it.

expecting members that have been here for 10 yrs/10 months or 10 days to pay up might seema bit harsh, but its either that or they get less site...

of course donations arent sumthin you can guarantee either, but given the volume of dudes/dudettes on here expecting some dudes to hand over a fiver or a tener should be much to ask for...

edit - or on the t-shirt front, add $5 to every t-shirt to go towards server costs

BruceGeetz

Hosting the mixes off site, as you mentioned Raj, would be a good idea.

and a quick question, as the site stands now, can I download the mixes, or just stream?

cookbook

funny, i was just thinking yesterday that Soulstrut needs a weekly/monthly podcast. maybe an idea is to begin having selected members produce a mix for that weeks/months podcast, and that is all that is hosted on Soulstrut proper. we could then create a new "Mixes" forum section where users could post their own mixes (hosted outside of Soulstrut). i think this new forum could also allow for more discussion of track lists, artwork, etc.

Unherd

moving the mixes to soundcloud seems like it should be job one. that's gotta cut the server requirements significantly.

beyond that, i wonder if you couldn't get some of the designers around here to lay out a bunch of new shirts and stuff, and maybe limit access to the real heads forum to people who've contributed; either bought a shirt, or donated, or bought classifieds.

i got some peoples in philly who run a big screen printing operation. don't know what they charge, but lemme know if you want me to put you in touch.

mr.brett

I was always annoyed that I couldn't download a high bitrate mp3 from the mixes page, so I'm definitely in favor of hosting mixes on a reliable service. I would like to see a forum dedicated to sharing mixes... If you have a mix, start a new thread and post a downloadable mp3 and whatever else you want. If a mix is hot, there will be a lot of posts in the thread and everyone can easily find the best mixes from a large pool of great djs.

billbradley

Do what you have got to do. We'll all still keep coming back.

dj_cityboy

having all the mixes moved to soundcloud still doesnt eliminate the cost of having them housed on soundcloud unless you have a paid account, i dont know the total number of mixes on the site, but when i first stumbled across this place years ago i recall tredging through pages and pages of mixes. costs associated with having the mixes in a place that could be accessable and playable, might be more than the server costs (although i am not quite sure what it costs for a soundcloud account vs the amount of space/bandwidth you get)

and given the volume of mixes the time associated with uploading them all could take a long ass time as well...

i am still all for this:

Donations are very important to SoulStrut because they help to run the website and keep everything free of charge. Without donations, it would become impossible to run the site free of charge and we would quickly have to charge for some services we offer (Like the mixes section). We never want it to come to that. You don't have to donate much, just what you can afford to spare, and we're greatful for every penny.

i would add emphasis on the mix section as that would be the bulk of the bandwidth, that way all the mixes are still housed by the strut and people wouldnt turn to soundcloud for mixes..and there would be no need to "cut down or scale back" the site...donations could be made via CC/paypal or any other method that gives people the ability to help out.

LaserWolf

I support what ever you decide.

noz

Is this how the dream of a Bernard Purdie-focused Myspace dies?

jimey

soundcloud is getting very strict with copy right issues for mixes lately...maybe mixcloud then

Snagglepus

dj_cityboy said:

having all the mixes moved to soundcloud still doesnt eliminate the cost of having them housed on soundcloud unless you have a paid account, i dont know the total number of mixes on the site, but when i first stumbled across this place years ago i recall tredging through pages and pages of mixes. costs associated with having the mixes in a place that could be accessable and playable, might be more than the server costs (although i am not quite sure what it costs for a soundcloud account vs the amount of space/bandwidth you get)

With this in mind, I'm wondering if the Strut really needs to host the actual audio content. I know this solution would be far from ideal (with respect to dealing with the current mixes and having control of the collection moving forward), but could you simply manage the database (hosting related images and info as you do) and ask that contributors host the audio content on their own Soundcloud accounts? This site would still serve as the finding aid (I'm a librarian ... can't break away from library lingo) but the costs of storing the actual content would be distributed amongst the contributors.

As I said, it's far from ideal for several reasons ... but so is paying to store all of that content in one place. Just a thought.

RAJ

noz said:

Is this how the dream of a Bernard Purdie-focused Myspace dies?

I think I met you once in Philadelphia. You had a blond mullet and your name was Kyle?

noz

Yeah we met. You were even less interesting in real life than you are on the internet.

dj_cityboy

@ snagglepuss - the idea of having people actually host the data is that, time to time people snooze on their accounts or dont keep them up to date or peeps with free accounts only have so much space so they maybe limited in what they can or cant keep, uploading a mix on soundcloud and expecting people to keep it there is sumthin completely different and theres a very HIGH probability that mixes will get lost like dust in the wind, then again at the same time there is also a chance that they wont.

the main reason i am all for the donation portion of it, is simply for the fact of not having the data lost and by keeping it the way it is now, you can rest assure thats not going to happen. having the cost distributed amongst the community by housing the audio on soundcloud wouldnt be much different then allowing Raj to accept donations, either way in the end the community is contributing and taking on some of the costs associated with maintaining the site.

