Dear Jamendo friends,

Discover the Jamendo Artists Corner!

We created this new page to shed more light on what matters the most to Jamendo: the artists! We truly value those who like to break boundaries and give away their material, those who make the free music world a wonderful place!

We are very thankful for the creative driving force that is our artist community, sharing new music everyday on Jamendo.com.

From now on, visit this page to read all about our artists’ latest news: interviews, concerts, special projects, and many great stories.

This is also the place where we will share contests and opportunities for our artists, so check back frequently!

- The Jamendo Team

Until July 16th, apply on Sonicbids Artists will perform in front of French and international music professionals, French and international media, festival-goers (half of venue capacity is dedicated to public).

8 venues will welcome the Festival:

Centre Musical Fleury Goutte D’Or – Barbara, La Boule Noire, La Cigale, Le Divan du Monde, Le Bus Palladium, Les Trois Baudets, La Machine du Moulin Rouge (La Chaufferie), Le Trianon, to present in the best way around 80 gigs to the music industry delegates and French audience.

APPLY RIGHT HERE !

www.mama-event.com

As you know, among the additions are the new player, ten new radio channels and improved search.

Our goal is always for our users to discover and listen to music more easily and for our artists to have a great, effective way to share their art.  

While we have received some positive feedback, we’ve also heard your criticisms loud and clear, specifically reporting bugs, calling for the return of some old features or criticizing the new track-oriented approach.

There were some technical problems that we needed to solve and we are working on getting it all smoothed out as soon as possible. Jamendo’s technical team is composed of only three people who handled the huge task of rewriting the site and migrating the new architecture while still maintaining the Jamendo PRO site. The team has been working very hard on solving these problems and many have already been fixed – artist blogs are now working normally and the forums are up and running again.

We deliberately chose a track-oriented approach in an effort to make search results more accurate, make it easier for users to find music that suits their tastes and to give our artists a better chance at exposure.  We also wanted to provide a new experience to accommodate the changing ways people are sharing and consuming music. Lastly, we had realized that a huge percentage of albums uploaded to Jamendo were only single tracks as it was.

However, after assessing your feedback, we understand the desire of many artists who remain attached to the album approach and will improve our interface very quickly by enabling:

- album reviews in addition to the current track review option
- display of both album and track reviews on the album pages
- rearrangement of the artist page so new albums are more visible, higher up on the page
- the display of favorite albums in the MyMusic section in addition to the current playlist of favorite tracks
- displaying the number of listens for each album on the album page
- a better presentation of the most recently released albums/tracks.

Another major problem reported was the inability of artists to send messages to their fans.  This was another function that was temporarily lost during the migration, but a system that allows artists to contact their fans via email has been planned, and users will continue to have the opportunity to become fans of artists they like.

Our search page will also evolve very quickly so it not only displays just tracks, but also search results for relevant artists, albums and playlists.

The social features (friends, messaging between members) will not be integrated into the new Jamendo. Between Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, we believe it’s essential to better integrate these services into our site in order to allow artists to expand their audience.  We are aware that currently the number of Facebook “likes” displayed are inaccurate and we are in the process of resolving that issue.

Please note that there is no need to use Facebook in order to use Jamendo – this is just optional. Some users were experiencing connection problems that were due to a combination of a bug on our side and a very specific configuration of their browser. This has been fixed.

The Creative Commons license for each track is visible on the bottom of each track page, but as many users had difficulties locating them, we will move them so they are more clearly presented. Of course, Jamendo is and always was a platform where all content is under Creative Commons.

Other problems will be resolved as soon as possible; it’s important to us that the site is as user friendly as possible for users and artists. We remain convinced that if we want Jamendo to grow and enable its artists to reach a large audience, we must take into account new user habits and give the community of members the maximum number of tools to listen to and enjoy music quickly and easily.

This first release of the new version of Jamendo was certainly not perfect, but a “big bang” was necessary for us to start fresh. The aggressive reaction of some surprised us because our entire team tries to do their best with limited resources. Jamendo is a very small company that has been fighting for years to promote free music, find new ways to disseminate it and find new sources of income for artists. We are also frequently harassed by collecting societies that are insistent on collecting royalties for this CC music without respect for our artists’ wishes for their music to be free.

Today, Jamendo requires more than 10 terabytes of storage, 40 servers and a bandwidth with peaks of 500 Mbits for managing Jamendo.com, Jamendo PRO, streaming radio channels and more than 350,000 songs.

Our approach is unique and is a threat to the way the traditional music industry has always run. Jamendo allows artists to distribute their music to an unlimited number of users for free and allows users unlimited streaming and downloads. Jamendo is the largest site that offers these services completely free of charge and without any advertising, all while providing artists an opportunity to generate income!

This is all done with the support and encouragement of our users and artists; we need to continue this adventure together!

- the Jamendo Team

Jamendo has launched a brand new version of its website, www.jamendo.com.

The goal of this evolution is to provide a more user-friendly, simple website to allow users to discover, listen and download thousands of tracks without limitations. Among the new features are new charts, new featured artist selections, 10 new themed radio stations, a brand new search engine and a completely updated music player. Users can browse Jamendo and recommend favorite songs to friends, all while continuing to enjoy uninterrupted music.

