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Put in perspective - the calls for support 2017 background

Put in perspective - the calls for support 2017 background

posted on #21
Uloisius
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Posts: 126
Joined: 24.07.2014
Another idea, if on the wikiloopsaccount at facebook a small video presentation to share would be ready to share (at most three minutes in which the advantages and possibilities of the loops are briefly presented) so all the looper could have a facebookaccount by regularly sharing the videos support loops in addition ... each of us has a lot of musicians in his circle of friends ...
+4
posted on #22
badprimer
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Posts: 5
Joined: 20.02.2015
I would only suggest as you've probably already considered is just making WL use able to those who donate to the cause. With maybe a free limit of uploads to try it out for initial members, as well as some marketing plans which I currently have none to offer.
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posted on #23
Lirare
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Posts: 5
Joined: 03.06.2016
An idea to grow the number of members: There are a lot of online music teachers out there in the internet. It might be helpful to get them promoting wikiloops as a helpful practice tool / platform. Maybe you could convince them to upload some of their practice backing tracks to wikiloops as a kind of cross promotion activity. Some professional musicians have successful youtube channels as well with a teaching or reviewing character. They might be interested in some cross promotion as well. Just mentioning wikiloops in the comments of such clips could spread the word as well.
This at least how I learned about wikiloops. And i found out about other musicians activities in social media via wikiloops. So if we want to give Dick a hint on how to grow awareness of wikiloops in the internet, we could tell him how we stumbled over wikiloops. There are maybe similar channels that could get explored.
+1
posted on #24
Dick Supporter
Posts: 2843
Joined: 30.12.2010
badprimer wrote:
...with maybe a free limit of uploads to try it out for initial members.

Mind, this is already in place :) The "free" account is limited to one download per day and one upload per week, these rules apply to anyone registered via the latest wikiloops version that went live on august 1st 2017.

Lirare wrote:
... So if we want to give Dick a hint on how to grow awareness of wikiloops in the internet, we could tell him how we stumbled over wikiloops. There are maybe similar channels that could get explored.

Spot on :) Reaching out to online teachers and other key people who have a reach into larger numbers of musicians is one of the prime ways to get the word out about wikiloops, and double-yes to spreading the word by youtube comments - that is something anyone with a youtube account can easily do, and we've "recruited" some phantastic players that way in the past.
Thanks to all who ever gave a hand that way, and thanks to anyone who may be in contact with some online teacher and could provide a first-contact which I could follow up.
I've been reaching out to some of the quite famous online guitar & bass teachers out there, but that's not as easy as one might expect - being a paying student of their classes would definetly help to get in touch I guess, so, should you happen to be... feel free to let me know and give an assist in establishing a first contact.
I totally agree a lot of effort should be invested into increasing the active userbase, the more folks are around, the lower the per-head operation and development cost.
However, while this is a key factor to get wikiloops funded at some point in the future, it's one of the reason why wikiloops needs a solid budget until we reach the critical size of userbase - to get exactly that kind of promotion work done, too :)
+3
posted on #25
rtkradle
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Posts: 6
Joined: 28.10.2014
i'd bump my donation up 200% but me alone wont solve anything. I haven't used wikiloops for a year or more but continue to donate because I freaking love this site. It brought life back into my dead soul!
+3
posted on #27
frenzie Supporter
Posts: 77
Joined: 03.09.2015
Isn't the problem the ratio? If you get more new members you will get more overhead this problem might grow along with new members...
+1
posted on #28
Dick Supporter
Posts: 2843
Joined: 30.12.2010
frenzie wrote:
Isn't the problem the ratio? If you get more new members you will get more overhead this problem might grow along with new members...


That is a good question, let me answer that:

Of course, ratio matters, the term that springs to mind is "critical mass" (meaning the minimum amount of something needed to achive something else).

As we are discussing here, wikiloops has a budget need, and we have not reached the "critical mass" size of either paying members or good willed supporters to meet that demand so far.

Now, if I understand your question correctly, you are wondering if the budget needs will not grow according to the number of members.
If that was so, then there would be no hope to make ends meet.
The good news is: The number of active members on wikiloops does not affect the needed budget in a 1:1 ratio.

Why is that?

wikiloops has a critical mass of development and maintenance work.
It takes at least one coder to operate the platform - and that is not tied to the amount of members at all. Coding-wise, you might as well handle 100 times more active users.
More users will eventually increase moderation needs and server cost, but since a lot of work has been invested into preparing the server infrastructure for larger user numbers, the potential budget need increase is both foreseeable and coverable.

An easy way to imagine the situation is to think of wikiloops as a public transport vehicle:
A bus has a certain amount of running cost, to pay the driver, maintenance and fuel.
That cost will be pretty much the same, regardless of the bus being emtpy or totally full, maybe it will need slightly more fuel if it is all full.
The target budget of the wiki bus covers the driver and the maintenance, and we have plenty of seats available before it would eventually take a second bus.
If we had twice as many active users next year, that would not lead to more than maybe +5% budget need - but we would have a chance to get the budget together a lot easier than it seems to be right now.

Hope that was a good answer, thanks for asking a good question :)
+1
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posted on #29
frenzie Supporter
Posts: 77
Joined: 03.09.2015
Great answer! Thnx!
posted on #30
frenzie Supporter
Posts: 77
Joined: 03.09.2015
To little to late, there is a recent forumthread with all funny photoshops and rhymes about sponsoring and funding...

for next year you could try to make the funding a bit fun, if non supporter members donate say 10$ they get one of the photshopped pics, or a wikiloops hitsong showing up from behind a ? People are curious and they lIke personar prizes...you might tap into that..with tongue in cheek of course don't know... if it's a lot of work...or it might not work at all just popped my mind
Are there creative souls around on the loops who can make a professional layout for such a thing...

Don't know it might not work and just gives you more work to begin with ;)

Cheers and merry Christmas! !!
posted on #31
frenzie Supporter
Posts: 77
Joined: 03.09.2015
Why don't we make an official drumloop bassloop
Guitarloop organloop package? we got perfect mucisians, collect audio on wav let it mix and edit by 1 person and sell it for some $...

There is a definite low in simple loops that go around lot of Comercial loops are very destinctive and very few are straight forward...

Is that to Comercial?
posted on #32
kcsn
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Posts: 4
Joined: 23.06.2014
Maybe some kind of community collaboration for promotion & spreading the word. One example I think might be helpful is music focused youtubers & twitch streamers who already have a rather large following. Few years ago I was making flight simulator cockpit mods & streaming the process with just a handful of followers. One well known Turkish streamer saw my content and loved it. When I streamed at the same time or joined his channel he would tell his thousands of live viewers about my work and to go check it out. Follows and views poured in by the hundreds.

If enough loops users put a little time into reaching out to video media content creators of the net in the music field, every one of them that fell in love with loops could potentially bring in thousands of new users to at least try the site out.

Loops fills a unique niche in the online music world, but does so in a "Non-Overbearing Commercialization User Pestering" way, which is nearly unheard of now a days.

I think there's a ton of musicians out there that would love this site if they knew about it.

Anyway just an idea that popped into my head when I read the post. The more economically at ease I become the more I will continue to give to this project, but I can't dent the overall cost with $ alone. Maybe some time spent spreading the word could increase the overall user-base enough to chip away at the running cost.
+1
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posted on #33
jjbuggz
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Posts: 7
Joined: 18.12.2016
rtkradle wrote:
i'd bump my donation up 200% but me alone wont solve anything. I haven't used wikiloops for a year or more but continue to donate because I freaking love this site. It brought life back into my dead soul!
............Great summation. wikiloops is loved but an extra donation can't be seen as moving that green bar farther into the white. I read Dick's original thread on his and his family's sacrifices to keep wikiloops rolling . First Thank You to Dick's family . Not only for keeping a great jam site running but you are affecting peoples lives around the world, for the better as the above quote states excellently . You have given a huge Positive to my life, Thank You. For those musicians who have been here for years they may have a better perspective on the debt. They have seen several of the Fund Drives before . Will wikiloops be here no matter what happens? Or , Dick what is the point at which you would close the site down? The above quote says doubling his donation alone won't solve anything , he can't see what all the donations will amount too. What about a Pledge Drive where , separate from supporter fees , everyone would only pledge an amount, which they could keep adding too , the total would be seen before anyone donates the actual money..... I do see plenty of problems with this verses the straight give the money upfront and see the bar move along slowly . Your trusting people to give what the pledged, this may be easier if the goal was reached with pledges then everyone can see their small or large amount actually helps reach the goal. A problem is if you don't reach the goal . Even if you do or don't reach the goal the problem is that it is a 'Pledge ' drive , everyone then has to honor their pledges and give the money. I'm sure not a problem with the outstanding musicians who are Supporting Members but would it help the hundreds? or thousands? of people who just go to the site and jam along with a tune and don't become a supporter? Which is a great part of wikiloops , musicians at all levels can hear great stuff and jam along at home for free . But Dick and others need caffeine and junk food to sit in front of the computer and keep wiki running , these do cost money..... So I rambled on too long and can't say I agree with a Pledge Drive after all that..... Maybe several smaller goal pledge drives over a year. Maybe a combination or a Pledge drive for the Non supporting users with a smaller goal.;):|..... Now I'm craving caffeine and junk food.... Thanks again Dick , jeff - I really do ramble, 'smiley face here'
+2
posted on #34
Dick Supporter
Posts: 2843
Joined: 30.12.2010
Today is friday the 5th of january 2018 - and as those observing this thread will probably have noticed,
the end-of-2017 support rally (including my video address on the wikiloops homepage, the screen displayed directly after log-in and the frequent support shouts in the shoutbox) has ended as we've rolled over into 2018.

This year, 258 members of wikiloops managed to fund 43% (15k US-$) of the needed budget for 2018 within two months of rally -
leaving us with a "gap" of roundabout $ 19.800,
which wikiloops needs to bridge somehow within the next 10 months (mind, the whole cycle starts over on november 1st for 2019).

Put in perspective, that means it takes 198 individuals who can afford to give $ 100 before October comes, and who'd of course get a year of full premium status in return. You can do the math any way you want, and reach your own conclusion if that is likely or not.

It is my intention to keep this post short -
but at the same time I know that it is up to me to deliver another "put in perspective" statement on the above result.

Maybe one fact that (especially our new members) should be reminded of is this:
wikiloops has been in the very same situation last year -
we crossed the years line at a mere 20-something percent of the desired budget,
and the following discussion is still available in this forum.

Please do notice that wikiloops is online and kicking,
and that we are about to reach the 100.000 tracks in the public wiki mark within the next few days.
How is that possible?
Because there is people like you who care enough to help keep the project going,
some who can afford to "double up", and a small group of people who do a lot of work for free if it helps keep wikiloops going.

I will include the funding status bar started on november 1st 2017 here for you to check in the future,
and I will be issuing the annual wikiloops transparency report within the next few weeks,
which shall offer some more detailed insight in the projects evolvement and give some perspective on what is coming up in 2018.





For the time being, let me end by once more thanking all the supporters,
it would not work without folks like you.
The supporters may be a small group,
but on the other hand one can take that as a signal how large each supporters individual impact is.
wikiloops has a lot to offer to a lot of people, and that can be kept up with the help of "only" a few hundred supporters.
I still feel the investment vs. fun return ratio of wikiloops is quite excellent - and I still have that vision that it is possible to operate a truly independent and technically up-to-date community for real musicians, if only a critical mass of supporters can be won.

As I mentioned before, we are by now all set up to welcome quite a lot of new people (re: my "empty seats on the wiki-bus" example),
so I guess we should focus on getting the word out about wikiloops in 2018,
and on keeping it a place where new members are welcomed.

I'll keep you updated as we're rolling into the new year
thanks for the read & all the best
Richard
+7
posted on #35
jjbuggz
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Posts: 7
Joined: 18.12.2016
Thanks for the information Dick, glad to know we still have time over the year to 'move the green bar'. I think the Fund Drive Goal amount is very low. At the Supporter level this is a fantastic bargain. I will be happy to put in extra over my Supporting Member amount throughout the year, as I'm sure many of the people who have gone through the fund drive before do. Being my first fund drive I was a bit worried. :) Thanks to you and your Family. jeff
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