Instrumental Music

Clip Player Launched

2011-08-15T09:35:00.003Z

With the advent of video clips served by YouTube like this Buck Due Rag:
I have had to review and modify the way selections of samples are offered from various pages on the site.

Mostly I had switched off the automatic player to avoid the risk of intereference. The controls on the player are wquite small and I suspect that visitors would not know how to stop it.

Eventually I had the idea of creating a separate clip player page - it's small so I made it a pop-up and now I've put it behind an image in the side bar. I am hoping that this will give me better visibiliuty of the usage and I will be able to experiment with the playlist and monitor the results more easily. You can get it here.

This has already dramatically reduced daily bandwidth consumption and set me thinking about my hosting arrangements and I realise that I have not been keeping up with developments here. More on this later.

Grenwich Witch - New Video

2011-07-14T17:19:00.004Z

Here is the first video featuring a clip from Grenwich Whitch - one of our Ragtime Novelty tunes which have been arranged on Gamelan and Marimba:

Find links to the rest on our ragtime novelties page.

There is clearly an opportunity to completely change the way our 300 clips are delivered but that is going to take some time.

Our site has now been Panda'd but there is lttle evidence of changes to the page rankings so I'm wondering where the traffic has gone - let's hope added video helps with both human and robotic visitors appreciation of our site.

Billikin goes to You Tube

2011-07-09T08:28:00.003Z

Here is my first You Tube upload

I hope to be able to publish a reasonable number of clips in this way as a new avenue for promoting the business and as a way of adding video to the site.

New Year Update

2011-01-07T08:20:00.002Z

Just a quick post to mark the new year.

The launch of our splendid Gamelan Ragtime recordings has passed with very little reaction if you ignore a brief surge of interest from Indonesia - we now have over 300 recordings available for sale on the site. The new pricing structure seems to have had very little impact with very few customers taking advantage of the very generous discount for second and subsequent orders.

We had the usual surge of interest over the Holidays as people tried to learn how to use their new MP3 players and iTunes. Interest in the nutcracker suite also peaked in the run up to the Holidays while things like the Danse Macabre fell back. Yet again our recording of Carol of the Bells proved to be a popular free download with about 1000 copies being taken again this year.

Partly because of the larger size of the samples offered on our more recent recordings and the automatic player on most pages the volume of sample data streamed from the site continues to grow with a few individuals apparently listening to them for hours.

The Download2MP3 brand continues to build steadily with both direct visits to the site and its emergence as a key word in Google searches.

Adsense continues to perform reasonably although some of the banner advertising that appears is a bit odd. Our ISP has been taken over but the new company is contiunuing with existing packages and seems to operate quite efficiently so no one should notice any difference there.

Error checking almost complete

2010-09-22T11:48:00.002Z

Adding 93 new produsts to the website is no mean task - not least the complex of files and code that deliver the streamed samples.

There are still a couple of outstanding issues on this front but we should be able to resolve them soon.

The remaining task is to individualise the catalog products for each product - this is not critical to the operational performance of the site but hopefully will encourage more sales and improve our Google rankings.

The development of the Face book page is also proving a bit of a challenge but I am concentrating on the website at this stage.

Major Launch - Gamelan Ragtime

2010-09-18T10:53:00.002Z

Native Instruments launched the Balinese Gamelan Orchestra last year and I juast couldn't resist.

It took a while to develop a suitable ensemble arrangement for ragtime music but once we had found it there was much pleaure in it's repeated application. Essentially the three main componenbts are arranged on the right hand part and separated on the stereo map with the highest frequency on the outside and the more mellow tones near the centre.

The marimbas varied rather more depending on the piece but many of them emplyed a version which runs short seqences for each note - producing a rippling effect in the left hand to add interest and body to the arrangements and improve the balance.

In many tracks - particularly the Rags and the Marches a base drum was added to the centre of the mix.

This has been great fun to produce.

We tried to contact John Cowell who produced most of the midi recordings on which these were based but none of the email addresses produced any response. Unlike some other MIDI recoders he has not placed restrictions in the MIDI file and he dosen't have a website that I have been able to find where this could be clarified. So we have decided to take the risk.

Adding 93 tracks to the site in one go is a significant enterprise but we have got there - I suspect that there are still some small errors. Testing has been hampered by some errati behavious by the system this week and upgrading the database software to MySQL 5 provided some challenges but the OSCommerce support forum came up trumps.

New Simple Price Structure

2010-09-16T07:10:00.002Z

We have tried a price per duration structure for the last year or so and it hasn't made any difference so now we have gone for simplicity.

The Low Value Order Premium has gone for good.

A 50% discount now aplies to all orders for two or more tracks.

All tracks are now priced at $1.00.

So the minimum order value is now slightly higher for a single short piece but multiple orders at Download2MP3 are even better value than before.

This blog has moved

2010-05-01T08:29:00.001Z

This blog is now located at http://newworldpercussion.blogspot.com/.
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Over 1000 Carol of the Bells Downloads

2009-12-23T09:56:00.002Z

This has been our most successful Christmas gift offer yet.

Over a 1000 downloads - mostly to the USA but many other parts of the world too.

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a lot more Rags using the new Native Instruments Gamelan - so more good things in store for the new year.

In the mean time I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Peaceful New Year.

OS Commerce Update

2009-09-07T07:10:00.002Z

After mulling it over for a while I have decided to tackle the Big Update.

Yes that's the complete shop overhaul!

OS Commerce has come up with an 3.0 alpha version with a more controllable template CSS and all that and I don't need the outstanding items flagged for later releases.

This time I am going to integrate the shop with the rest of the site whilst retaining the existing URLs and take the opportunity to update the overall appearance: colour scheme, Menus - the works. I'm even going to replace the database to remove any wrinkles that may have crept in.

As far as I can see I just need to rent a second database and set up a development area in my existing web space to be able to develop and test as I go along. Then I should be able to change over quickly and easily.

Never the less I expect this will take quite some time and if I hit anything interesting I'll do more posts.

Other wise it has been a quiet summer again while the students are on their holidays. There are occasional download problems as new browsers come out and I have reinforced our Firefox recommendation because no matter what other issues occur with Firefox from time to time the download functionality seems to be very stable and user friendly. The You Send It facility which we rent as a backup distribution solution has never failed. The new sample player is one of the occasional casualties on my set up but it never generates complaints so I am sticking with it.

Only Number One will do

2009-07-22T11:32:00.002Z

The new Google Webmaster tools have exposed a new phenomena in Google search behaviour.

It has become evident from my results that far and away the vast majority of searchers only look at the first result on the results page. This is a huge change from years gone by when you could get some hits from the second page let alone the bottom of the first page. People don't pay for the 1,2,3 ads in my sector because the is not enough money in it but you can see how effective it must be in other sectors.

It would appear that Google's progressive refinements to their algorithms have achieved near perfection form the searcher's point of view. This doesn't reflect some of my own experience as a searcher but perhaps that is a signal that what I am looking for may not be available.

This makes the challenge of site optimistation much greater and must have implications for small competitors versus large ones. On the other hand I suppose the constant churn does give more that one player a shot at the number one slot.

It's those "Interesting Times" again!

Tidying up the site

2009-05-11T07:32:00.003Z

After a major change like the removal of Ring tones from the product range there is a lot of tidying up to do.

Dreamweaver comes into its own as a mangangement tool - enabling a site wide search for references across 5000+ files.

The on line free site map tool at http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp helps too with identification of remaining site quality issues - some of which still have to be fixed. Broken links caused by typos etc.

A little trip down memory lane to the menu files and a follow up today to finish the job.

There is an opportunity to revamp the whole side bar now but I'm going to mull that over for a while.

Oddly enough the price changes seems to have gone through relatively smoothly. Although there is little in the way of automation to help with the HTML, the back end system is relatively rigourus because the prices are only kept in one database table and that is what get's charged. Because I was editing the table in Excel I was able to use sorting techniques to check the integrity of the application of the pricing policy. The first paying customer has now ventured in and all seems to be well.

First New Price Structure since 2004

2009-05-08T07:56:00.000Z

When we opened this site our declared pricing strategy was to follow iTunes. What we ncould not anticpate was that it would be so stable for so many years.

But the dollar a track bulwark is beginning to crack and we have decided to go with the flow.

So we have now implemented a new structure based on track duration.

5 minutes or more 0.99$(US)
4-5 minutes 0.69$(US)
3-4 minutes 0.49$(US)
<3 minutes 0.29$(US)

The PayPal processing fee has been retained for orders below 3$(US) and the 30% discounts still kick in on orders for 3 or more items.

So far there has been no response to these massive price cuts - perhaps price never was an issue and music buyers are not as rational as all that.

Oh and by the way we have bailed out of the Ring tone game but they might come back as freebies I suppose because they are quite nice. It was fun to do but never caught on commercially possibly because they only work on phones that can download the MP3 file from the PC.

14 New Mozart Recordings

2009-05-05T07:06:00.002Z

At last we have got them launched.

