JamBase Blog

JamBase Updates

2008-01-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

We pushed live a few updates, enhancements and fixes this evening. Most notably, the expansion of the main navigation to include Contests, Festival & Forums. No longer do you have to click "more" to actually see "more".

We've got a lot 'more' to come, stay tuned...

The New JamBase

2007-08-25T00:39:00.001-07:00

After almost a year of discussion, design, development, testing, launching, and re-testing, we finally pushed the new JamBase out the door last night.

Whenever we do a big redesign, it tends to get a bit nostalgic around the office.

There was the time we went from this to this, and of course the time we went to this and met this guy.

Then of course we went with this for a few years until arriving at where we're at today.

What's most exciting is where we can go from here. We have a new foundation, a clean slate and already some great ideas on what to do next.

Thanks to everyone who has already written in with their comments, we look forward to continuing to make improvements for your enjoyment :)

Goodnight,
Andy

JamBase iPhone

2007-07-25T23:23:00.001-07:00

For those of you who have leaped into the world of iPhone, check out our little adapted interface app designed specially for you:

http://www.jambase.com/iphone

(we tried to take a screen shot but only have 1 iPhone in the house...)

What's up with the new JamBase?

2007-07-17T22:31:00.001-07:00

Thanks for asking!

We got a ton of great feedback from our beta test a few weeks ago and are working on fixing some remaining bugs and ensuring that the site will be stable enough to handle the traffic. As it turns out, there's a lot of you!

You can still check out and play with the new site at http://new.jambase.com

Please continue to test away and send us any issues, errors, suggestions or praise ;)

Our NEW Site

2007-06-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Thursday Everybody -

We're in the midst of final testing and bug fixing of our new site this week.

It actually got some public exposure on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning before we realized there were a few more things left to deal with before it was ready for prime time (that and our server started crawling).

Please feel free to visit the new site at http://new.jambase.com, help test us out and be a good Beta Breaker and report any issues you come across.

We're very excited about our new look, and hope you'll enjoy all it has to offer!

Cheers,
Andy

Tap Tap Tap ... is this thing on?

2007-05-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

Things have been a little too quiet in JamBase Blog-land lately so here I am chiming in with an update.

We're been keeping busy working on great new features, launching FestivalBases (Wakarusa, 10Klf & Summercamp) and putting the final touches on our next version of the website.

If you're interested in helping us test out the new JamBase, drop an email to new at jambase.com and we'll let you know how you can help. You just have to promise to tell us what you think. ;)

Have a nice weekend...

A Comment About Comments

2007-02-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

At JamBase, we're all about allowing people to speak their mind. What is the live music experience without opinions, discussions, theories and general debate? This is why one year and ten months ago we enabled "comments" for the stories that are published on our site (which are also often submitted by fans). Be it a Featured Article, Interview, Show Review or Newswire, we wanted to give you a place to give 'feedback'.

Most of the time these comments supplement the stories with a general pulse of the community reaction and gives everyone a chance to chime in with their take. Every now and then certain individuals (who will remain nameless) get involved at a slighter higher volume, velocity and demeanor which tend to hijack the conversation and forces people to reply to their comment, usually with a higher degree of negativity than the original comment until the whole thing spirals into a match-up of wits, jokes and insults that depart completely from the original topic.

Occasionally we've had to go in and remove certain obscene or completely unacceptable comments, and on a very rare occasion resigned ourselves to removing the comments option from a story entirely. We hate doing this, as it undermines everything we've tried to build here at JamBase, especially around the participation of our community.

Today we're excited to roll out a new enhancement that allows you to vote on any comment.

If you like the comment, give it a thumb's up. If you don't like it, give it a thumb's down. If enough people vote the comment down it will be hidden from everyone. You can still "Show" hidden comments and vote on them yourself.

We're not silly enough to really think that this will completely solve the problem. What we hope this feature will do is give people a bit of incentive to be more thoughtful with their comments, as well as give fans a way to voice their discontent (and content!) with a commenter without resorting to negatively commenting themselves.

If all those reasons fail, we hope you'll agree that it's still a pretty cool feature!

Happy Commenting!

-JamBase

p.s. Thanks to Digg, Yahoo!, Netscape and all the ajax developers out there who have come before us for the inspiration.

iConcertCal v1.1 Released

2007-02-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

iConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city. It is available for both Windows and Mac OS X and supports worldwide searches.

iConcertCal v1.1 was released this past weekend and improves upon the search capabilities and includes radius searching.

