Hi all,

I realize it’s been some time since I blogged for your reading pleasure. But given the stellar job that KB has done keeping up with the day-to-day dealings, I took advantage of the time to write (and write, and write and write and write). I got a lot of books to ink out here. But when there is good news share (or great as is the case here) I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to share it with you.

If you haven’t seen the red button on your profile imploring you to “Manage Your Playlist”, then let it be I who implores you to visit this link and try it out for yourself!

Check out the new Playlist Manager

This is important feature enhancement because it will make sharing and organizing all of your great music (and that of friends) much easier.

I won’t get into a lengthy summary of the features here. There is loads of good how to information just a click away when you access the new manager. But I do suggest you revisit your Music Genre Preferences settings (see link in your Recommended Songs block on your profile, add that block to your profile if you haven’t already).

Screen shot of Recommended Song control settings!

P.S.! I haven’t been recording much new music of late. But for my b-day (just came and went), my darlin’ wife o’ mine orchestrated a “covers project”, featuring some of my hyper-talented friends covering songs I penned. I uploaded one of them to OurStage (don’t worry I can’t compete!) this being a country song I wrote years ago. It started out as a gag track, but the end result, because of my buddy’s talent ended up sounding great. Figured I’d share it with my OurStage friends and fans since I know some of you are country music fans as well. Click to listen to Daniel’s friend cover his song Love Poker! Leave me a comment if you dig. Be great to hear your feedback on the track! Enjoy the summertime (be it the summertime blues/reds/pinks or purples). Comments on the new Playlist Manager or “other” welcome below… Signing off, your same old (but this time even older) community/artist relations guy, -Daniel

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I blogged on OurStage. In that time, we’ve had several major competitions, including this month’s Bow Wow hip hop contest. We just announced the winners of the Be Legendary contest and we made some significant changes to our channel pages (OurStage 100) and closed some channels down. But most important of all, in my opinion, is the introduction of KB (aka, Kristin) as a new leader of the OurStage community. (I’m not going anywhere. It’s just that KB will be handling most day to day stuff now).

There’s talk on the street, it’s there to
Remind you, that it doesn’t really matter
which side you’re on.
You’re walking away and they’re talking behind you
They will never forget you ‘til somebody new comes along
Where you been lately? There’s a new kid in town

Those of you who have followed my exploits here on OurStage (I joined the team Jan. 1st, 2008) know that I try to be fair, listen and help you (the independent artist and music fan) get the most out of OurStage. That commitment comes not only from my professional ethics, but also because, as an artist myself, I know what sort of help and advice I would appreciate. I’ve tried to emulate those qualities in my daily interactions with our community and to that end, I hope that I’ve succeeded.

As much as I love being your facilitator here, I’m equally passionate about being a creative person as well. Just recently, I had the very good fortune of selling my novel (and two more to follow) to a major NYC publishing house. I’ve spent years learning the craft, networking and getting rejected time and time again to arrive at this milestone. In a lot of ways, it’s like landing that record deal so many of us desire. And yeah, it feels great and is VERY exciting.

So as new issues arise, we’re confronted with various challenges, or you simply have a question about OurStage, I hope that you’ll view KB as a trusted leader here and extend to her the same respect and friendship that you’ve shown to me. You should feel that asking her to participate in various discussions and topics is the same as asking me. I might not be blogging as much as I did before (heck, I’ve got to write these books) or penning all of your artist updates, but I will continue to blog, support KB and the rest of the OurStage Community Team, as well as participate in what we’ve built together.

I hope this post inspires you to become friend’s with KB, drop her a nice “welcome to the Stage” message or comment and just know that she is available to answer your questions and protect the integrity of our Community in the same way that I hope I’ve done this past year.

Click here to read KB’s bio. She has a very impressive music industry background and will bring a fresh, new perspective to what we’re creating here.

Thank you again for extending your support to KB. And don’t shy away from asking her the tough questions you’ve asked me (like you would anyway ;)). Most importantly, thank you for rockin’ OurStage.

DELIRIOUS, by Daniel James Palmer
In DELIRIOUS, Charlie Giles, an up-and-coming electronics superstar, sees his life unravel as his company and inventions are wrenched from his control, and his family is decimated. One day he’s king of the hill, the next day he’s the prime homicide suspect as his former employers are picked off one by one. In a mind-bending story where the line between what is real and what is imagined twists and turns, Charlie enlists his schizophrenic brother to uncover the dark family secrets that lie at the heart of the conundrum.

Comments welcome.