The production process for these recordings was a joy. It has taken a little while to get familiar with the capabilities of our new set up and the experience with the Beethoven Symphonies was very instructive.

I have always loved the Mozart concertos which we have interpreted here and it was great fun working out how to arrange them to best effect. The quality of the MIDI files on which they are based is good and we now have a fairly settled mix and mastering approach which produces repeatable results.

We have used the Talking Steel module before to under pin or supplement the steel drums but in the Horn concerto it comes into it's own as the lead instrument. In contrast for the Flute and Harp Concerto we used a Flute and Harp as the lead instruments and a percussion band as the orchestra but the wonders of electronic music mean that we were able to make them more prominent.

We don't have complete Mozart Symphonies but the two first movements we have recorded stand up on their own.

We haven't decided where to go next on the recording front and there is more work to be done on the web site and the commercial side of things.

The new sample player technology seems to be working well and with that and the new hifi samples we have doubled the volume of download data from the site every day and after a somewhat sticky period our advertising revenue has picked up again.

Google Rankings Churn

2009-02-09T08:20:00.003Z

Here is a blast from the past - Page rankings on Google.

Time was many of us watched anxiously for the next shift in Google's ranking formulae because of the dramatic impact they could have on our site traffic. But for some time now things have been very steady on the page rank site.

However today I noticed that music Downloads were in the top 10 volatile sites on the latest little excursion by Google.

Here are the top 10:

#1	www.apple.com... visit
	#2	www.kazaa.com visit
	#3	www.rhapsody.com visit
	#4	www.napster.com visit
	#5	music.download.com visit
	#6	www.ez-tracks.com visit
	#7	www.virtualsheetmusic.com visit
	#8	mp3.walmart.com visit
	#9	www.mtv.com... visit
	#10	www.limewire.com vis

To see the chart got to Rank Pulse here: http://www.rankpulse.com/music-downloads?p0=on&p1=on&p2=on&p3=on&p4=on&p5=on&p6=on&p7=on&p8=on&p9=on

(Rank Pulse have got a bit more secure on their image copyright.)

This illustrates the turbulance over the last few days. We are not seeing much back wash in our little corners but it keeps you on your toes.

Our lack of activity on the site for a long time followed by a lot of changes in a short time also seems to be having little effect on rankings and traffic but sometimes that takes a kittle longer to come through.

Player Effects

2009-02-02T09:46:00.001Z

There are the some modest indications that the new players may be having some effect on the proportion of very short visits to the site which is obviously positive if it is sustained.

So we will carry on with the application on the more popular landing pages and see what we can do and perhaps we'll see if we can add one to this blog page.

Settling Down

2009-01-28T11:44:00.002Z

After making significant changes to the site and launching new products you are naturally prompted to delve a little further in to the site monitoring data.

As ever there are mixed results - the use of the new player has substantially increased the volume of music streamed off the site. Some of that is push and some pull and we have more work to do to get a proper handle on that. Suffice it to say that we have plenty of head room on our ISP package to expand the volume still further but I want to do it in a controlled way. There is definitely scope for more page specific play lists and we should be able to have more fun with the site wide players using hidden, randomised play lists.

On the other hand we are not seeing much in the way of change to other aspects of the site as yet, apart from the usual random changes that occur from day to day. Hopefully further refinement on the use of pushed music on the site will have positive effects - at the very least we are increasing the audience for our music.

We're Back with the Symphonies

2009-01-26T09:49:00.002Z

I can't believe it has taken so long but we are finally there and two Beethoven Symphonies have been published. An early bird has already bought the first movement of the Fifth!

The hubris of recording these wonderful pieces on new world instruments caused me to pause for some time but each time I listened to them I heard something new and the overall effect was so positive I have pressed ahead.

Inevitably some of the machinery was a bit creaky after such little use - not least my memory for where I had put things.

We also bought a new player which is taking a little time to bed in - not helped by browser quirks on this PC which refused to play them - sorted now! We're looking to develop the use of play lists as a way of promoting sales but there is a bit more work to do on that.

The auto play of the excerpt from the first movement of Beethoven's 5th is a temporary celebration and will be replaced by a more controllable solution later this week.

After the repair work we did last spring the shop has been working well - so all is ready - come and buy!

Return to the Blog

2008-09-25T06:54:00.002Z

It has been a long time since my last post. Moving house and all the associated tasks have absorbed a lot of time and energy.

But the promised reequipping has occurred and after the latest update for Cubase Essential it is nice and stable now and the last major hard landscaping task is almost complete.

In celebration we have started to tackle some even more major works and - the height of hubris - a complete Beethoven Symphony is on the stocks. We have developed a New World orchestra with our customary steel drums and marimba in the "stings" section supported by a vibraphone and talking steel. Talking steel also handles the brass section while Ocarina and Pan Pipes take on the wood wind and the flutes are assigned to steel drums.

Still a bit more refinement required on the mix but it shouldn't be long now...

Shop Re-opens

2008-03-05T10:01:00.002Z

The PHP upgrade on my server precipitated closure of the shop for a couple of weeks but I finally found the time to work through the backlog of OS Commerce upgrades that I had been putting off and Lo and Behold the shop is working again.

I still need to do a bit of testing on the shopping cart arithmetic and make sure that the downloading is still working properly after the changes I have made. I'll also have a look at the recent contributions to see if there are any other improvements I should be making.

In the mean time there has been another surge of Ranking changes on Google as reported on Rankpulse and it is evident that our rankings continue to swing around on a daily basis but our overall position and visitor numbers seem pretty stable - even the shop closure didn't seem to have much of an impact.

Just a little surge

2008-01-29T08:23:00.000Z

Google's algorithms are churning again this week - not a peak but a bit of a surge.

Our main beneficiary seems to be our iTunes advice page which is nice but not very productive for us.

It is very odd that something we wrote a couple of years ago should be so popular in an area where you would expect much more professional help to be available.

Our ISP service has been/is being upgraded so I'm waiting for any fall out from that. OS Commerce have a major update on the stocks so I'm hoping that any significant consequences for us can wait until we tackle that one. From an operational point of view our biggest problem seems to be downloaded files lost in the bowels of the XP operating system.

Also noticed today that our ISP have increased the maximum bandwidth of our package dramatically so I'm thinking of putting sample players on a lot more pages.

We have a few fans who seem to go through our whole sample library and we will have a look at how we could make that easier possibly by playing them one after another off the same page.

The threat of the record companies coming in and trying to supplant the iTunes business model is something we need to take seriously and develop a response. Fortunately we already know a bit about making advertising work with our music but we will have to ramp up our game to respond to them.

AdSense is back - up and running on the site

2008-01-09T10:05:00.000Z

Yes - the errant postcard turned up thanks to a nice bit of informal mail re-direction and Google have now satisfied themselves as to my bona fides to the extent that they are willing to make payments into my bank account and present adverts on our site!

The added confidence that this seems to give potential customers is also evident in the renewed trickle of sales. Some interesting optimisation opportunities in the light of this experience - onward and upward.

A New Year Dawns

2008-01-02T09:56:00.000Z

We have been quiet for the last few months while I have been tackling some other projects.

The website has been doing well without much in the way of intervention but in the last couple of week we exhausted Google's patience with us on the latest stage of identity verification - I lost the postcard with the PIN and requested the replacement sent to our old address! The absence of relevant adverts seems to be having a very negative effect on sales which is very odd.

We have also seen the seasonal surge of visits from new i-pod users to our remarkably popular help pages but hat has ebbed away now and visitor numbers have subsided a bit.

So this is the year to sort out a few basics and return to the creation of new and original arrangements with some new software and hardware.

Danse Macabre

2007-10-30T07:55:00.000Z

Yes it has been a long time.

The new house has preoccupied my thoughts and time and is still doing so.

This is just a short update.

Visitor volumes are riding high but volatile. Sales are strengthening too. After the massive spasm of updates on Google there have been lesser by relatively frequent spikes of activity on Rank Pulse indicating that Google has become more active in updating rankings. The new webmaster tools also show the shifting patterns of positions and search behavior.

It is coming up to Halloween and Danse Macabre by Saint Saens is top of the charts for a few more days again this year.

SERPs Churn dies down again

2007-09-24T07:34:00.000Z

Just a quick comment to note that the churn of SERPs on Google has died down again after the longest period of high activity I have seen since I started to use the Rank Pulse site.

RankPulse Graph

This is obviously their copyright material but I don't suppose they will mind us giving them a plug. Oddly the most active chart today is for the letter 'i' but 'mattress' illustrates the recent turmoil more vividly.

We seem to have once again bubbled up slowly across the piece.

Now that the new office is set up we will have to do some more work on the site and the ads some of which are doing well while others have failed to perform at all.

Google Flux Continues

2007-09-18T06:04:00.000Z

The exceptionally high level of flux in the Google search results has now continued for two weeks - twice as long as previous episodes.

This suggests that Google are testing significant refinements of elements of their algorithm in the continuing campaign against Spam. This doesn't appear to be a problem in our area these days and although we are seeing fluctuations in SERPs, visitor numbers continue at high levels.