JamBase is proud to be a part of this exciting and very cool new project.

Download it here!

How ya gonna clap?!

2007-01-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

We love JazzFest, and each year before going down to N'awlins we map out the grand plan of shows to hit and places to be. With so much to see and so much to do, it requires more than just your typical list.

So once again we are proud to present the 2007 New Orleans During JazzFest Grids, an easier (hopefully) to digest breakdown of what's happening each weekend (and in-between) down in the Crescent City.

We'll be updating this automatically as shows get announced, but we couldn't resist giving you a sneak preview as we all start to whet our appetites!

Enjoy, and don't forget the Po Boys!

iCal? I CAN!

2007-01-19T22:42:00.000-08:00

We love our My JamBase show calendars. It keeps us all (and our friends) in tune with the shows we want to go to and ensures that we remember where we're supposed to be (or hope to be).

Today we're happy to announce that now you can also take it with you.

That's right sports fans, My JamBase show calendars are now iCal enabled!

For those of you not familiar with the term, iCal (short for iCalendar) is a data standard for sharing event information between calendars. iCal is also a calendar program for the Mac which, not surprisingly, supports the iCal format.

Whether you're using iCal, Google Calendar, Spongecell or some other iCal enabled calendar program, you can now subscribe to your own My JamBase calendar. Outlook is a little tricky.

To get started, simply log in to My JamBase and select the "My Calendar" tab and then copy code beneath the iCal button
at the bottom of the page and paste it into your favorite calendar program.

If everything works the way it's supposed to, your personal calendar program will update whenever you add a show to your My JamBase calendar.

Give it a whirl, let us know if it works and we'll keep figuring out ways for you to access JamBase on your own terms.

-The JamBase Team

Recommend Live Music

2007-01-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone - I figured I'd contribute to this dormant blog with an installment of advice for all you wanna-bee music promoters.

I was very excited about the recent launch of the JamBase Profiles features. Now any music fan can share their musical tastes with the world.

If you'd like to "recommend" shows to someone, simply add bands to your Favorites list. You can do this by inputting them one by one, uploading your iTunes Music Library or entering your LastFM username.

Once you've populated your list of favorite bands, not only with their shows be available to you within My JamBase, but your adoring fans will be able to see when their shows are coming around on your own JamBase Profile page.

Check it out - my favorites reside comfortably here. If you're logged into My JamBase when viewing my profile, it will tell you when MY favorite bands are playing near YOU!

Enjoy,
Andy

November Top 10

2006-12-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Top 10 Searched Bands on JamBase in the month of November were:

Rocktober

2006-10-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

If it feels like there's a lot more shows going on right now, that's because there are.

October has traditionally been the most active month for shows, outweighing it's fellow calendar blocks by a solid margin.

Average Tour Dates by Month

(Source: JamBase 2001-2005)

Everybody tours in October. The Summer Festival season is over, folks are making plans for the winter...it's time get back on the road! Enjoy!

Talking about Music

2006-09-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

We launched Forums about a month ago, and so far folks seem to be liking it. It's a fairly basic way to discuss general music topics and get to know your fellow JamBasers.

Beyond the main forum, did you also know that there is a forum for EVERY band and EVERY event in JamBase?

For bands, just search for a band that you're a fan of, add it to your favorites (if you haven't already) and then go to the "Fans" tab and there will be a link for the Forum. Yes, we realize this is 2-3 clicks too many, but while we're testing things out it's good to keep them somewhat hidden so we can fix any issues quickly.

For events, just use the "Forums" tab on the events page.

We've got some more ideas for futher integration of this and making it easy for you to communicate with one another.

Thanks for playing along...

Welcome Last.FM Users

2006-09-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

We just added a function to allow anyone with a Last.FM account to import the 50 most popular artists that they're listening to right into their MyJamBase Account.

Go to the Edit Favorite Bands page and enter your Last.FM username in the form.

While you're there, don't hesitate to upload your iTunes Music Library XML file as well which will add all the bands you're listening to into your profile.

If you haven't already, be sure to create a Public Profile so you can share your favorite bands with other eager fans interested in your musical tastes.

Forums

2006-08-09T05:38:00.000-07:00

Well we figured it was about time, since JamBase is all about connecting people...with the music you love.

Today we launched two special 'forums' on JamBase for MyJamBase Members to communicate with each other.

