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Shift to Thumbs up Voting Only

General | From the mind of Eddie | 02/21/2010

If you’ve checked out our network over the past couple days, you probably noticed that we did away with thumbs down voting. This is a fairly significant change, so I figured I’d write a quick blog post to explain the reason for it.
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For starters, let’s look at the philosophical raison d’etre for the RV network. The aim of our network is to serve as a resource where DJs and producers can gain visibility and where fans can access a wealth of quality free music. Basically, we know there are tons of talented DJs and producers out there who deserve recognition for their skills, and we want to help them get it. With this in mind, we don’t think we’re helping any artists by allowing their mixes to be voted down. The world is full of critics and naysayers. We want the RV network to be a place where artists get support, not discouragement.
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Don’t get me wrong; honest feedback can certainly be helpful for up-and-coming artists. For this reason, we’ve left in place the comment feature so that the RV community (you) can still share your candid thoughts about any track or mix on our site.
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Another more practical reason for our removal of thumbs down voting is that some people were voting disingenuously during our contests cycles. For example, we’d be running a contest cycle, and people would start voting some of the top-rated mixes down so that their favorite mixes would stand a better chance of winning.
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This actually bothered me quite a bit in a few cases. On multiple occasions, I watched as solid mixes were voted down by people who wanted to game the system. Two examples of this that immediately come to mind are the mixes submitted by Ingo Vogelmann (for mix cycle 004) and Naveen G (for mix cycle 005). Ingo’s “Welcome 2K10” mix was a fine progressive mix, and Naveen’s “Sub Zero to Plain Zero” mix was rock solid. Both of these mixes started receiving thumbs up votes and a string of favorable comments, then people seemed to start trying to keep them from winning. There were other victims of this sort of behavior, so we’ve taken action to prevent this from happening in the future.
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So that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Going forward, people will win contests by receiving thumbs up votes, not by virtue of other music being voted down.
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Speaking of contests…I should tell you to be on the lookout for new ones to start soon. We’re cooking up some more cool prizes with MixMeister, so stay tuned!
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Eddie B
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How to Pimp the RV Media Player

General | From the mind of Eddie | 02/03/2010

Holida Sale

I’m not sure how you’ve been using the RV 2.0 media player, but I want to share a few tricks that can make the previewing process uber-efficient. Basically, I want to tell you how to pimp our player ;)

Before you start browsing for good tunes on our site, you might want to resize your main browser window so that you can fit it side-by-side with the media player window. (Unless you’ve got an unusually small screen, this should work ok.) After doing this, you’ll be able to see and use the media player simultaneously while browsing.

Next, I would suggest that you dive into our shop and start browsing through our releases, tracks, or samples (whatever your pleasure). You can browse through all releases, tracks, or samples, or you can browse through them by genre. Next, you can adjust your preferences to view 30, 50, 75, or 100 results per page. You will find a “cue all” button above your browsing results, which you can click to load all of the previews on a page. (This can be really efficient if you’re loading releases, each of which contain multiple tracks.)

RV INSIDER TIP –> After you get the previews loaded in our player, you can start pimpin’ by using the special hotkeys that we created. Here’s a little cheat sheet of commands that will let you avoid having to use a mouse.

* Space Bar : Play/Pause
* ‘M’ : Mute/Un-mute
* ‘P’ : Pause/Play
* ↑ or ← : Previous Track
* ↓ or → : Next Track

It doesn’t get much more efficient than that! With a single click you can load dozens of previews in the player and then play them in rapid fire succession by just arrowing down. We’re adding so much good music to our site right now, you gotta be efficient to get through all the goodies ;)

Eddie


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The A&R Guy – Funny (But Explicit) Video

General | From the mind of Eddie | 01/27/2010

Well, I’m breaking with tradition here a bit and walking on the wild side by posting a video that has some explicit dialogue. I’m hopeful that this won’t offend any of you blog readers. This video made its way around our office after being found on a message board. I’m posting it to give you an inside look at some RV office humor…after all, our blog is supposed to be our way of keeping it real with you, right?
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DISCLAIMER: If videos with profanity offend you, don’t watch this one. On the other hand, if you’ve got relatively thick skin and want to see a funny skit about the music industry, click play immediately.
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Top Three Reasons to Shop on RV

General | From the mind of Eddie | 01/03/2010

Holida Sale

As you know, there are plenty of websites selling dance music downloads, and at least one of them has more catalog and a much bigger advertising budget than we have. With that said, I honestly think there are at least three good reasons to shop on RV, and I wanted to take a few minutes to share my thoughts on this point…

Reason #1 to Shop on RV – $1.50 Downloads!

Of all the reasons I can think of to shop on RV, this is #1 because it just doesn’t make sense to waste money. Seriously, we’re adding thousands of quality tracks to our shop each week in WAV and MP3 format, and we’re selling all downloads for $1.50. There’s no reason for you to pay $2.49 or more for your tracks. Granted, there are a lot of labels still missing from our inventory, but that’s changing quickly. Over the next couple weeks, you’ll see tons of sexy new labels hitting our site.