Meanwhile inappropriate comments have been added to this blog so we have hidden them all. Disappointingly comments have never played a significant role here so in some ways this is not much of a loss but it is irritating to have to respond like this. We will investigate the prospects for moderated comments in due course.

Google SERPs Change Surge

2007-09-06T06:32:00.000Z

Rankpulse has again registered a significant surge in SERPs change on Google - much too early to say what that may mean for us.

We have been quiet for a while because we are moving premises - a new studio/office is being delivered today.

We have moved out of Greater London to the sunny uplands of the North Downs - let's see what this does for our creativity.

August was a quieter month as usual but the students are coming back and so should our visitor numbers.

Now here's a funny thing!

2007-08-07T06:51:00.000Z

Customer contact is one of the bonuses of running this sort of business.

It is only with that customer feedback that you pick up the problems they have experienced and give yourself a chance to fix them.

Over the past couple of years the most frequent difficulties have been concerned with downloading. We fixed the worst of those with the updates we did earlier this year but Microsoft still come up with new ways to hide files downloaded with IE if you don't arrange the settings properly.

The one thing that has never been questioned in the whole time has been the quality of our recordings - until yesterday that is. A customer in Australia down loaded the recording of the Brahms Hungarian Dance No 6 he had bought - it played OK on the PC but when he burned it on to a CD it crackled like crazy!

Now for some reason I had never burned one of our recordings to a CD - so I tried it with the Microsoft Media Player and the same recording - result perfect!

Normally you assume that with digital recording quality is binary i.e. it is either there or it isn't. Drop outs, delays and distortion can occur with players but the original material that leaves our computers here should arrive in pristine form with the customer. Never the less I emailed a copy back to Australia and this morning I open my mail to find that this copy burned perfectly.

If anyone can suggest why I'd be very interested to hear from them.

July Best month yet

2007-08-03T06:53:00.001Z

Looking back July has been our best month on all dimensions so far.

We had more visitors, hits and downloads than any month previously.

Sales were also healthy but we are now also benefiting from the revenue from the Google AdSense campaign. During the month we increased the amount of advertising space on our pages and we have seen the effects of that coming through. We have tried the search option but that isn't doing much for us at the moment and we are now going to try some referrals.

In particular we have found that some of our customers who use IE have not set it up very handily for downloading music and they are unable to find the file after hearing it for the first time. We have always been able to resolve this for them but plan to recommend Firefox on the basis of it's superior downloading facilities.

August has always been a slow month for us and it is shaping up that way again this year - presumably this is because schools and colleges tend to be closed for most if not all of this month in North America and Europe so we are looking forward to things picking up again in September.

Yesterday this computer hung after the restart following the latest Microsoft update - it only took a few hours to follow the Dell troubleshooting pages on the laptop and roll back to Wednesday. Now we are not sure if it was that update or the Trojan which Zone Alarm quarantined this morning. Still it is the first time we have had to use the restore facility on XP and it appears to work really well once you can find it.

Google SERPs Spike - More & More Churn

2007-07-19T06:42:00.000Z

Rankpulse has recorded another Google event about half the size of the last one but bigger than anything else in the last 6 months.

Yes it is churn and more churn. Our Keywords roil and boil on an almost daily basis but our overall performance is pretty steady. I'm not sure if this isn't a new Google tactic to keep the spammers off balance and test user reactions to a variety of ranking algorithm settings.

Our visitor numbers have come slightly off their peak levels but have held steadily well above previous heights. Customer orders are up too and so is our AdSense Content based advertising revenue.

The task of re-formatting our streaming pages to allow inclusion of more advertising is well under way but it is a bit laborious.

Once that is complete we'll go back and try to fix the AdSense Search facility so that it allows searches of our site. Then we can try deploying that more widely. As it is some one found it lurking on our site map yesterday and had a go.

AdSense - a couple of months in

2007-07-10T06:49:00.000Z

As I have mentioned before Google's contract is a bit restrictive in terms of what can be disclosed about the arrangement.

But I think a few comments are justified, although of course, they are personal comments based on the experience of just one site.

From our first toe in the water experiments with individual ads on some pages we have in the last day or so moved to maximizing the advertising coverage where that can be done without compromising important page layout considerations. So apart from this blog we don't use the top of the page. We do use the right hand side where it doesn't interfere with our own product tables.

If there is space at the end of our text we include the 'fat one' otherwise a single banner has been placed at the bottom of most product pages and all the streaming sample pages. We have even added the banner ads to our product pages in the shop below the action buttons because we know people do sit and listen to these samples for up to 30 seconds and then sometimes listen again. There also seem to be a few individuals who come and listen to lots of samples, occasionally over several days.

As you would expect Google's monitoring stats are pretty good although some of the more sophisticated aspects take a bit of getting used to. Through this we are seeing our advertising income rise steadily without any negative impact on our own sales - there could even be a small positive impact.

To conclude this has been a very positive and interesting experience so far, despite the mysterious process by which our actual remuneration is determined and the stochastic visitor behavior with their decisions to click or not to click.

Unprecedented Visitor Levels

2007-07-04T07:43:00.000Z

Well, our last post was not far off the mark - those levels of visits were sustained making June a record month and have in the last few days have been surpassed.

The keyword re-focus and bounce reduction initiatives really appear to be paying off although there is still a lot of turbulence on individual keywords. Encouragingly buying behavior seems to be following the visitor activity and the e-commerce side of the site is functioning really well now.

We are planning to move home soon and there will be some disruption to the creative side of the business while we get settled in. But we are going to take the opportunity to upgrade some of our equipment and possibly software before we produce more recordings.

The dual processor PCs are looking very good value now and the 100% increase in memory, not to mention the large caches should mean that we will not hit processor constraints with our instrument emulation software as often as we do now.

Visitor growth at last!

2007-06-14T10:43:00.000Z

It is always a tricky decision to announce an increase in visitor numbers because they can fall away again so easily but this follows the biggest upheaval in Google SERPs for more than 6 months and a recent pick up in Googlebot activity on the site. Over the last three days we have seen a 25% increase to levels that we have hardly ever seen before.

So it is fingers and toes crossed that the work we have done on the site has brought us to a new plateau and that we have a firm foundation for the next set of refinements and further growth.

Of course we now have the extra potential benefit from increased visitor numbers in the pay per clicks on our Google Ads because we are looking to strengthen and refine that activity too.

We started on this refinement phase activity months ago and this just demonstrates how patient you have to be in this game.

Bounce Research Findings

2007-06-11T06:43:00.000Z

Today I came across one of those gems which makes the whole business of optimising site for Google so worthwhile.

As someone who was trained in science and sought to apply it in a marketing environment over many years with huge budgets it is so nice to be able to appreciate the efforts of those who experiment on Google with the help of a few acquaintances and get results.

As you know we have been concerned about the bounce rates on some of our pages and have taken action to reduce it, with some modest success. It had occurred to me that Google might be using this information to improve the search results for searchers on the assumption that bounces are a bad thing and that might harm our rankings.

In the experiment reported in this article they seem to have proved that this is the case - so we can start to see why Google Analytics would be free to webmasters. I'm so impressed I signed up for their newsletter at www.1stsearchenginerankings.com and I'll flag items of interest here.

In the meantime our keyword results are churning away following the recent spikes of SERPs churn but the overall level of visits is pretty stable and we are strengthening our Google Ads activity because that doesn't seem to be doing any harm to our sales activity levels and is developing a steady trickle of pennies.

Now it is five Rankpulse Google SERPs spikes in a week!

2007-05-31T08:15:00.000Z

This kind of churn really is unprecedented - but still no comment on the forum.

Here is a chart from www.rankpulse.com of the top ten positions for ten sites up to yesterday:

The blur over the last few days illustrates what is happening to the relative positions of these sites in the Google Search Engine Results Positions (SERPS). While the top two sites have managed to stay above the fray everyone else has been engulfed.

And that is just how we feel at the moment - well and truly engulfed!

But you can also see that former number 1's have disappeared completely from the top ten chart but that the recent movement mostly revolves around sites that have been there or there abouts in recent time.

Third Spike on Saturday

2007-05-28T07:24:00.000Z

It's a very unsual Google update that has just passed by without any comment that I've seen on the forum. Major spikes have been recorded on RankPulse's measure of Google SERP's change on three days with one quiet day between them is I believe unprecedented. With so many differnt keyword contributing to our visitor numbers it is impossible for us to discern any significant imapcts in the short term.

Overall it looks as if May will pull us back to our January visitor levels but of course our shop is working properly now so we may see a bit more business out of it.

The number of people who come to listen to a short sample of our version of Widor's famous Toccatta without purchasing the whole thing is quite extraordinary.

Google Update History

2007-05-26T07:05:00.000Z

Yes some confirmation of the RankPulse observation here google-update-history-136975 in the SEO forum and a nostalgic wander down memory lane for veteran SEO enthusiasts.

That was followed by a second RankPulse spike yesterday - even higher than the first one - Google rolls on!