It's been a long time coming, and we're excited to see where this new platform can take us in terms of actually getting people to interact with each other. All we ask is that you are kind to each other, in whatever that means for each of you.

Enjoy, more to come...

Steal Your Favorite Bands

2006-07-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

We've enabled "favorite band syndication" so you can take the list of your favorite bands which appears on your My JamBase Public Profile and put it anywhere you'd like. (Like your MySpace Page, Blog or Website)

To find the code, simply click the universal symbol for syndication: when looking at your own public profile next to the Favorite Bands area.

Check it out, and post a comment here to let us know where you use it.

Fans

2006-07-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

If you're a fan of a band (they're one of your MyJamBase Favorites), and have a MyJamBase Public Profile, then your beautiful mug will appear on the new Band Fans page.

Enjoy, and be wonderful to each other.

Site Updates

2006-07-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

A quick hello to all the seven people who are subscribed to the official JamBase Blog RSS feed! We obviously haven't kept this section up to date recently, but plan to post more frequently (yeah right) with site updates, stats and our plans for the future. If you're interested in signing up for our RSS Feed, it is located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/JambaseBlog. You can read all about RSS and why it's important here: http://www.squidoo.com/rss

OK, now onto the site updates:

Artist Profiles

For a while now we've had a wealth of information on artists available but it's been hidden behind various tabs. We're pleased to now have brought that information to the forefront by creating an artist profile featuring (when available), Bio & Photo, Tour Dates, Recent Articles and Goods.

For those artists wanting to submit your official photo and bio, please email (info at jambase.com) with the bio & photo attached (300x200 jpg preferred).

If you're logged into MyJamBase when looking at an artist's page and have friends who have that band as one of their favorites, you'll see your friends listed...

Which leads us to our next feature creep announcement...

Fan Profiles

Spread Live Music! Now you can make your MyJamBase page public by creating a public profile. From the main MyJamBase page simply click on "My Public Profile" at the top and you'll be taken through a simple set-up process. Once completed you can share your Favorite Bands, their shows and a little information about yourself along with a photo. Your friends will also see your personal concert calendar.

The goal here is to turn people onto your favorite bands and allow you to recommend music simply by customizing your own experience.

This is just the beginning, and we realize that there isn't a way to search for other fans in your area that like the same kind of music as you, but hang on, we're working it out...

Customize, Connect, Discover...live music...Together.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

April Top Bands

2006-05-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

We had over 2.8 million searches on JamBase in April, here is your top 12.

Top Row: Umphrey's McGee, Keller Williams, STS9

2nd Row: ALO, The Disco Biscuits, Widespread Panic

3rd Row: Yonder Mountain String Band, Particle, String Cheese Incident

4th Row: moe., Phil Lesh and Friends, Benevento/Russo Duo

SuperDee - Behind the Cape (v.1)

2006-04-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

Presenting the first installment of "Behind the Cape." I have just returned from the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in Indio, CA. As a veteran fest-goer, I can't help but compare and contrast all the positives and negatives to other festivals.

What makes Coachella great?
- Hot line-up chock-full of buzz bands of all genres mixed with big name favorites.
- Easy to get from stage to stage so you can really pack in the music.
- Not a cloud in the sky.
- Hip hop, hip hop, and hip hop.
- Potential celebrity sightings! (I saw none, oh well.)

What could they do better?
- Sound bleeding between certain stages is kind of rough at times.
- Clean vibes crew is desperately needed! A little awareness and trash bags will go a long way.
- A few additional entrances/exits in key areas.
- More ID checkers for the beer wristbands scattered throughout the grounds.

Until next time...

March Top Bands

2006-04-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

We had over 3 million searches in March. Below is our top searched bands. How many can you name?

April Fools

2006-04-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who wrote it with appreciation (and confusion) for our revamped April Fools homepage.

http://www.jambase.com/google.html

We obviously adored Google's minimalist homepage for years, and even now after switching back to our old comfy ways, there's still a craving for a cleaner design.

I already miss the "I'm Feeling Heady" button. What if when you clicked it you were taken to a random upcoming show in your area not already in your calendar based on your favorite bands and your friends favorite bands?

Welcome to the official JamBase Blog

2006-03-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome - we thought it was about time we adopted some of the blogging software out there in the world to use for posting about our world at JamBase.

Look for new features, articles, stories and general commentary in the day weeks and months ahead...