Hi there!

After a quiet january and february, alonetone is getting some development love.

I just came back from Vienna where Samo and I hashed out the UI design for the upcoming secret project.

Here's what I just pushed out on alonetone:

  • You can now see who everyone follows
  • You can now easily add favorites to playlists
  • The beginnings of a press page
  • A few IE7 bugs fixed
  • Playlist editing and track adding was...cleaned up a bit
  • A handful of minor changes here and there
  • Upgrading to the latest version of Rails and jQuery

Let me know if anyone sees any issues.

We're humming along at a good clip, track uploads are looking scarily...'exponential' on the stats page.

Welcome to all you n00bs - be sure to speak up on the forums if you have questions and suggestions.

Yeah, and if you wanna get creative with the alonetone logo for some strange reason, check out the press page with 8 different versions of the logo in 3 different formats.

Yeah....that's it for now. Time to enjoy all the good music that's landed here recently.

Your Comments

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

another cultural landslide
another cultural landslide said 3 months ago

We're humming along at a good clip, track uploads are looking scarily...'exponential' on the stats page.

Holy crap, Batman! Exponential is a euphemism. Yowza!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

Sister Savage
Sister Savage said 2 months ago

Secret project! Secret project! Secret project!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

globalskanetwork
globalskanetwork said 2 months ago

Sounds Skanktastic!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

VIVIAN CIRCLE
VIVIAN CIRCLE said 2 months ago

There is an Agency...(stop)
Awaiting further instructions...(stop)
A secret revealed...(stop)
evidence will be solidified...(stop)
extendedextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayextendedplayplayextendedplay

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

Lalo Oceja
Lalo Oceja said 2 months ago

hey... thank you so very much for this amazing, awsome and wonderful site, I am enjoying it more and more. secret project?... can't wait to know about it!!!!!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

Trixie Thorne
Trixie Thorne said about 1 month ago

Tnahx guys at alonetone for all your work in making "Alonetone"! all that it is great stuff1 Keep it up! I salute you!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

Minibar Madness
Minibar Madness said about 1 month ago

I must admit I'm amazed at the amount of new stuff constantly being uploaded. So much talent out there with sooooo much time on its hands!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

olifante
olifante said about 1 month ago

Thanks for creating Alonetone, it's very nice. However, I've noticed that I often find myself looking for a few features that don't yet exist:

  • Being able to classify songs by genre or add a tag.
  • Star-ratings. Binary favorites are not expressive enough.
  • Ranking songs/artists by play count, number of times favorited by others, number of comments received.
  • Ranking artists by number of songs uploaded, freshness, activity.
  • Playing your own songs when you're logged in shouldn't add to play count.
  • Downloading a song seems to add to the play count. I think this should be a separate metric.
  • Songs should only be counted as having been played when they reach the end (like in iTunes), or maybe once you reach halfway. Currently I think that the play count increases once playback starts.

Keep up the great work!

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

olifante
olifante said about 1 month ago

One more thing, very important! Why is there no way to reply when people comment your songs? It would be nice to be able to hold conversations and have some constructive critique around songs.

blog: spring cleaning, see who follows who

olifante
olifante said about 1 month ago

Oh! Oh! Oh! One more feature request: being able to fast-forward, ideally with a time-slider. Having several playback speeds would also be nice.

Sorry to be such a bother :-)

User Say something as a guest or login:

It's been an amazing month at alonetone, in part thanks to the RPM challenge which many alonetoners participated in as well as brought many new faces to alonetone.

For those who don't know about it, the challenge is to record / produce a full album within February. Kind of like the 24 hour album but in a month. :)

In the last week alone, more than 1000 new songs were added to alonetone. New signups were on the rise, and new tracks were flying by at a rate too quick to listen to:

hits

To the all the new faces: Welcome! It's going to be an incredible month catching up with all the new music here.

In honor of all the hardworking musicians who completed their album, we've put together a page listing all of your albums:

rpm challenge

It's going to be a great spring for alonetone. I'm back in action maintaining the site (after taking Feb off for cough music making) and the rumors regarding the upcoming secret project - well, they are all true.