It is not too surprising that there would be a delay beause of the time it takes for changes to be propogated throughout Google's network of data centers.

Another Google SERPs Upheaval?

2007-05-24T07:07:00.000Z

RankPulse has published its highest spike for 6 months showing a one day churn of 15% of the SERPs on the first page from the sample of 1000 keywords which it monitors. On a normal day we expect to see around 4% churn. But there is no comment on the optimiser bulletin board yet.

In theory this shouldn't happen any more because of the constant re-indexing which Google undertakes and it is possible that it is the one or two datacenters that RankPulse connect with catching up. But the previous days data look reasonably normal so that seems unlikely.

It is a bit hard to see if there are any impacts on us at this stage because Analytics seems to be a little slow in completing all of yesterday's results - but nothing too disasterous so far.

We have been trying to interpret the results of the changes we made some weeks ago in terms of re-focusing on some keyword targets and trying to reduce the bounce levels on some of our worst pages. There certainly have been some improvements on both at the page level but it is hard to see any movement at the site level. There is so much churn on our keywords week to week and we have so many it has become quite unmanageable.

Many Keywords Few Conversions

2007-05-07T12:03:00.000Z

After the recent refurbishment of our keyword focus - there has been more purchase activity which naturally sparked our curiosity.

Delving into the Analytics tables we were able to find that there is a very small number of keywords out of the 2.2K words that have been used to reach us in the last month which prompted purchase.

Most of those are for specific pieces, one for a specific piece instrument combination! But the largest is the oddest 'mp3,itunes' because it leads to a page which has been notably unproductive with a very high bounce rate. Perhaps it is a fluke but if not more focus may be called for to secure our position. We may also have a look at some more instrument piece combinations.

A Well Earned Break in the Carribean

2007-04-30T06:09:00.000Z

We're off to the St Lucia tomorrow for a couple of weeks in the sun.

Who knows what musical influences we will be exposed to and how we might translate that into new recordings when we get back.

Such is the wonderful technology of the Internet our trusty laptop will enable us to mind the shop from those distant shores but there will probably be a short intermission in blog entries.

When we come back it will be time for a full review of the impact of the changes we made to the site in the last few weeks. The overall level of activity is about the same but it seems to be better focused and the shop is working very well now. So we'll concentrate on the effectiveness of the specific actions we took and see whether there is more to do to build and sustain the profile and impact of our site.

AdSense - the first few days

2007-04-25T10:22:00.000Z

The terms and conditions of AdSense are a bit restrictive about public utterances but a few general comments seem in order.

In the first place the set up was very quick and efficient. It took a little playing around to get the hang of the the different advert formats and we are currently trying about four variants on different parts of the site.

Our attempts to track them with the Channels facility dosen't seem to have come off but it is too early to start really digging into that yet.

I have seen some comment about prices per click in one of the news groups but again it is too early to get to grips with that yet and we'll keep an eye on it.

Any how - modest supplementary income for rather modest effort is not to be sneezed at so we'll carry on - refining as we go.

Bounce Rates Falling

2007-04-23T07:02:00.000Z

It is nice to report some success following problem identification and prioritised action.

The excessive bounce problem on quite few of our pages had been with us for long time but we had been focused on other issues.

Then by reordering the pages listed in the bounce rate reports we were able to focus on the most extreme cases - starting with the 100% cases - yes all visitors to those pages left immediately!

One of the common factors was that the first music sample offer was below the bottom of the visible page so we systematically revised the layout of many of the www.download2mp3.com/ pages to fix this and try and make them look more enticing.

After a suitable wait we have found that bounce rates have fallen and almost all of these pages have improved their bounce rate performance.

We are less worried about bounces away from the sample pages because those visitors will have heard a clip from one of our arrangements and that probably means that they are in the wrong place and not looking for our kind of music.

AdSense Sign Up

2007-04-12T07:20:00.000Z

A further review of our Analytics data has convinced me to experiment with Google's AdSense.

The bounce rates from many of our pages make it clear that many visitors are just not seeing what they are looking for when they reach us so we might as well get what we can out of the visit. Our traffic volumes mean that even with significant conversion rates we won't make much.

The risk of loosing valuable customers is pretty modest and the ads can sometimes increase the credibility of a page to a new visitor i.e. most of our visitors.

We will be selective about the pages we target with this - naturally from the start it will include this blog and our iTunes and iPod pages and then we'll experiment with our more business critical pages.

One of the incidental benefits of the Bit Pass closure is that we can now track all our sales activity through the site with Analytics - the data isn't really statistically significant but it is providing sufficient clues to drive some further refinements on a number of specific pages to try to reduce the higher bounce rates on certain pages.

We are also going to have a look at playing music on these blog pages in postings or on the menu bar.

Re-focusing on Target Keywords

2007-04-11T11:47:00.000Z

It is now nearly a month since we did a thorough site overhaul - looking at our target keywords and re-focusing pages as indicated by current performance.

Yesterday we had our first detailed look at the impact and as ever it is a fuzzy picture.

There is no obvious overall rise in traffic but there is evidence of progress on some pages and the targeted keywords so our efforts were not in vain but as one might expect they weren't all as successful as each other. It is also probably the case that some of the changes have still to work through - some of the relevant cached pages were only picked up in the last week or so.

The big success was the prominence that our www.download2mp3.com/bach_more.htm
has now achieved with significant support from the Baroque music reference which clue we picked up from Keyword Discovery. Handel is also doing much better at the moment thanks to our new Hallelujah Chorus emphasis - a bigger draw than Sheba or the Concerto Grosso. There is also some encouragement for a separate Vivaldi page especially if we can produce some more material.

There were a number of other minor successes where there has been movement in both SERPs and visitors and some where there was no evidence of progress at all. So we'll be having a look at the latter for our next round of re-focusing encouraged that Google is still a pretty rational environment if somewhat competitive in places.

Inward Links

2007-04-09T07:44:00.000Z

We signed up to Google's Webmaster tools quite some time back and they provide a range of more or less informative reports on a daily basis although they are not all updated every day.

The information about key words used to find the site seemed rather odd and not too consistent at a glance with Analytics results although this may be down to a different (undisclosed) period of coverage.

However looking at the links from other sites which is much more fulsome today it was striking to note how many of the links are into the blog rather than the rest of the site. In some ways, on reflection, I suppose that is not too surprising but it is a long way from our intentions - still a link is a link is a link and I'm not going to complain. The weird thing is that they are mostly dates (month/year from our Archive files) which must be the most common bits of data to be found in blogs everywhere.

There is perhaps a hint that some of our optimisation work may have begun to have some impact so we'll have a detailed look this week and report back.

New Download Problems

2007-03-27T08:07:00.000Z

Well - not really - more like the reappearance of an old issue.

With IE7 and media players like Windows Media Player or Quicktime downloaded files are played straight away and it is far from obvious if or where they are saved.

Although we recently upgraded some of our PC's to this configuration we hadn't spotted the issue ourselves and by some strange chance two customers raised it this morning.

It took a while hunting around the menus in both the player and the browser, followed by a quick Google enquiry to track down the solution.

This time with IE7 you go into Tools/General/ Browser history/Settings/View files to get to the Temporary Internet folder where your downloaded files are sitting quietly. I suppose that an explorer search set to look at hidden folders might have found them eventually but life is too short.

So thanks to those two customers we'll be updating the site with that advice later today.

If anyone know how we are supposed to keep up with developments like this I'd really like to hear about it.

Site Re-focus

2007-03-23T07:58:00.000Z

For the last couple of weeks we have been reviewing and tightening up our keyword focus.

This involved pulling together our historical targeting information with the new insights we got from Keyword Discovery. We have picked up some new targets from the later which we are trying out on pages that have not done too well on their existing targets.

As you know Google discourages checks on SERPs with automated tools but their personalised search solution completely invalidates manual checks so we've had to bend the rules a little. The free tool which we have been using is slow and unreliable so we are not overdoing this.

With this information to hand we have gone through each page and updated the content to better target a key phrase and then through the pages that link back to it to make sure that they are optimised too.

Following Big Daddy we are not getting pages picked up by Googlebot as frequently as we used to. In fact Googlebot now accounts for much less bandwidth consumption than Yahoo or MSN. So it is going to be some time before we see any results form this effort and we are doing a fresh site map to see if that will hurry things along.

As ever we'll keep you posted.

E-mailing Customers

2007-03-14T10:09:00.000Z

Everyone does it - don't they.

Surely it's not spam - well?

Any how we have taken the risk and emailed them all with an update on the improved link with PayPal and advice about a couple of free recording s which they may have overlooked. So we'll see what if any reaction there is and decide whether we need to ask permission in future.

Having settled that long running performance issue we are having a fresh look at the keyword optimisation of the site. It has all got a bit haphazard over the months so we are sharpening it up not with the use of specific tools but based on memory of feedback from the Web Position Page Critic tool. I realise that it is not up to date but at least it should give us a chance in some of the less competitive areas.

Interestingly some of the product pages are really doing their stuff even though they don,t contain much text - it is very focused.