Well, it is. Yup. A la, our AOL prize (which has helped some deserving artists with their buzz building) select high-ranking artists from each month’s competitions on OurStage will be selected for a feature on the OurStage Radio channel in Winamp. All high-ranking artists across all genres on the Music Stage are eligible; The winning artists will be selected by the OurStage editorial staff. The channel is currently featuring the best music from OurStage artists in Country, Rap, Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and many other music genres and will be updated regularly.

Just for facts, there are over 72 MILLION potential OurStage Radio WinAmp listeners. And since we announced our sterling new partnership with WinAmp, we’ve just been off the hook with new fans and artists joining in the OurStage fun. So if you didn’t have reason to enter your best before, or inspiration to vote in a channel, hopefully this good news will do it.

I think this is cool. And I don’t always say that. Really, I don’t. Okay, maybe I do. But I always mean it.

-DP OUT

OurStage is a team effort. It’s not your stage, or my stage, it’s “OurStage”. When you ask for things, we do our best to deliver. For example, you asked for a way to give your songs a permanent place to be found, even when not entered in a competition. You said it was hard to find your songs, and because the link to show off your song changed every month, there was no easy way to show yourself off. Consider our new media pages our good first try at “fixing it”. Using this page, you can quickly link your friends to a cool song on OurStage, and soon they will be able to see similar songs, other songs by that artist, and all the comments and other information.

Starting next week this media page will also be used in the search results. Going forward when you search for a song, you won’t see a list of all the entries that song has ever had on the site – just one link to that song. It’ll make it much easier to find things, which was a big complaint as well. Here’s something we hope you’ll really like:

The OurStage Top 100:
First, let’s explain the idea behind the OurStage Top 100, then we’ll get into the why. Right now, when you click the MUSIC or VIDEO links in our top navigation bar, you go to what we call our “channel pages”. Each channel (Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, Folk etc.) has its own “channel page”. Every song entered in the channel contest that month is viewable on that page in its current rank order—1 to however many songs are entered in the channel that month. Starting May 1st, OurStage is going to make a major change to how these pages work. We will no longer show the rank for ALL the entries in the channel; Only the Top 100. As a song moves into the Top 100, they will show up to all in the channel pages. Artists who haven’t yet reached the Top 100 will be able to see their real-time rank on their artist profile. Only the Top 100 will be visible to the member community at large.

Here are 4 reasons why we are doing this: 1) For new users, they’ll see the channel page as a way to find the best music on OurStage.

2) For older users, being in the Top 100 now becomes a bigger mark of distinction – Think of it like Charting on the Billboard Charts or another chart. Being in the Top 100 will bring you much more exposure than the past because you are now one out of a hundred, instead of one out of many hundreds. Real bragging rights.

3) When we looked at our website logs of activity, almost no-one ever scrolled or listened past 100 in a channel. People were most interested in the top 20-30 songs, and they often did listen deeper in a channel, but virtually no-one ever listened past 100.

4) Some artists actually complained that their songs that ranked lower than 100 were visible and could not be easily hidden – They felt like it made them look bad and they did not want it shown on their profile. Artists were uncomfortable inviting their friends and fans to join OurStage when their song was ranked 400th in a channel of 900 items.

We are, as always, open to feedback about these changes. Please let us know how you feel by commenting below. We appreciate that this is a very big change to how our existing users use OurStage, and we want to make sure that our Community helps participate in solutions. I only ask that you discuss this topic here, and not on your own blog or messages so that I can effectively respond to all of the questions or ideas that people raise here, instead of having to try to reply to lots of messages and comments here.

See you on OurStage!

DP, your loyal Community & Artist Relations Guy here with some breaking news from Radio One and Hip Hop superstar, Bow Wow. Hip Hop artists take notice!! Bow Wow wants to see if you can “Roc the Mic” so ‘You Can Get It All’. Bow Wow is helping Radio One and OurStage find the hands down best hip-hop artist. Artists please submit your best original hip-hop song into the contest. Bow Wow will be listening to the top 10 entries and hand-picking the winner. Show Bow Wow that you can “Rock The Mic” and You Can Get It All.

Winner will get to “Roc The Mic” on stage in front of thousands as a part of the legendary SCREAM Tour concert series. Add to that, a meeting with Columbia Marketing Executives at Sony Music headquarters in NYC to listen and critique your music (possible record deal??), trip for 2 see Bow perform live in NYC and a meet and greet with Bow Wow. This isn’t just opportunity just knocking, it’s kicking down your door.

Check out the official Bow Wow OurStage page and complete rules and gear up to “Roc the Mic”.

As for blog post comments, feel free to shower OurStage with glowing praise for providing this AMAZING opportunity, FREE OF CHARGE, as well as our on-going commitment and support for Urban Music and the artists who make it.

DP out.