Enjoy listening to all the great music produced during February and cheers to the new guys for hanging out with us on alonetone. Have fun!

Your Comments

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Sudara
Sudara said 3 months ago

Oh, and please let me know if your album is not listed on the RPM page, or if your album *is* listed, but shouldn't be ;)

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

tim mcfate
tim mcfate said 3 months ago

thought i would cover all the bases and tell you here as well that my album isnt listed as far as i can tell
tim mcfate
food and shelter

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

another cultural landslide
another cultural landslide said 3 months ago

Man, we're just starting to dig in... and this year's crop of music is just ASTOUNDING. What a feast!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

jimbouchard
jimbouchard said 3 months ago

Hi Sudara,
My RPM album is also up here: http://alonetone.com/jimbouchard...
Thanks for pointing out the great number of RPMers here!
also I found this from this post on MacJams: http://www.macjams.com/forum/vie...

Thanks!
Jim

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

glu
glu said 3 months ago

the graphic looks like an inverse of current stock prices! Looks like music capital is up this year! :)

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

hardrick
hardrick said 3 months ago

amazing!!!
:)

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Scenery
Scenery said 3 months ago

Is it too late to get my band listed as an RPM band? I guess I kept seeing alonetone on the RPM forums but never really checked it out until now. Great site!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

mmi
mmi said 3 months ago

Sniff... you forgot mine.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Robert James
Robert James said 3 months ago

There is still more to come as those of us who didn't finish on time try to keep their back ends in gear and eventually get things done.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Jay Durfey
Jay Durfey said 3 months ago

I just uploaded mine here today, I would like to be added to the RPMer's list too please!!!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Rob and Laura
Rob and Laura said 3 months ago

It's nice to be among such wonderful company.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Michael Wilson
Michael Wilson said 3 months ago

I uploaded mine a few days ago (Master of None). I would like to be added to the list if possible.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

bud
bud said 3 months ago

Didn't expect to see the page with all the RPM'ers together - that's great. Don't see Nick Flash though. Maybe he didn't post his album. I'll check.
Thanks for putting this together.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Jack Merlot
Jack Merlot said 3 months ago

Hey, sorry I'm late - I just uploaded some of the tracks I recorded for Orchids for Betty, (my entry in the RPM Challenge 2009).

Check out my page at the RPM Challenge or check out my website for more music!

I'll try to upload the rest of my album here later, right now I'm on a really slooooow computer.

Thanks!

  • Jack Merlot

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Nervous Neal Smith
Nervous Neal Smith said 3 months ago

I was finally able to get my tracks uploaded! I'd like my project ("Manhandle Suite") to be included on the RPM Challenge page as well. Thanks!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Sudara
Sudara said 3 months ago

Ok, I think I got everyone who made an album here on alonetone. Just let me know if that glass of wine I just drank affected my album collecting abilities.

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Cave Street
Cave Street said 3 months ago

Thank you Sudara, for hosting this awesome community of artists!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

beatnikturtle
beatnikturtle said 3 months ago

Hi Sudara - we just uploaded our RPM Challenge 2009 album "When I Was Your Age" (http://alonetone.com/beatnikturt.... Can you add it to the RPM album collective? Thanks!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

transmit
transmit said 3 months ago

Hi, I'm Transmit and I did an RPM album, "Signal To Noise". A few of the songs are on my alonetone profile:

http://alonetone.com/transmit

And here is my RPM link:

http://www.rpmchallenge.com/comp...

Thanks!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

bellbirds
bellbirds said 3 months ago

bellbirds are yet another RPM band that's happy to find a home here. love the site and we're thankful for the hosting opportunity. thanks for helping everyone spread the love!

blog: RPM is over, 1000 new songs

Sister Savage
Sister Savage said 3 months ago

What a great tribute to the RPM Challenge! Thanks Sudara, yet again! X!

User Say something as a guest or login:

alonetone 1 year ago

This is what alonetone looked like 1 year ago.

Alonetone wasn't really "launched" in the hyped web 2.0 popular way. It just kinda slid out. irwinnormal was the first to play with it in December 2007. I emailed a few friends. I broke uploading, went on christmas vacation, came back. It was January 2008 when things first got rolling.

