Bandnews Blog

Artists and Bands discover blogs

October 12th, 2005 at 10:24 am

When we started with Bandnews.org there weren’t many artists using a blog to post their thoughts. Hell there were even bands who didn’t have any news at all which made it hard for us to keep track of them.

But luckily this is rapidly changing. Only one year after the launch there already quite a lot of musicians using blogs and rss to keep in touch with their fans. Most of them integrate it into their website, some are using Blogger or other free services.

For example Radiohead who didn’t have any official news at all, now has a blog.
So does Franz Ferdinand, Moby, Helmet, … just to name a few.

And the best: you can read all of their news on Bandnews.org

It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Maybe some musicians are already planning to podcast in order to showcase their work.

blog, music, news, artist, radiohead

posted by nader | General | 11 Comments »

Now available: Magazine News

October 11th, 2005 at 9:30 am

To provide our users with news from bands which may have not gotten their own bandnews, we incorporated a couple of magazines:
Spin, LiveDaily, MTV, E!Online, Spex, Vibe, Dancehallmusic, Blabbermouth, …

We’ll be constantly adding quality magazines so you can also read some news from a different perspective.
Should you know of any other interesting magazines, let us know by e-mail

Hint: The type of news (official, magazine, label) is marked on the right hand side of the “Read more” (”Weiterlesen”) link.
For example: The Darkness Bandpage

posted by nader | General | No Comments »

Thanks for the Press

September 2nd, 2005 at 12:55 pm

The feedback on the new Bandnews.org website is just amazingly positive. Thanks to all bloggers, musicians and news sites for writing about the system.

Important note:
We are not just an RSS aggreator for band feeds. Less than one percent of the bands we have listed provide RSS. We have to deal with badly written html pages and news hidden in flash files. The spider system is what makes Bandnews somewhat special in our eyes.

A couple of interesting posts:

Waxy.org

a nicely-designed niche RSS feedreader for musician news; crawls tons of band websites

Mixedcontent.com

All in all, I’m impressed. The idea is that most band websites do not push out RSS feeds (all though I’m trying to change that!), so the smart folks at bandnews.org wrote a bot to crawl band pages and publish RSS feeds for those artists’ sites…

Maxkiesler.com

there is an AJAX enhanced website that will help you start dealing with this issue…The Bandnews interface is lightning fast due to their use of XmlHttpRequests and as they say in their blog, “it allows client-server-communication while the currently loaded page remains unchanged”. Their AJAX features include a live search, add/remove bands function, login/registration and their band directory.

In a recent email Alex of Bandnews stated, “Unlike all the hyped websites we tried to use Ajax in an intelligent and useful way”. I couldn’t agree more!

Argh.de

…fühlt sich an wie eine gepimpte (wow, daß ich den begriff wirklich nochmal verwenden würde, ..) version von google news (ajax olé!), kümmert sich inhaltlich um musik bzw. bands, und die beiden (vienna berlin unite!) betreiber haben nebenbei noch ein kleines weblog zur site bzw. zur entwicklung. lieblingsbands zusammensuchen, rss-feed personalisieren, informiert sein, wohlfühlen. gute sache.

Exego.net

אגרגטור לידיעות מוזיקה. כמו מנועי חיפוש מתמחים, עכשיו יצוצו אגרגטורים מתמחים, וטוב שכך. [ירדן לוינסקי]

posted by nader | Press & Buzz | 26 Comments »

MTV Video Music Awards News

August 29th, 2005 at 5:05 pm

All official and collected news around the MTV Video Music Awards can be read here.

Bandnews.org is a search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the band scene. A bot collects the news from official band websites and magazines so you can read them on one page.

Technorati Tags: VMA MTV Music

posted by nader | General | No Comments »

Bandnews.org loses weight through AJAX

August 29th, 2005 at 4:54 pm

The old page was nice and handy for its time but we figured there are a lot of improvements that can be made. So we have been working on a completely new version based on the welcome page of Bandnews.org. Check it out here.

The user interface has been undergoing a heavy reconstruction, so have the band pages in general. The site is now cleaner, faster to load and most importantly easier to use.

New features include a faster user interface which provides instant reaction by using Javascript. This is now possible due to the widely supported function called XmlHttpRequest. It allows client-server-communication while the currently loaded page remains unchanged. This technique is nowadays refered to as AJAX (Asynchonous JAvascript with Xml).

The features are listed in detail below, but let me pick an example:
when clicking on a +-sign the band gets instantly added to your list. Using this in combination with Live-Search you can add any band you like in 5 seconds flat.

Features using AJAX

Live-Search
Using the Live-Search function you’ll see immediate results as soon as you type in a band name, for ex. Green Day. Try it out

Add / Remove Bands
After searching for your preferred band or browsing the band directory you can click on the +-signs anytime to add the band.