Keyword Discovery

2007-03-07T09:51:00.000Z

While tackling the problems with the shop we have also taken a look at the Keyword Discovery Application using the free access they offered us.

Like Word Tracker it is a web based solution and unlike Word Tracker it lets you work out your own work flow for yourself. It took me a little while to get to an optimum approach to this but once there it was quite quick and easy to understand.

Keyword Discovery has its own approach to calculating a scale for the best Keywords to target based on the volume of daily searches and the level of competition and produces comparable results. I also made a couple of cross checks on the estimated daily volumes which were at least in the same order of magnitude, whilst the levels of competition were more a less equal on the few that I compared - not too surprising as they are the result of a Google search.

The big differences are around the way the lists of keywords are generated. Keyword Discovery seems to generate longer lists of possible targets but they all seem to have significant levels of competition. Whereas Word Tracker seems to produce results for narrower less competitive niches. This is probably OK if you have a high profile site that is recognised by Google because you still have a chance of getting on to the first two pages if you optimise your target pages well - otherwise you may be in for a lot of disappointment.

In other words Keyword Discovery looks like a good quality professional tool for larger organisations looking for ways to expand their web traffic in targeted ways but it's price and capabilities probably rule it out for the micro business seeking those undiscovered micro niches.

Bloodied but unbowed

2007-03-06T07:43:00.000Z

The last few weeks have, as they say, been a bit mixed.

The problems at the shop have taken a lot of effort to resolve but we think we are there now.

None of the small fixes did the job and so we had to upgrade our connexion to PayPal to their Immediate Notification system which doesn't depend on the customer doing what they are told and coming straight back to our site after they have made their payment.

That change went in fairly smoothly but there was a bit of fiddly work to do on defining order status levels in response to the messages that come back from PayPal.

Then came the real pig - download control. We went for the heavy duty option right from the get go but somewhere along the way a small change crept in to the configuration of one or two key directories on the site and the system was broken. But of course we first had to work through all the software eliminating problems before we got down to something so close to the physical layer. The trouble is that in a logical environment it is much harder to spot the loose connexion which has been causing all the problems.

So we are back on the air again properly now.

Keyword Discovery

2007-02-15T08:18:00.000Z

Today I had an unusal response to this blog - Keyword Discovery approached me to try out their site because of the Wordtracker comments I made here ages ago.

So naturally I'm going to give it a go and I'll let you know here how it looks and what it could mean for us.

All seems to be quiet on the other fronts although Rank Pulse is indicating that another monthly rankings upheaval at Google in underway. I saw some comment to the effect that the last one was geared to clobbering some 'Black Hats' so we didn't see any real impact from that. In any case none of the free ranking tools we have been tempted to try from time to time seem to be working on Google now - perhaps they are part of the scope of the 'Black Hats' being targeted.

We would not expect much impact because we don't see to much of that activity in our niches. We just watch the continuing pressure on the Russians and their interpretation of International Copyright law with interest because that all helps to amke for a more level playing field. On the other hand we don't mind major competitors continuing to use DRM becuse it just make us look better.

The Joys and Joys of OS Commerce Contributions

2007-02-13T09:34:00.000Z

One of the wonderful things about using open source software like OS Commerce is the opportunity to try the contributions provided by other users.

Our shop would not operate were it not for some of these contributions but as we are warned every time - contributions are used at your own risk.

To fix the lost orders problem we trawled the contributions lists for solutions and found a few. The easiest one to apply was the Alert which delivered a rather fierce pop message telling customers to make sure they come back from the Pay Pal site. What I didn't realise for a few days was that it also cut out the trip to Pay Pal and sent customers straight to their downloads without collecting any money. So that's been disabled now.

But fortunately the more complex but better engineered solution for Holding Orders has gone in like a dream and seems to be working well.

Prompted by this success we had a go at another longstanding problem of visibility of Orders from the Admin suite and here we found our way into another corner of the realm - the Current Version Store (CVS) - where the developers put up fixes and modifications to the main suite of programmes and with some trepidation we tried it out and Lo! that too is fixed.

After a couple of years you do get a bit rusty on the old PHP and MYSQL but it has started to come back.

Now we've got that sorted let's see if we can find a Bit Pass replacement!

Pay Pal Interface

2007-02-09T08:58:00.000Z

Delving into the Pay Pal and OS Commerce support areas have flagged further exposures to failures to return customers to their download screen after they have completed payment.

So we've added a Pop Up advice screen that someone kindly contributed and today we're going to add another contribution which should give us Admin visibility to shopping carts that have been subject of this sort of failure to make recovery easier when we get the payment email from Pay Pal.

There was another suggestion involving the product description that requires more investigation.

And there is also a more expensive option from Pay Pal which would obviate the problem altogether but we are not yet earning enough to justify that.

So Far So Good

2007-02-06T07:57:00.000Z

For a start we are getting much more activity through the online shop now that it is the only option - the product info page is storming up the charts and we've had some successful purchases go through since the update at the weekend.

I suspect that there may be more we can do to bring the transaction processing fully up to date but I want this change to bed in first and identify any remaining wrinkles.

Google is taking its time picking up the changed pages so perhaps it is time to do a new site index.

Auto Return

2007-02-05T08:01:00.000Z

So far our delvings into the inner workings /failures of the shop suggest that the issue relates to shoppers return behaviour at the conclusion of the Pay Pal part of the transaction.

To overcome this common problem the recommendation is to switch on Auto Return at Pay Pal - a feature that wasn't even there when we originally built and tested the shop.

So we'll have to see how that goes.

Incidentally our musings on the passing of Bit Pass have evidently registered and some people have been finding us on "replacement for Bit Pass" which is ironic because we haven't found one and we're not sure yet whether we need one.

Phew!

2007-02-01T08:23:00.000Z

Yes by George they've done it.

BitPass has been expunged from the working pages of our site, we've taken a copy of the relevant data from their site for our business records and we patiently await payment of our outstanding balance.

It was a slog but the find and replace facilities in Dreamweaver proved invaluable for this task and we have done a final sweep to check that we didn't miss any remaining references.

In the end we just re-used the Buy Now graphic from the shop package as our call to action on the product pages. There is a risk of visitors getting two instances of the player running at the same time if they don't wait until the end of the clip but it is easy enough to stop one if that occurs.

So we'll pause for breath and see how visitors react to the new layout and navigation arrangements. The search engines will have lots of updated pages to digest so we may see some changes on that front but it shouldn't upset things significantly.

Then we'll need to initiate the search for a replacement and of course we'll keep you posted.

Ringtones are Done!

2007-01-30T08:12:00.000Z

Yes it was a slog but our Ring tone pages have been re-configured to take account of the Bit Pass switch off.

This work has exposed a problem with the More Bach entries in the catalog because the samples don't play on the catalog pages - not sure how I missed that on earlier.

But today we are flogging through the remaining individual product pages to complete the removal of all traces of Bit Pass from our site only a few days after their closure.

No White Knights in view

2007-01-29T08:14:00.000Z

The faint hope that a replacement supplier would appear to rescue us from the Bit Pass debacle is fading fast. The only one to poke their noses above the parapet look to be far to expensive for us.

So we are slogging on - the composer pages are done but not the ring tones yet and only some of the selections pages. The individual track pages are a particular problem - they are not strictly necessary in the new configuration but I am reluctant to abandon them in case a Bit Pass replacement emerges and we can re-use them and their search engine positions so we are going to have to come up with some intelligent visitor guidance copy and boiler plate that.

New Design for a New Opportunity

2007-01-24T12:03:00.000Z

Looking for the best way to respond to the BitPass debacle we have decided to simplify the main Composer and Selection pages with a "Listen & Buy" call to action against each product.

The button then takes them to the product page in the shop which plays the clip and included the product details so they can be removed from the tables on the main pages.

This leaves the product pages without a real role for the time being but they do draw in some traffic so we'll remove the BitPass content and leave them up for the time being while we consider whether we can replace BitPass for single purchases. Of course these are the last pages that we will be able to update not least because there are so many of them.

The first of the new selection pages is already up : Steel Drums - because we needed to do a live test of the new design.

If any one has any thoughts or reactions to any of this they would be most welcome - in public as a Blog Comment or privately by email to webmaster@download2mp3.com

BitPass Bites the Dust

2007-01-23T07:56:00.000Z

They hoped it was just another hoax but the Bit Pass website today confirms that they are closing down in the next few days. This is sad because they really seemed to fill a need and they performed well - we had very few complaints and their system allowed us to resolve them promptly.

For a business like ours that has been built around a unique service of this kind this is a hammer blow.

We will obviously have to refocus around our own OS Commerce online store facilities but we know that they are less attractive to the casual browser not least because of the cost of individual transactions with Pay Pal.

So we start today on the stack of work involved in deleting Bit Pass from hundreds of pages and replacing them with links to our store pages. And removing all the other references to it in the text and updating the calls to action to reflect the new situation. Not to mention some of the operational difficulties we have had recently with our store that need to be fixed.