the Strut doesnt really need to house all the audio, but it makes it better for everyone if it continues to keep all its ducks in a row so to speak.maybe the donation part might be a bit much and not a very sound "be all end all" option, but it would be a start, i dont have a paid for soundcloud account and a lot of people do take advantage of the fact that its free for that reason..

hell even if sumthin as small as a $5 a month donation is given, if 60 people donate thats the full cost covered, only reason i would suggest it is because, it is a great idea and SoulStrut has the user database to implement such a thing, and expecting people to pay a small amount to be able to use the side and isnt a lot to ask for, i have seen smaller communities have there complete costs covered just by donations..

sounds much better then being severely cutting back the site

vintageinfants

i also stand behind whatever decision raj makes, but instead of monthly installments id rather just drop $100 and get a t-shirt or a lock of db_cooper's hair in the mail.

Snagglepus

@DJ-Cityboy
Yeah, I do agree with what you're saying. I really only threw out that idea as a last resort. But, you're right, if we want this collection to serve as a relatively permanent archive of mixes, having them hosted in one secure place is the best option. There are examples of digital libraries (Library of Congress' American Memory being perhaps the largest and most established) that, for the most part, act as digital finding aids to collections housed elsewhere (by trusted institutions). It's an interesting solution to a common problem, but it does require putting a lot of faith in your contributors.

DB_Cooper

vintageinfants said:

i also stand behind whatever decision raj makes, but instead of monthly installments id rather just drop $100 and get a t-shirt or a lock of db_cooper's hair in the mail.

I'm getting a haircut this weekend. LET'S DO THIS.

noz

vintageinfants said:

i also stand behind whatever decision raj makes, but instead of monthly installments id rather just drop $100 and get a t-shirt or a lock of db_cooper's hair in the mail.

Son I'll send you a clump of my mullet for half that.

DB_Cooper

noz said:

vintageinfants said:

i also stand behind whatever decision raj makes, but instead of monthly installments id rather just drop $100 and get a t-shirt or a lock of db_cooper's hair in the mail.

Son I'll send you a clump of my mullet for half that.

PSSHHT. AIN'T NO ONE WANT YA RATTY-ASS MULLET CLIPPINGS DAWG.

batmon

How important are the mixes really?

There's so much music out there, is it so important to petrify this stuff?

JehovWet

batmon said:

There's so much music out there, is it so important to petrify this stuff?

The problem isn't really the total size of all the mixes being stored on the server. All together they're a decent size and growing with new submissions, but that's not really a problem yet. The problem is the bandwidth required to serve the number of requests the mix mp3s get. It eats up available bandwidth and makes other requests slow, so the entire site responds slower for everyone. (And mixes get a lot of requests.)

Pruning mixes probably wouldn't make too much of an impact unless you were really aggressive. As far as I can tell from the logs the requests tend to make a long tail, with the large majority of the requests being for new/recent mixes (and a few very popular older mixes). There's still a lot of listens for older mixes but they're not as big of a dent as the new/recent ones.

noz

DB_Cooper said:

PSSHHT. AIN'T NO ONE WANT YA RATTY-ASS MULLET CLIPPINGS DAWG.

Ratty? Never that. I wash my shit in goats milk daily. In fact I hereby challenge you to a blind taste test amongst randomly chosen Soul Strut users to determine who, in fact has the best hair.

holmes

Just ditch all the mixes & do what someone said earlier, another forum where people post links to their own mixes, like the Real Heads forum but for mixes as opposed to album rips, have the first 5 posts of the mix thread linked through to the main page to keep the exposure up.

z_illa

I see no reason why Soulstrut needs to host mixes in 2011. I know it's what started this site but it might be time to bite the bullet and become and aggregator rather than a provider..

I think a mix forum would be great. The dj would be responsible for keeping their link active and I'm sure most of us would help out when we can.

This would also protect you more.

The White House is concerned that "illegal streaming of content" may not be covered by criminal law, saying "questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works." To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to "clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances."

DB_Cooper

noz said:

DB_Cooper said:

PSSHHT. AIN'T NO ONE WANT YA RATTY-ASS MULLET CLIPPINGS DAWG.

Ratty? Never that. I wash my shit in goats milk daily. In fact I hereby challenge you to a blind taste test amongst randomly chosen Soul Strut users to determine who, in fact has the best hair.

I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR LADY LACTATING ON YOUR LOCKS, DAWGSER. BUT IF SOULONE N' 'NEM WANT TO GO BEANIE BABY WITH YOUR GOAT CHEESE HAIR BALLS, I'M 'BOUT IT.

Jimster

noz said:

DB_Cooper said:

PSSHHT. AIN'T NO ONE WANT YA RATTY-ASS MULLET CLIPPINGS DAWG.

Ratty? Never that. I wash my shit in goats milk daily. In fact I hereby challenge you to a blind taste test amongst randomly chosen Soul Strut users to determine who, in fact has the best hair.

Does your hair have it's own Facebook page?

Game over.