So, it's been a year! Over 4000 tracks uploaded by over 400 musicians. We've delivered over 230,000 tracks. Yes, A chunk of those went to the greedy spider invasion of mid 2008, but it's safe to say we're pumping out the tunes. We're just the right size. Not to big, not too small.

Thanks to everyone who signed up in 2008 and uploaded their tunes. A extra-HUGE thanks to everyone who suggested ideas, let me know when something broke, listened to my rants and answered my obscure and detailed questions - I'm looking at glu and ACL especially. Each piece of feedback helps us build what we humbly hope to be the most kicking-assiest place to host music at. Thanks guys.

Also, this site would be nothing without the genius of Samo Korosec aka smoofles who provided the original and the current alonetone design, consistently delivered top notch ideas and psd files, travelled 6 hours from Vienna on multiple occasions to help out, provided endless user interface handholding over IM, and in general gave me the best 'working together' experience I've ever had on a web app. Thanks Samo.

Oh, and I cooked up a new years treat last night! Try following a musician you like. Look for the 'follow' button on the top right of anyone's alonetone page. It looks like this:

follow

alonetone will email you when that musician uploads a new track. You'll also see a list of tracks from the folks you follow on the alonetone home page. (Yes, we'll have a 'view all' button soon!)

Enjoy!

Your Comments

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

another cultural landslide
another cultural landslide said 5 months ago

Suds, our lives actually changed when we signed on to alonetone last February (okay... so we didn't have much of a life at that time, but hell - it changed anyway); and we're honored to be a part of this place with fine folks who've found their way here. alonetone is - Home. And a thing of beauty, too. Kudos to you, sir. ;)

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

Mrs. Nussbaum's Credit Card
Mrs. Nussbaum's Credit Card said 5 months ago

Alonetone rules!!!!!! Happy birthday, and huge thank yous to Sudara and all who help this place to grow, peace and prosperity for the new year...

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

smoofles
smoofles said 5 months ago

Thanks sudara, it's been a real pleasure being part of alonetone – usually most projects are a "business" affair , but alonetone has the nice touch of "friends doing stuff for friends" and it's rewarding to see people enjoying it and you putting so much of yourself into it.

Here's to 2009 and more of the nice and steady growth with great people around!

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

Visaudio Designs
Visaudio Designs said 5 months ago

Awesome! Is this follow feature in the latest version on github?

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

hardrick
hardrick said 5 months ago

Thanks Sudara. The "follow" button it´s a great idea, to have a near contact. HERE WE CAN FOUND GREAT MUSICIANS... A LOT OF BRILLIANT STARS, ILLUMINATING THE PROPER WAY TO MAKE MUSIC.

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

Joshua Wentz
Joshua Wentz said 5 months ago

Alonetone = Awesomenesstasticality.

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

polymood
polymood said 3 months ago

I'm very happy to have found aLoneTone.
Great site, thx

blog: alonetone turns 1 - follow the musicians you love

Trixie Thorne
Trixie Thorne said about 1 month ago

Thanxs suds! You legend!

User Say something as a guest or login:

You know what is nice about vacation?

Having enough time to be human, be with the family, and also being able to sneak off into my room and get long-awaited alonetone features into production and long-standing bugs wiped off my plate.

Highlights for this round of updates:

  1. Upload a new version of a track. That's right. It's finally here. Nothing fancy, just the ability to completely replace a track. It'll delete the old version from our servers. This is ideal for waking up the day after you toiled all night on a track and realize that the mix was a bit...how shall we say....off? Simply edit the track, choose your shiny new mix and no one will be the wiser.

  2. Comments and forum posts will now obey your return key. That's right, no more strange formatting! Things that you type into alonetone will appear as you typed them, which really should have happened to begin with, but hey.