Reason #2 to Shop on RV – Customer Appreciation

Since we first launched the RV 1.0 website back in 2005, we’ve always had a uniquely caring approach to dealing with our customers. Maybe we’ve enjoyed the luxury of providing better customer support because we’re smaller. I’m not sure what the reason is, but I do know we truly care about and appreciate our customers. This appreciation manifests itself in various ways – giveaways, free vouchers, etc. – and hopefully you’ve gotten a sense for this if you’ve shopped with us. As the CEO of our company, I’m never too busy to chat with our customers, and you’re always welcome to hit me up directly. (My email address is eddie@resonantvibes.com.) I’m not sure our competitors can say the same…

Reason #3 to Shop on RV – Supporting the Underdog

If there’s one thing I know about the dance music community, it’s that we’re free thinkers, not lemmings who follow mainstream trends and established corporate powers. Here at RV, we think the dance music community needs (and, in fact, is thirsty for) an alternative to the clear 800-pound gorilla in our space, and we’re determined to give you that alternative. Are we smaller? Yes. Are we an underdog? Yes. But we’re not going anywhere, and we’re going to keep shaking things up by offering more benefits to you, our beloved dance music community.

Eddie B


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Happy New Year from RV!

General | From the mind of Eddie | 12/31/2009

Happy New Year

Well my fellow dance music lovers, it’s hard to believe that another year and another decade have come to a close. I just wanted to wish you all Happy New Year on behalf of the RV Team. May your 2010 be fulfilling, prosperous, and chock-full with great tunes!


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History of House Music – Interesting Documentary

General | From the mind of Eddie | 12/23/2009

For years now, I’ve been fascinated with the history of dance music. I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading articles and books and watching documentaries on the subject. I recently came across an interesting documentary called, History of House Music, and I figured it would be good to share. The video is broken up into 15 parts on YouTube, and I’ve provided all of the parts for you in this post. If you have time, checkout the full documentary. I think you’ll enjoy it ;)
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PART ONE
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Renovating The Store

General | From the mind of John | 12/14/2009

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The Why?

Last week, we quietly unveiled some fundamental changes to the ResonantVibes.com store. This unveiling was the culmination of reams of user feedback, days of internal discussion and weeks of development. While we have yet to shout it from the mountaintops, we are confident that this overhaul will change the way you shop for music on RV.

One of the most frequent bits of advice we’ve received from users pertains to the browsing functionality of the site. Many users have suggested that we streamline the process and provide a way to quickly navigate our catalog while providing the flexibility to sort the collection. Some have mentioned that our product listings were too big and cumbersome, so we’ve slimmed them down. Significantly.

Furthermore, we wanted to provide users with more views into our catalog, so we added the ability to view by releases, tracks or samples. This is change that you can believe in (if the President of The United States of America can end a sentence with a preposition, so can we). (more…)


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How Does the RV Network Help You?

General | From the mind of Eddie | 12/08/2009

The RV Network serves a few different purposes, and I don’t think it’s fully understood by all of our site users. With this thought in mind, I figured I’d write a blog post to succinctly describe the ways in which the RV Network can help you. In short, we want the RV Network to provide three valuable benefits to the worldwide dance music community. First, we want it to be a forum where underground DJs and producers can get increased recognition and industry exposure. Second, we want it to be a convenient place where DJs and producers can store their music for free. Third, we want it to be a treasure trove of quality free dance music that fans throughout the world can access and enjoy.
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Giving You a Forum for Recognition
By now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’re running recurring mix and track contests in our Network. In these contests, we offer prizes to encourage all DJs and producers to submit their music, then we let the RV community judge the music by using our site’s voting feature. The aim of these contests is to give DJs and producers a chance to be heard by the many people coming to our site each day. We feature the winning contestants on our site, and we announce their victory through our various social media outlets (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). The basic idea is to get your music heard by more people and to help you advance in the industry.
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Hosting Your Music for Free
Another important way in which the RV Network can help you is by hosting your music for free! I think a number of DJs and producers may be sleeping on this benefit. Over the years, I’ve met tons of people handing out demos of their mixes or tracks. I’ve also gotten hoards of emails from people sending me download links for their music. We’re trying to make it easier for you to get your tunes out there. Just create an RV profile page, and upload all of your mixes and tracks. Then, whenever you want to share your music with people, just send them a link to your profile page or to the page for the item you want to share. We’ve also added a “share” button to make it easier for you to share music on well-known social networks. Other websites may charge a fee to host your music, but we’re happy to do it for free.
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Offering a Treasure Trove of Music
The third important way in which the RV Network can benefit you is by serving as a treasure trove for your download needs. Right now, we’ve got so many phenomenal mixes and tracks in our Network that I couldn’t list them here. Basically, anytime you’re looking for a great new mix to check out for free, you can come to our site and download one. We’ve made it super easy (unlike when you download a mix in a message board post). You don’t have to worry about going to some spam-laden third party download site, where you have to wait 20 seconds for your download to start (or where the download link may have already expired). In the RV network, you simply click the “download” button and get your mix. If you’re not already downloading the amazing free music in our Network, you’re missing out…big time!
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So that’s it in a nutshell…I hope this post clarifies the main ways in which the RV Network can help you. More importantly, I hope you take full advantage of the free services it offers!
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Eddie B


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Mr. Oizo Flat Beat – Funny Video; Decent Track

General | From the mind of Eddie | 12/05/2009


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What have you done for me lately, a la Facebook Integration

General | From the mind of Craig | 11/24/2009

Trogdor: The Burninator At last count, I’d been using the Interwebs for over 14 years. In the old days, pickins were pretty slim as to which web sites I spent my time on. The landscape has changed a bit since the days of trolling through Lycos and serial sites for useless software. I’d be so bold as to say I’m not alone in feeling deluged with the number of sites now vying for my attention as a consumer and it’s really affected the way I spend my time. Lately, I’ve been trying to pair back the time I spend wasting away on the web (whilst listening to Joe Cocker sing “The Magic Has Gone”) and getting back to basics. I’ve got just a few go-to sites that I routinely use, and I search for everything else, ad hoc. Probably nothing earth shattering here.

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