Login / Registration
Instant feedback is provided to show, e.g., whether you provided the correct password or your favourite username is already taken.

Band Directory
A page with, for example all bands starting with the letter A, gets displayed without reloading the complete page.

Technorati Tags: Ajax

posted by nader | General, Technology | 2 Comments »

Bandnews Scout: Collaborative software checking for the latest News (Beta Release)

August 1st, 2005 at 2:12 pm

We all like music. And we all are, in some way or another, interested in finding news on our favorite bands. What’s best for that? The internet, right. But it’s not always that easy as there exist a ton of websites a fan would have to check out. “Eh, what’s the band’s website address again?”

And there is Bandnews.org - a one-stop-website automatically collecting official news from over 780 bands worldwide. Every 5 minutes to present the most recent articles on one page. The service features artists in the likes of REM, Eminem, Jamiroquai, Snoop Dogg and offers an archive dating back to 1998.

Users can add their favorite bands to myBandnews, a personal news selection they can get access to by web, RSS and the scout. So as soon as the band posts a new message, the user gets notified.

Apart from RSS there is also a windows tool called Bandnews Scout that not only provides users with the latest news (shown as a balloon tooltip, see below) but also helps to improve the speed of news detection by Bandnews.

Each Bandnews Scout acts as a real-life scout by going ahead and checking for updates. This distributes the load for the bands’ websites geographically. The more people use scouts the faster they receive the news of their favorite bands. As simple as that.

Bandnews Scout: Screenshots
Bandnews Scout - News notification in Windows taskbar
News notification by flashing in the Windows taskbar

Bandnews Scout Software - Checking for News
The Scout checking band websites for news

posted by nader | Technology | 1 Comment »

Alternative Startpage with Live-Search (Update)

July 29th, 2005 at 9:40 am

Following the numerous requests of our users we have launched an alternative version of the startpage focusing on usability. Use the handy Live-Search function and see immediate results while you type (similar to Google Suggest).

Update: You can now read the latest news entry on this page.

View it in Action

What do you think? Feel free to post a comment.

Alternative Version of the Startpage

Technorati Tags: News, Music

posted by nader | General, Features | 4 Comments »

Live 8 Concerts - Collected News by Bands

July 3rd, 2005 at 3:12 pm

Everybody interested in reading official comments and news from bands around the Live 8 concerts can visit the Live8-Searchpage where all messages are displayed on one page.

Artists like U2, Elton John and Green Day have participated in this worldwide event to put pressure on the G-8 nation’s leaders to come up with more aid for Africa.

Bandnews.org is a portal and search engine for the latest band related news, directly from the official source, and automatically updated every 5 minutes. The news are collected by a spider, then easily made available on one page.

posted by nader | General | 4 Comments »

Incorporating Google AdSense. Why and How?

June 27th, 2005 at 2:10 pm

Alex and I have thought longer about this issue since we know ourselves how annoying ads can be. After running several possibilities (in theory) we came to at least one conclusion: we love music and our work that goes with Bandnews.org but we need to be able to pay the server, therefore we need some money.

The most viable solution: Google AdSense. Why?
We personally think of the ads as visually not disturbing and contextually interesting.
For example: showing a link to free tunes for the band currently displayed.

We’ll be incorporating and testing a couple of advertisement setups so please be patient with us while we find the best and most interesting solution. It won’t be a logo-ad-overkill for sure.

Should you have thoughts like “the ads suck” or “hm, that’s quite interesting” we’d be happy to receive your feedback.

posted by nader | General | No Comments »

Enhancing myBandnews

May 24th, 2005 at 4:07 pm

Users can now anonymously personalise the Bandnews feed with their favorite bands. Simply click on the “+”-button, displayed next to each band name. In order to store your news selection, click on “Save”. This brings you to the registration process after which you have the possibility to store up to 100 bands. Already registered users can directly proceed to login.

posted by nader | Features | No Comments »

Artists and Bands discover blogs

October 12th, 2005 at 10:24 am

Now available: Magazine News

October 11th, 2005 at 9:30 am

Thanks for the Press

September 2nd, 2005 at 12:55 pm

MTV Video Music Awards News

August 29th, 2005 at 5:05 pm

Bandnews.org loses weight through AJAX

August 29th, 2005 at 4:54 pm

Bandnews Scout: Collaborative software checking for the latest News (Beta Release)

August 1st, 2005 at 2:12 pm

Alternative Startpage with Live-Search (Update)

July 29th, 2005 at 9:40 am

Live 8 Concerts - Collected News by Bands

July 3rd, 2005 at 3:12 pm

Incorporating Google AdSense. Why and How?

June 27th, 2005 at 2:10 pm

Enhancing myBandnews

May 24th, 2005 at 4:07 pm

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