Lucky we didn't have all our eggs in one basket!

All of MP3 Removed from search facility

2007-01-13T11:00:00.000Z

In the light of recent publicity in news groups etc I had another look at All of MP3 . com and removed it from our legal mp3 search facility.

Although they do claim to abide by their own local copyright legislation this isn't really good enough in my opinion when you are working in a Global market place. Their prices are just too low to allow anything sensible for copyright owners - so they are out.

iTunes Bubble Subsides

2007-01-12T08:16:00.000Z

Inevitably after the holidays the volume of iTunes help enquiries has subsided dramatically but it still obscures what is going on at the summary level. Rank pulse has been showing higher than usual churn in rankings in the last few days but nothing too dramatic.

We have launched the Legal MP3 Search facility with it's own page now and done a bit of branding to its appearance. Given the recent publicity we probably need to have another look at the inclusion of the Russian sites in the domain list. But this really isn't going to develop much further if we don't manage to attract any collaborators so that is the splash on all our pages for the next little while and a Press Release may be in order now.

iTunes Enquiries Obscure all else

2007-01-02T08:16:00.000Z

The surge may be over but the dominance of iTunes enquiries continues.

Yes we are number 10 for "iTunes help" on Google and yes they do stop and read our helpful advice about dragging and dropping MP3s into iTunes - on average for several minutes - an age in site viewing statistics.

But Widor's wedding march continues to be the most popular streamed item with over 100 visits yesterday!

More seriously there is evidently a persistent problem with our shop software - we are collecting money but not releasing the goods until we get the payment email and then email the products. I had hoped to wait for the next OsCommerce release to tackle this but it looks like we will have to see it we can fix it now....

Christmas Day surge in iTunes Enquiries

2006-12-27T08:41:00.000Z

It almost doubled the normal number of visitors and on the festive day itself.

Our iTune/Pod help pages were prompted by noticing a niche in this area which we sough to fill to our own advantage. We have been relatively successful and these are amongst if not quite always the most popular pages on our site. They also represent some of the longest visits which suggests that they do find the copy useful. But we are very unsuccessful at converting those visitors to listeners or paying customers.

On reflection I suppose that this is just a piece of in appropriate targeting and we should really re-visit the whole novelty music issue.

Google Update signalled by Rankpulse

2006-12-22T09:03:00.000Z

Rank pulse is showing it's highest level of changes in rankings on one day for the last six months, so something is a foot.

No comments on the SEO forums yet but I suppose that this is a good time to slip through a big change - too late to have a significant impact on the seasonal commercial activity and a quiet time in which to settle things down.

We are seeing one of those seasonal increases in iTunes driven enquiries as people get their new iPods - just wish we knew how to convert a few of them into sales. Interest in the Carol of Bells is flagging a little but we'll keep it there until New Year or maybe even for the full 12 days of Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Out of Beta

2006-12-20T11:55:00.000Z

Blogger is out of beta and that was pretty painless.

The new features look quite interesting so we'll give them a go shortly.

No collaborators on the search engine yet so I think we'll do a page on the main site and see what we can achieve from there. My news group post killed the thread I responded to - so nothing from that source either.

An index page update was picked up by Google the following day so we seem to have all that part of the system sorted and I finally got round to tidying up the title and description so that might generate more responses.

We are ending the year on over 2000 visitors a week on the main site but not many on this blog - I'm really doing it for my personal benefit now but it helps to imagine that anyone could come along and read it. In fact I suspect that we have far more readers of individual pages thrown up by searches than we do regular readers.

File Usage on Download2MP3

2006-12-18T08:13:00.000Z

Looking through the stats I thought I'd come back to the issue of the way our site is used.

For a digital content site the whole issue of band width is Giga - we have to buy enough capacity from our ISP to ensure that our visitors and more importantly our customers can down load what they need. The way the site is engineered has some baring on that but at the out set all we had was a best guess.

As things stand this month so far MP3 downloads have consumed about 60% of the bandwidth used on the site which is pretty good. Next up are the online steaming samples which appear as Flash animations at 12% but if you add the Javascript for the menu presentation to the gifs, png and jpeg files their combined total is about 16%. Following on are the Html files which include most of our text at about 10%, our CSS layout code at 1% and bringing up the rear PHP for the shop code at less than half a percent.

I could wish that the PHP was working a little harder but overall the balance looks about right.

Carol of the Bells on Bells

2006-12-15T08:56:00.000Z

We have just taken the time to have a look at the performance of our Christmas gift on the site.

We noted earlier that we were quickly on to the first page of Google for that keyword phrase but on looking at and more importantly listening to the competition we have not made enough of our distinctive arrangement. While we might have to acknowledge the superiority of the Leonard Bernstein version ours would come a close second and might even edge ahead for festive values.

So a minor up date on the index page is in order - just to make that point.

So far nearly 400 downloads have been recorded - not breaking the bandwidth bank but some potential new customers we hope.

Carol of the Bells - new Number 1

2006-12-07T08:14:00.000Z

Yes our seasonal gesture has got off to a flying start and is now the number one keyword phrase for people searching for our site.

This is really quite remarkably responsive and it illustrates the benefits of working with the Google grain rather than against it.

In particular the site map facility seems to stream line the Google bot visits.

It is also true that with our template page structure we are able to get a message like this out over all our pages very quickly and that must strengthen its impact in the ranking. So Carol of the Bells MP3 finds us at number 9 on the main Google engine and number 5 in our customised Legal MP3 Downloads engine. Without MP3 in the phrase we are nowhere and the addition of Free is no help at all.

For those who would like to know more about this tune here is the Wikipedia reference.

Dazed by DMOZ

2006-12-04T09:29:00.000Z

Yes , I gave DMOZ a go. I have hardly used it except to register new sites to help them on their way on Google- not sure that works any more but it gives that extra air of respectability to be signed off by a reasonably knowledgeable human being.

So it was a bit disappointing to find a significant number of broken or 'temporarily' down sites and one or two with very old news features.

But it did take me down some interesting by ways - Mozart's works for mechanical organs and some organ replications. Several more independent sites have been added and we are up to 68 sites in total now.

There is a bit of a Classical music bias and I'm going to wait for collaborators to address of other styles.

November Best Month Yet!

2006-12-01T09:17:00.000Z

On virtually all metrics November was our best month yet. This is partly a seasonal recovery from the dog days of the summer when people are away from their PCs and partly a genuine strengthening of our positions on Google.

However it has weakened a little in the last week so we are not getting too excited.

Never the less I think it is probably time to bring out our Carol of the Bells seasonal gift because last year's press release is still floating around.

You can download it free of charge for your personal use from here first: use this link Carol of the Bells in time for the first Sunday of Advent in the Christian Calendar.

Why not use Open Directory?

2006-11-29T18:12:00.000Z

Yes it has taken a few days for us to hit on this resource. We have been included in DMOZ almost from the outset and it supports our position in Google but drives next to no traffic.

So we should be piling up the human checked sites into our search engine at a much faster rate now.

This exercise also highlights the benefits of the focused system we are seeking to develop - there really is quite a lot of dross and repetition in the Google listings which makes me think that they probably focus their effort on cleaning up the first three pages which would make a lot of sense.

We've doubled the number of sites included to 36 now.

Search Engine _ Instrumental MP3s

2006-11-27T08:38:00.000Z

Instrumental MP3 has not been a very productive seam for new MP3 sites - we have stopped after page 7. The level of site duplication in these listings is quite substantial - might be an interesting topic for exploration some time but anything below page 3 is of academic interest really.

But there are some possible promotion sites which we will need to investigate.

I have excluded Karaoke sites on the grounds that they are too specialists and can do their own search engine if they need too.

So it is off to the specialist areas around our own sites content - classical, composer names, percussion and ragtime then I think it will be time to raise the profile a bit.

In the mean time an update on Google - signified by a modest one day spike on Rank Pulse and reduced linking sites and like us sites on Google it self - but little in the way of impact on visitor volumes so far and not picked up on the forums.

Progress with Site Inclusion

2006-11-24T10:16:00.000Z

This little project has given us a reason to look afresh at the MP3 scene on Google and it is evident that this has improved. There are still some rubbish sites out there but the proportion in the first few pages of search results is much reduced and since that is all that most people ever see Google can be well please.

Never the less our editorial approach still seems worth while - we are up to 18 sites included now.

Collaborators would be very welcome!

Search Engine Progress

2006-11-23T15:44:00.000Z

To begin with we just had a look at what Google produces for "MP3 Download" and started a selection from there.

To our list of exclusion criteria we have added portals that point to other sites, so far we have included one Russian site that appears to charge prices that are not too ridiculous. We also exclude sites that say "delete after 24 hours and buy the CD" - don't think that would stand up in court.

It now produces 443 results for 'mozart mp3' and we are number 10!

Should we refine the focus on to instrumental music - another area to explore...

Customised Search - Call for Contributors

2006-11-22T09:59:00.000Z

We have made a start on a customised search engine: Legal MP3 Downloads

This is raising lots of issues: commercial, legal, organisational and time. So we intend to use the blog to air these and invite participation.

