The IndieHeart Site News Blog updates you about new features and other news of note from IndieHeart.com. Every so often, you can also expect a random ramble or two from the site administrator, Jill Nojack. She really doesn't seem to be able to help herself when it comes to randomness. en-us http://indieheart.com Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:32:10 GMT Jamroom 4.0.14 http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_267.php
As my time begins to free up, I may create an IndieHeart Eclectic Acoustic room at Turntable.fm where we can all play music to each other. Sadly, this does require Facebook membership and being in the US (or being on a US VPN). If you are unable to access Turntable.fm because you do not have a friend on Facebook who is a member, you can friend me (just search for Jill Nojack) and that should allow you in to the tunrtable.fm app (which also can be found by searching).

I do not know if you can then unfriend me or not after registering with Turntable - I think that you can, but have not tested that supposition.

So, that's it - Sam and I have two shows to go before the site becomes inactive (with just the archived podcasts available to new listeners).

BTW, Sam is now a daddy! And his daughter is a brilliantly lovely little thing, as one might imagine.

Jill Nojack ]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_267.php http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_265.php
Why is the site closing? Simply put, I have struggled for a long time with finding the time and energy to keep the site going. There is also a money component, but I had made that much more manageable earlier in the year, so it is not as big a factor as it once was.

While I have loved doing the shows and finding such phenomenal music, doing it right just became too time consuming. This is why there have been so few shows in the past few years. For each band or solo artist who appears in the show, I listen to another twenty or so who didn't make the cut.

And then there's the radio station playlists, actual production of the shows, and site administration (you have no idea how much I hate web design, especially given how bad it all looks when I am done!)

I don't regret the time or money I have spent on IndieHeart. Not one jot. I always thought that my original energy level would return, but it is clear after a full year of neglecting the shows, it will not. That is the part that I regret! But we all reach stages in our lives when we have to rebalance ourselves and be realistic about what we can manage, and I now know that it is time to begin what I hope will be a graceful shutdown of the site.

From today, the rock station will stop broadcasting and the ability to sign up on the site as an artist or member will end. Members can still sign in to the site to administer playlists, etc.

The acoustic station and member playlists will remain available until September or so. Sam and I will also be finishing up with the final three Transatlantic Acoustic Shows in that time frame. I anticipate leaving the TA Shows available on the feed until around December, but I may keep an archive of those shows available for quite a long time. Perhaps Sam and I will back when I am retired and he and his wife have finished breeding!

Truthfully, there have been many times over the past couple of years when I decided it was time to pull the plug. And then I would get such lovely e-mails from a listener or two and change my mind again. We have had such a wonderful group of people joining us in our silliness and that kept me going for a long time! Thank you to all of you!

That's pretty much what I wanted to say about it. I will be sending notifications when changes occur that affect Artist and Member accounts.

I recently joined Facebook, and if any of you would like to be a friend (because you certainly are!), you can find me here. I think you'll find I pretty much just post music and videos by Indie artists. Because I can't really seem to help myself! Just let me know that you are a listener if you send a request, so that I don't have to think back to grade school to try to figure out how I know you :-)

Jill Nojack ]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_265.php http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_263.php
However, there are some nice improvements that have come out of me banging my head on my desk in frustration!

1. The Eclectic Acoustic Station now has port 80 streaming. This means that it will not be blocked by strict firewalls of the type often encountered in the workplace and various other locations. Nice!

2. The playlists will now be more varied throughout the day than ever, with very little work on my part to keep them that way. That's more than fine with me!

3. The lists on the radio pages of the "Last 10 Songs Played" now display correctly on the page, instead of all crammed together. I had given up on ever getting that right, but I gave it another go, and this time I got it! They should be much easier to look at now, for those of you who use them.

If you use a bookmark in your player, you can create a new one from the radio pages. However, if you want to create a bookmark that will follow the stations wherever they may go, you can edit your bookmarks with the following addresses.

For the rock station, replace the url with:

http://indieheart.com/rockplaylist.m3u

For the acoustic station, replace the url with:

http://indieheart.com/acousticplaylist.m3u

I don't know if that work in all players, but it works great in WinAmp.

As always, thanks for tuning in!

Jill ]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_263.php http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_260.php
If you visit the station pages, you will note that the recently played list will look pretty funky and links will not work. All related to the server problem (what with the server not being online and all).

Sorry about the inconvenience, but I have no control over this one.

Fans of the our rock station will probably enjoy WSPR (SongPlanet Radio) as an alternative until we are back online. Heck, you may like it so much you never return :-)

Thanks!

Jill]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_260.php http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_259.php
In addition, I got a few more station ids recorded for the Acoustic station, which badly needed some more variety AND I came up with a better way to manage the playlists. It cuts down on the amount of time I need to spend on them while keeping the daily rotation a bit fresher.

By the way, any artist or member of IndieHeart is encouraged to contact me about recording your own promo for the stations. Just contact me about the format through the site contact form, if you would like to participate. We can even help with the production if you don't have the ability to set your message to background music/sounds.

Well, that's it. I had a big day/night recoding the station pages so they work properly with the new server. I'll be working on putting some front page access back up next weekend. Until then, let me know if anything doesn't work the way it should. I am a very bad (and quite tired) coder :-)

Jill]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_259.php http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_258.php
I also expect there will be a lot more technical issues with the streams. The service will be down more often, although I do not expect buffering issues (please let us know if you experience chronic problems when the streams are back online). I am returning to an extremely cheap service I used for a few months before I got the dedicated server we used until I had to cut the finances.

This will allow us to continue to promote non-acoustic music.

It may take longer to get the stations back on line than I anticipated, so I appreciate your patience if it doesn't get completed as soon as I just said it will.

Update: Stations should be online by the second weekend in December.

Jill ]]> http://indieheart.com/Site_News/post_258.php