For several years, Jamendo has been the #1 platform for free music. It is the only site offering more than 350,000 free tracks licensed under Creative Commons, all available for streaming and unlimited download without ads. It allows the public to discover thousands of artists of all genres who have chosen to distribute their music independently outside the traditional system of collecting societies.

Jamendo artists can choose to join the Jamendo PRO service that allows them to sell commercial licenses of their music for professional uses, such as music synchronization for audio-visual productions or broadcasting in public spaces.

Today, Jamendo has more than 12,000 customers worldwide and regularly generates revenue for hundreds of artists by sharing licensing fees 50/50.

In 2011, Jamendo has redistributed several hundred thousands of euros to its artists, thus validating its innovative model in the new ecosystem of digital music.

Following this initial launch of the new site, Jamendo plans to unveil many new features in the coming months.

What’s new?

• The simple new design will make it easier to navigate
• You’ll find more accurate results when searching for new music
• The site runs faster than ever before
• You’ll enjoy an enhanced HTML5 player with playlist/last played features
• Your donations will go immediately and directly to the artists with no wait time
• Artists can upload single tracks without having to create a new album
• There are more sharing features to help spread your favorite songs
• Listen to ten all new Jamendo radio channels to help you discover fantastic music
• You can still benefit from unlimited uploads for artists, unlimited downloads for users and no ads!

Enjoy the new site and let us know what you think!

You like listening to music and watching videos without having to worry about the format of files you use?

You are probably one of the 50 million people using the VLC player! The famous open-source, cross-platform software supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats.

The VLC team just released the 2.0 version, integrating Jamendo selections!

Here are a few screenshots:

VLC 2.0.1 is available on Mac OS X and Windows.

Today, mobile industry professionals from all over the world are meeting in Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress, taking place from January 27th to March 1st, 2012.

In addition to many large companies coming to premiere their brand new mobile devices, Jamendo will also have a presence at the event! Partnering with Systematic Paris-Region and Paris Region Economic Development Agency, we will play Jamendo music during a big networking cocktail, held on Wednesday, February 29th at the French Pavilion.

On this occasion, our teammate Diego Lorijn will present our work and recent developments in enhancing Jamendo’s mobile experience.

For more information: www.mobileworldcongress.com

Midem, the biggest networking event for music professionals and artists, will take place in Cannes on January 28th-31st, 2012. Jamendo will be active at the conference, but will also host what is surely one of the coolest events of the music festival organised by Midem: the Jamendo Night!

Here are the 4 artists selected on Jamendo to perform live on January 28th, 2012 in Cannes:

Victoria Caffè (pop, France)

The League (rock, France)

Anitek (trip hop, USA)

Emerald Park (indie pop, Sweden)

We chose these artists because they reflect the best of Jamendo: some are popular on the platform, some represent the most common genres of music in our catalog, others are natural-born live performers…

They will undoubtedly make this show a memorable night!

CcMixter is a fantastic website dedicated to remix culture. The site offers samples, source tracks and a cappella tracks all licensed under Creative Commons. The community then re-imagines these tracks and samples by creating their own remixes!

Join in the fun! Whether you want to contribute your own source tracks or create remixes, we’d love for you to get involved.

We are currently gathering a capellas, samples and stems. Visit ccMixter.org and upload yours! As always, they need to be either original holiday songs, or those in the public domain. Spoken word and instrumentals are also encouraged. Then, get excited to hear your music reinvented!

From now through December 21st, the focus is on remixes! Of course, each remix should include at least one a cappella, sample or stem contributed for this ‘Tis the Season project.

After the remix phase is over, we’ll be sharing a playlist of the remixes on both Jamendo & ccMixter for you to listen to as you celebrate the holidays!

For inspiration or just to get into the spirit of the season, listen to the beautiful album ccMixter already shares on Jamendo!

Happy holidays!

Or, you can click here: http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/215332

1. “Silent Night” by Jita

2. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” by Chance’s End

3. “Best Christmas Yet” by Stellar Art Wars

4. “Holy Night” by Maya Filipic

5. “Amazing Grace” by Snowflake & ccMixter

6. “Christmas Eve: A Sweet Waiting” by Stefano Mocini

7. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” by James Edwards

8. “Wayne Coyne, Be Our Santa Claus” by Viola

9. “O Come O Come Emmanuel” by John Springer Family

10. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Third Eye” by Drop Zone

11. “All I Want for Christmas” by Tanya T6

12. “First Noel (guitar)” by Frozen Silence

13. “Silent Night” by Emorej

Or, you can click here: http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/213830

1. “Aquarius” by SaReGaMa

2. “Organic Healing Sound” by Pedro Collares

3. “I Still Love Her” by Matti Paalanen

4. “Warrior’s Honor” by Zero-Project

5. “Morning Horizon” by David Schombert

6. “A Walk on the Beach” by Alban Lepsy

7. “Reflecting the Moon” by Sambodhi Prem

8. “Shanti, Shanti” by Migel Konstantin

9. “Réflexions” by Francesco

10. “Our Lives, Our Destinies” by Mindthings