The focus of the search engine reflects frustration experienced in the past with sites which quite obviously ignore copyright so we are going for a positive inclusion approach rather than a black list. This has the disadvantage that we won't pick up new sites very quickly and it will take time and effort to be comprehensive but the search results will produce legal MP3 files for download. Not subscription sites are being included they can fend for themselves. However we will include some of the big boys whilst putting most of our effort into the independents and self publishers. The idea is to help searchers find the available versions of specific pieces of music or examples of particular music genre no matter how obscure, without hooking them in to broader or longer term arrangements.

So the first call to action is seeking volunteers to act as contributors to the search engine. This is new stuff so we will need to feel our way into the organisation but I'd hope that we could keep things pretty relaxed and see how things go. Bringing human editors back into the search engine management is an interesting twist and may not come off but I think it is worth a try in a specialist area like this. So let's hear from you soon.

Legitimate MP3 Search Development

2006-11-21T08:50:00.000Z

We checked out the OS Commerce site and it is evident that there is a new milestone release on its way so we are going to sit on our hands with that for the time being.

However yesterday there was an interesting development by Google which came to our attention - this is the new Google Co-op service which enables webmasters to develop specialist search facilities based on Google's infrastructure.

This opens up interesting areas for possible cooperation between the smaller independent MP3 distributors or between the 'legitimate' to provide a valuable service to their visitors. So we are going to experiment with it here on this Blog and see if we can generate some interest and support for it.

Naturally we'll keep you updated.

Tools for Webmasters

2006-11-20T07:43:00.000Z

Google have pulled together quite a decent set of indicators to help webmasters check how their site is working with Googlebot and the indexing system.

For example a regular reader might recall that we set up a sitemap file for Google's benefit using a website offering a free solution. This included submission to Google - what we didn't know until last week was that that submission didn't appear to have worked. So we used the Google facility to submit the file which had been sitting in the appropriate directory for months without being looked at by its intended audience.

More reassuring was sight of the Google reading of our Robots file which has been there for much longer.

The listings of frequently used keywords seem to be a bit at odds with our Google analytics results but we have yet to dig into that - it could easily be a timing issue because there is a constant churn in the popularity stakes for this site.

It has now joined my daily checklist.

Blogger Beta's OK

2006-11-16T15:18:00.000Z

After a couple of days boldly trying the new Beta version its seems to be OK.

The new spell checker is neat and it is one less click to post which is cool too.

Looked at Link Popularity Check for the first time for ages - not much change but modest improvements on Google which must be helping - which led to looking at Google's new tools for webmasters. We have a little tidying up to do but nothing too serious.

Formating Fixed

2006-11-15T09:32:00.000Z

At last our little local formatting problem has been resolved.

The presentation of our main pages is based on a template developed from a commercial package and over time we have experimented with the left and right marginal columns.

This is always tricky because of the interaction between the fixed and %age width and height of tables and their elements. The logic of these arrangements sometimes escapes me so there is always some trial and error involved.

But at least it doesn't seem to be a compatibility issue for the different browsers just my incompetent coding.

False Alarm

2006-11-14T09:20:00.000Z

Good job we didn't panic - it was a reporting problem. Unusual because it was spread over a three days.

We have migrated to the Blogger Beta this am so we'll see how that goes.

We're going to try to fix the Firefox presentation issue today so wish us luck!

Google Hitch

2006-11-13T07:49:00.000Z

Over the weekend Google analytics indicates a significant fall in visitors from Google so we shall have to investigate.

It is too early to panic because it could still be an Analytics reporting problem. There is nothing on Rank Pulse to suggest a wider issue so we just need to go to heightened awareness for a few days we hope.

Keeping your posted as it happens or some times even if it hasn't happened!

Blog Resumption

2006-11-10T10:29:00.000Z

Starting this blog was quite difficult - for one who is not used to putting thoughts down "on paper" on a daily basis.

But after a while you get into the swing of it and the daily monitoring and development of the site, the search engines and our visitors provided a steady feed of ideas.

Over time the monitoring has been cut back as things have got into a reasonably steady state and some of the tools which we used to monitor individual key words and pages have become unavailable or been terminated by Google.

So after our sabbatical there seems to be much less to talk about. The absence of daily contributions doesn't seem to have made much difference to anything so I think you can expect more irregular but hopefully still interesting contributions from now on.

Home Again

2006-11-04T11:02:00.000Z

Yes we're back from the South Pacific.

The lap top we carried enabled us check into our email and monitoring web sites from time to time. The spread of wifi and lap top access in hotels and internet cafe's meant that we could deal with most contingencies that might arise.

As it turned out there were no customer problems raised during the period and visitor numbers increased significantly with out any action on our part.

But we are back in a new era of browser compatibility problems because the latest version of Firefox renders our margins in a rather unattractive way while IE is fine with it. So that's our first repair task - we'll keep you posted.

Back Soon

2006-10-28T23:37:00.000Z

We have been off round the world but will be back home soon and this blog will resume.

Phew!

2006-08-08T06:57:00.000Z

That little production cycle has taken quite a while.

We were a bit rusty to be sure but there must be a better way - perhaps a check list would do it.

Looking back we got the music production and recording set up working on the 17th July - so it took just over three weeks from then to the press release. Not too bad by industry standards I suppose.

However we are going to take a pause now - a bit of a sabbatical even. This blog will be off the air until November unless something dramatic happens while we are on our travels. We're taking the lap top so that site maintenance and customer service will be sustained albeit slightly less responsively than normal because we will be out or range of the Internet for some parts of the trip.

I considered regaling you with travel blog episodes but that didn't seem fair so we'll go quiet for a little while.

Au revoir!

Press Release

2006-08-07T10:06:00.000Z

Yes - at last we have resolved the remaining snags and are ready with the long promised Press Release for our More Bach Collection:

New World Instrumental Recordings of JS Bach Released.

The latest additions to the Online Percussion MP3 Source Download2MP3.com have just been released. Original arrangements of famous pieces selected from the enormous output of JS Bach have been specially arranged and recorded in HiFi MP3 format for sale exclusively online - a Bach's Dozen freshly baked.

In several of these recordings the Steel Drums and Marimbas are supplement by new Synthesizer sounds to give added depth to the novel percussion interpretations of these pieces.

Highlights of this collection include:

The incomparable Air on a G string - reinterpreted on Marimba and Steel Drums;
An amusing Choral Prelude with "humorous" Brass effects;
All three movements of the A minor Steel Drums (formerly Flute) Concerto - introducing the Log Marimba on Basso Continuo;
A brilliant Fantasy on Percussion;
The moving Chaconne originally composed for Violin , famously reinterpreted on Guitar by John Williams and now played out on Steel Drums;
The delicate minuet in F on Celtic Harp with percussion in support;
A complete recording of the glorious Double Violin Concerto - now a double Drum Band Concerto with Marimba accompaniment.

These recordings augment and complement the existing catalog of Bach's Fugues, Toccatas and selected movements from the Brandenburg Concertos with yet more popular Classics.

August Google Update - a Modest Affair

2006-08-04T07:38:00.000Z

After some of the tidal waves it looks as if the August update on Google was a modest affair if we can rely on Rank Pulses results.

Never the less the recovery in our visitor numbers continues so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

I'd forgotten how much work was involved in setting up new products on our site. We just have a little more code to cut and paste, a couple of images to generate and some supporting text to generate and we'll be away.

A very intrepid customer could actually buy them and download them now but I don't think there is much risk of that.

Then there is the exciting task of generating the Press Release!

Visitor Numbers picking up again

2006-08-02T09:33:00.000Z

It looks like we have turned a bit of a corner but not yet returned to our former glories - so far so good.

More progress with the new products yesterday - the new sample pages are almost complete and the products are registered on Bit Pass. Now we just have to register them in the Volume discount store and then tidy up the More Bach page text.

On with the motley!

Amazing Churn?

2006-07-31T07:31:00.000Z

If we believe the Google Analytics results there has been an almost complete replacement of the first two hundred keywords leading to our site associated with this latest update.

I suspect that this has more to do with a change in Google Analytics but of course we can't be sure.

It's not that the areas of interest have changed but the specific form of words where we are picking up visitors seems to have changed across the board - that's spooky if it is true.

However even if Google returns flattering results to me when I search on my key words, positions have not changed that much - so I think it must be Analytics that has changed.

The product registration and web pages are taking longer than expected and it may still be a few days before we complete the task. In the meantime here is a sneak preview of our new Hi Fi Freebie - Bach's Crab Canon just under a minute long and weighing in at 1.3 Meg.

Configuration Day

2006-07-28T07:27:00.000Z

The new files are uploaded and so today is configuration day.

There are the final checks on the descriptions to be used, prices to be set, the web page to be filled out and then the product registration on Bit Pass and our own discount shop.

Dreamweaver is up and running and it looks like it might be a bit cooler today thank God so this should not be too onerous.