  3. No more facebook integration. The largest of our resident 'elephants in the room' - the ability to browse alonetone music on facebook and add it to your profile - is now completely removed from alonetone. Yup, this loss of a feature is a very good thing for alonetone - it means I get to stop trying to keep up with their crazy changing system and focus on core alonetone. For those of you who want to add your tracks to your profile, fear not - this is all built into facebook anyway, and the alonetone facebook app was really just a lump of redundant code that was making development more difficult and bulky.

Hmm, lets see...I hammered out like 10 more bug fixes that were outstanding. Still about 20 more to go, but good progress has been made.

Oh, and don't forget to speak up if you want some alonetone guitar pics. Supplies are limited, especially in the thin department.

Your Comments

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

glu
glu said 6 months ago

w00t \o_?

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

Joshua Wentz
Joshua Wentz said 6 months ago

Can I just say: Screw Facebook. It's a waste of time and I predict that it will be out of favor with the Webs That Be by the end of 2009. Screw that noise.

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

Sudara
Sudara said 6 months ago

Here here! My morale for working on alonetone went up by 500% after removing all that facebook code.

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

another cultural landslide
another cultural landslide said 6 months ago

Ditto on the Facebook issue. We only joined to help alonetone get the server space, etc. Now we only get messages from all the people we've tried to avoid in the first place. Ugh.

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

drakonis
drakonis said 6 months ago

I always sneak a little notepad along to do design/coding while on vacation, so I'm glad I'm not the only one :-) Thanks for all the hard work!

Whereabouts in CA are you vacationing (in the rain)?
-Eduard

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

drakonis
drakonis said 6 months ago

I always sneak a little notepad along to do design/coding while on vacation, so I'm glad I'm not the only one :-) Thanks for all the hard work!

Since people don't generally do much constructive critiquing of songs here, I think that a simple replacement of a song with a new version will work just fine, as long as we can edit the description to update info on it.

I assume that does NOT update the song and description that is up on iTunes/podcast via alonetone, right?

-Eduard

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

No-pic_small
Guest said 6 months ago

is tha replace feature workin? <3

blog: Upload new versions of your tracks

tpunkt
tpunkt said 6 months ago

yea man. REplace, nice. been wanting that. and unless you REtitle it no one will know. i mean people might have listened to the track and thought "hm, no, this is a bit poo", and then you go off and make changes (coz you also thought it was poo) REmix it etc and REpost it. them lot how thought it were poo may not go back to it unless they know theres been changes. ...why am i still talking?

User Say something as a guest or login:
Jeffdoessudara_small
December 17, 2008

Hi there,

Migration to engine yard went as planned, though it took a bit longer than expected.

The site should be faster and smoother.

Enjoy!

Your Comments

blog: alonetone UP on engine yard

Sudara
Sudara said 6 months ago

So.....anyone notice a speed difference this week compared with before? Is it snappier or am I high on server fumes?

blog: alonetone UP on engine yard

kavin.
kavin. said 6 months ago

Kinda the opposite. Seem to have more "false starts" on songs and slow/interrupted playing. Have noticed this more on the windows machine at work (fast connection) than on the mac at home. Could just be problems on my end, but there does seem to be a difference from the pre-engine yard performance (for the worse?), may just be on my end.

blog: alonetone UP on engine yard

Sudara
Sudara said 6 months ago

Ho hum ho!

Well, the mp3s stayed in the same place the whole time (they sit on Amazon), so any mp3 performances (play, start, stop) shouldn't be related to the move.

What should be improved is how fast the home page loads up, and switching between different pages on alonetone. Maybe it's not as noticeable as I thought? From the testing I did, it seems to be, but....

Thanks for the feedback!

blog: alonetone UP on engine yard

Jack Merlot
Jack Merlot said 3 months ago

Hey, sorry I'm late - I just uploaded some of the tracks I recorded for Orchids for Bett, (my entry in the RPM Challenge 2009).

Check out my page at the RPM Challenge or check out my website for more music!

I'll try to upload the rest of my album here later, right now I'm on a really slooooow computer.

Thanks!

  • Jack Merlot

blog: alonetone UP on engine yard

Sister Savage
Sister Savage said 3 months ago

What a great tribute to the RPM Challenge! Thanks Sudara, yet again! X!

User Say something as a guest or login: