Happy Birthday, wikiloops!

Hey there, friends of wikiloops - and a happy 12th anniversary to this musical community!

You got that right, today (april 1st) this place called wikiloops.com has been around for 12 years,
so here I am once again raising my coffee cup:
Here's to twelve years of sharing music and international creative exchange!
You are getting old, wikiloops, and yes, I've been younger when we started this, too ;)

As many times before, I have been wondering what to write about.
I've even wondered if I should ask chat.gpt for assistance - I did decide against it (as you can still tell in 2023), but the thought is a good indicator of how much times have changed on the internet in the past twelve years.

But let me not bore you with musings on tech evolution.
Instead, I'll let a guest speaker take the stage today:

When I discovered below video, I felt this was the best description of what wikiloops is all about ever given,
even tho I'm not sure if Mr.Wooten has ever heard of wikiloops (If someone reading this happens to have his number, send him my personal greetings and tell him about the 'loops please ;))

[youtube]2zvjW9arAZ0?t=15[/youtube]

You still there? :) What an impressive and well-delivered message!
When Victor asks "Who's working on that "cupid bomb" ?" I felt like raising the wikiloops banner - can you relate to that?
That's what the 'loops are all about, we've been on that "battlefield" for a dozen years today :)

Let me raise my cup once more, here's to all of you out there taking part on wikiloops, you are the ones really making it happen!
For the record:
We, the 3.335 musicians who shared music on wikiloops have
assembled a collection of 211.000 recordings,
which have been downloaded close to a million times,
and streamed a whopping 77 million times during those twelve years.

Looks to me as if our shared recordings have been noticed and appreciated,
chances are we actually inspired some people to make some music ;)

And we will continue on that path.
There is a major update for wikiloops in the works, which will become available for your kind review shortly.
Again, for the n-th time a giant effort is being invested into keeping the platform up to date.
We've been refactoring code since october, simply to make sure the musical exchange is not hindered by technical issues.

Let me end by giving thanks to all of you who have been supportive of the 'loops,
to those who help cover the cost with their [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/upgrade_plans.php]supporting membership[/url] fees,
gracious [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/donate.php]donations[/url] or by ordering a [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/shopping.php]wikiloops shirt[/url] from our store.
It would not happen without that side of the story, please keep it comin'.

Big thanks are due to the team of volunteers on the surface of wikiloops,
and to my friend and mentor-in-code karuma, who has been co-piloting and inspiring the efforts on the code-base for many months now.

Wishing you all some inspired & good times on wikiloops as we are moving into season 13.
Happy birthday, wikiloops!