Meanwhile the seasonal droop in visitor numbers goes on and there was a significant spike on Rank Pulse yesterday which usually presages an update so no doubt we will see more churn in our SERPs over the coming days.

Uploading New Products

2006-07-27T07:17:00.000Z

As it turned out we found another hidden copyright claim in one of the pieces we had planned to record so we have abandoned that. We also think that one of the others had been incorrectly attributed to Bach and is actually a Mozart minuet so we left that out too. All part of the final checks as we go into production.

We have to hand craft the uploading of our products one at a time because of the security arrangements - drudgery but necessary. Eased by the faster upload speeds we get these days thanks to our broader band connexion.

Speaking of which it seems to have learned how to speed up. Our download speed has risen to 5.8Meg in the last few days although it fell back a little this morning. There has not been enough rain to dampen the cables yet so we'll see how we go.

For some reason Dreamweaver has lost our site details so we'll have to re-configure that next. The files are still there as are the other sites we manage with it but I suppose it can't be a coincidence that it has happened straight after our little housekeeping exercise.

Recording Session Almost Complete

2006-07-26T08:53:00.000Z

We will probably wrap it up today! Thankfully the houskeeping we did has made the whole thing much more stable - very few crashes yesterday despite continuous use.

Yesterday's recordings included Bach's Double Violin Concerto which is one of my all time favorites. I didn't really think we'd have the nerve to tackle anything like this but we have become more proficient and the pre-sets have become available. We have even included the slow movement.

So we have managed some experimentation but still stuck close to our established approach.

Next we need to upload the files, price them and register them in our two shopping facilities and then produce the new web page - end of week possibly for the Press Release.

There is a substantial droop in visitor numbers at the moment but we are hoping that it is just the students away from their school/college internet connexions.

In Production - Sample from the cutting room floor.

2006-07-25T07:05:00.000Z

It is nice to be back in the game as it were.

As promised we are including a sneak preview to our regular Blog readers.

The sample is one of those slight errors a bit like the variations on rare stamps.

Normally when producing the LoFi Clips we select a few phrases up to about 30 seconds to record but yesterday we overlooked that step on one occasion so here is the resulting LoFi recording of Bach's BMV 560 a Prelude and Fugue originally composed for the organ and re-arranged on Steel Drums and Marimba. The solo bass marimba sections are a little odd but we decided to go with it any way. Despite the LoFi recording a good impression of the full recording is conveyed in the full three and a half minutes.

More house keeping on this machine yesterday including an afternoon de-fragging the D: drive where Windows 2000 sits.

When I consider how stable this operating system has been it is doubly galling to see Microsoft begin to withdraw support - no IE 7 for us apparently and future operations plagued by crashes to look forward to. On 2000 applications may crash but the operating system very rarely goes with them. The Task Manager actually copes and tidies up after the mess - such a shame that could not be sustained.

Orders of Magnitude

2006-07-24T07:47:00.000Z

I don't know about you but I still can't get my head around the expansion of memory that has occurred with computers in recent years.

I have been working with computers directly for nearly 30 years so there has been a bit of a change. When the last desk top arrived with a 120 Gigabyte Hard drive I divided it up into some big partitions and forgot about it. At the end of last week it became apparent that part of the instability we have been experiencing was due to insufficient memory - we were nearly down to our last Gigabyte on the C: drive. Please note that the C: drive nomenclature has not changed from the DOS on the Mainframe Timeshare which IBM provided to us in 1978 - nor has most of the rest of the basic DOS despite Microsoft's "re-write".

What has changed is the amount of memory that is routinely available. On our system the thing that clogs it up is back-ups. Over six years of operation we have tried a series of different back up solutions - none of them have been totally satisfactory but then again neither have we ever had to make use of them! The clogging is compounded by different standards for acceptable file names - especially length which can make it difficult to move things around.

So a weekend of housekeeping has got us back into shape - defragmented space now abounds once more on the music machine - we just have to sort this one now.

Unstable Software

2006-07-20T06:41:00.000Z

Producing music on a PC involves at least four major concurrent applications: the Operating system, sound processor, sequencer and synthesizer. And more if you use more than one synthesizer.

Naturally to get the most out of the system we often push that combination to the limits and we experience system crashes on a regular basis.

In our case the operating system is XP with all the available updates. Hard restarts often require a second restart to get the mouse cursor moving but many music crashes will only respond to a hard restart. Our sound processor is Creamware both the software application and the DSP processors on the sound card - we have our ticks and moans about it but when it is up and running it is very very good - it can even handle a little bit of sound processing overload without throwing a hissy fit. When they occur these often they involve loosing the ASIO sound interface i.e. silence.

We use Cubase SE as our sequencer and that fits our needs very nicely but that too has hysterics from time to time on its own account. The interface with the synthesizers is called VST and is another one of the weaker links in this complex chain. It offers enormous flexibility but at a cost. This is definitely software where it pays to keep saving your work as you go along.

We use two main synthesizers the Arturia Moog Modular V which provides the Syn Marimba as well as the obvious and offers hundreds of others. We also use a ROM Player called Ravity which provides the steel drum sounds and some of the other pads we use. Our Harp sounds come from a NuSoft application which is a software emulation of the physical instruments and the Celtic harp is particularly lovely. Of these the Moog is the most complex and processor hungry and occasionally goes belly up. But it is the most wonderful sound source that we could wish for. I don't think we would have got into this business it if it had not existed.

But you can see that we have an unstable three legged stool standing on an uneven floor so we get used to accidents happening and we make haste slowly. We are getting fairly close to completing the More Bach collection of arrangements and should complete the recordings next week.

The ....... of the New

2006-07-19T09:07:00.000Z

As part of the run up to this current bout of arranging we loaded up lots of new presets - instruments on our two favorite synthesizers thinking that this would help provoke some new thinking and new sounds.

And yes we have done some more experimentation and the Log Marimba will appear from time to time when it's staccato effects help. We have also tried some of the tempting new pads but have rejected most on the grounds that the effects are too gross and un-controllable. In many instances the quality of an arrangement is achieved through the restraint applied to the variety and complexity of the sounds combined.

Where the classical composer has the standard orchestral pallet to work from an electronic music composer has an enormous potential range of instruments to use. Part of our success has been the identification of a restricted pallet of instruments that work well together. This week we have identified a couple of pads which sit nicely behind our steel drums and marimba arrangements filling in for the longer dying notes and giving a little more depth to the sound during the more percussive passages. This is encouraging us to include a couple of slow movements which we have generally avoided up to now.

So incremental improvement rather than revolution this time.

Composer MP3 collapse?

2006-07-18T07:52:00.000Z

As regular readers know we have put a lot of effort into promoting composer mp3 keyword combinations through our site.

With the recent rise of iTunes related phrases we wondered if there was a general collapse of composer mp3 combinations causing the current fall off in visitor numbers but that doesn't seem to be the case. There has been a longer term fall off on this front and this has been exposed by other movements in the last few days.

So turmoil and drift now - not an easy situation to combat so I think we'll sit tight, work on the music production and see where that takes us.

The system was standing up pretty well yesterday and we probably have the bones of a More Bach page, possibly including a whole concerto. The question mark as ever is over the slow movement but we might package it up as one piece rather than separate movements on this occasion because our arrangement does emphasise the contrast with the faster movements.

Still finding hidden copyright messages in the MIDI files a bit late in the process so we have had to abandon some promising pieces. We have followed strict adherence to all copy right claims found in apparently Public Domain files because we think it is only fair. The only exception is the Brahms variations on a theme by Paganini where the young Brazillians who coded it could not be traced and we have explicity acknowleged their contribution. So far there is not a big enough opportunity to make it worth while to contact copyright holders and negotiate terms with them.

New Recording Configuration Working

2006-07-17T07:21:00.000Z

Yes - by George they've done it and the new set up is up and running.

So we are into the really fun part now - experimenting and listening and experimenting and listening. I'll start to put some of the new recordings up in the next few days - there might even be a few freebies for our regular readers.

It looks like the first collection will be "More Bach".

Meanwhile keyword phrases containing iTunes have taken over our top 5 and our iTunes advice page gets an even bigger proportion of our entrances - which is a shame because it also has the highest bounce rate despite our efforts to entice these visitors into the rest of the site.

And our Broadband speed has been stuck below 4 Meg since Thursday. Given the heat I would have thought that any dampness that may have got into the cable would have dried out by now. It seems the algorithm is good at slowing down but not speeding up!

Setting up the new recording configuration

2006-07-14T06:55:00.000Z

Yes that's what the first day was all about.

The Creamware software isn't too robust so there was a lot of trial and error, ASIO driver dropping out etc and many restarts. Hopefully it will be OK once we have settled on a new default configuration.

However we do seem to be making progress and we did make one test recording with the new graphic equalizer inline and today we are going to se if we can get some of the other effects working too.

We now have so many pre-sets for the Moog synthesizer that it is a real struggle to find the one you want some times.

It looks as if our Google backlinks have fallen again - no logic that I can see to this - not sure what impact if any it will have on our SERPs.