Musician Service (private beta invite-only)

A couple of days ago we launched our consumer services for beta2 testing.  Today we are launching our musician services catered to music producers and DJs.

Our musician's only services are exclusively for the serious musicians.  This service is designed to help musicians better communicate with their fans.  Our goal is for fans to virally share your tracks across the internet and recommend them to their favorite music artists.

We have spent much of our time developing a consumer friendly website that will attract fans and artists to you.  This means every track you post is not only discovered by your existing fans, but has prominent features for spreading from fans to their friends based on who is most musically compatible or most likely to like your music style.  This makes it easy to share amongst existing fans plus give you exposure to potential fans.

This service is currently in private invite-only.  Don't worry; we will open up access more broadly in a few weeks.

This is just the beginning and has a limited feature set.  There are 5 things you can do:

1.    Upload as much tracks as you feel comfortable with

2.    Upload a good looking photo (The best photos to use are close-up headshots, they need to look good (and recognizable)

3.    Create a well detailed bio and customize your profile page

4.    Rate and provide written reviews on your peers tracks

5.    Add your favorite Superstar Producers and DJs

That's it for now, but there's a lot more coming, so check back soon!

Duane

posted by BeatBuggy Team under Musicians Only  

It's official, So without further adieu

For the past month we have been in private alpha and beta1.  We invited all our closest friends and their friends for a preview.  They were stunned to see how the new beatbuggy has been transformed.  We feel very good about the responses and the results we’re seeing in the labs, and a lot of it is thanks to you.  The feedback that you provide helps us build the best consumer destination for music production.

Tonite, we are excited to announce that the much awaited private beta2 private begins now.

It's about time!!!:-)

We will start sending out invitation e-mail to the people who registered to be part of the beta testing.  For private beta2, we'll keeping enrollment limited to a small, enthusiastic, determined, focused group.  The beta2 testers will be responsible for testing out the new beatbuggy.  This includes performing tedious tasks like:

Uploading good looking photos

Customizing your portfolio to make it look appealing

Writing written reviews for our review system

Listening and rating tracks

Participating in the music production quiz

posted by BeatBuggy Team under General  Up-commings  

Beatbuggy is changing - in a big way!!!

Hey Folks,

Things are going great and we are coming up with tons of innovative ideas to make the site consumer friendly.  The community for the private/top secret beta testing is growing and the buzz is everywhere.  Beatbuggy is changing - in a big way!!!  We are setting the bar high for how music production site should function and operate.  We cannot wait for you to see Beatbuggy's new friends and fans module.  Our new music review system and charts are out of this word hottttt.  From photos and quizzes, to customization and music tracks, beatbuggy will be a social playground for music production fans.  

After months of hard work, we're almost ready to unveil a "beta2 private preview" of beatbuggy.

Yeahhhhhhhh!!!!! :-)

Ok, ok, ok, well, that's the good news.  The bad news is we still have a few more features and improvements to work on.  Therefore, we are pushing back the "official" launch date to from 8-8-08 to 9-09-08.  Thank you for your patience.

Duane   

posted by BeatBuggy Team under General  

Super Producers & DJ Credits

20 years ago, two sets of super producers emerged in R&B:  Lionel Richie and production team Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.  Do you remember?  How could you forget!  Individually, these guys produced some of the decade's largest and most impressive hits, most significantly Janet Jackson's "Nasty" album, New Edition's "Can You Stand the Rain" and Richie's ballads "Endless Love" and "Hello."

Super producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds ruled the 90s by taking home 4 Grammy's for producer of the year (92, 95, 96, 97).  Boyz II Men's "End of the Road," Madonna's "Take a Bow," and Eric Clapton's "Change the World" song were all produced by Babyface.

For the past decade, the music charts, clubs and radio airwaves have been riddled with a set of unique sounds:  those of Super Producers and DJs.  These Stars have been indispensable for turning out memorable hits.  It has become a common place for the men and women behind the music to overshadow the artists that sing or rap in front of it.  Artists and record companies tailor  entirely to the super producer.  So what is a super producer?  These days, any beatmaker who has a hit on the charts is likely to be called a Super producer.  Well, long story!  I don't want to get into that debate! :-)  Let me just say a beatmaker only makes beats. 

For the past month, we've been working very hard on developing a consumer friendly database of Super Producers and DJs profiles.  Now you can learn about the Stars that are behind today's biggest hits.  We have a huge database full of stars from Timbaland, Polow Da Don, Pete Rock, Swizz Beats, Kanye West, Dr Dre, Neptunes, to DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, M.I.A., Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, Paul van Dyk, and much, much more....During our Top Secret/private beta phase 1, fans have actively been updating these pages with their latest credits, biographies (form of a wiki), and comments.  You can find these Super Producers by clicking on their name or profile picture anywhere on the site.  You will find detailed discographies, biographies, pictures, videos, similar Stars, other fans, ratings, and comments.  We import the official videos (studio sessions) from Youtube.  This let you see how some of those hits were made.  We also provide you with their top hits in instrumental form so that you can hear how good these guys are.

 It's going to take a while for us to put in biographies and discography stuff for all those stars so please be patient.  You can help make this fun by helping us edit/update the biographies and uploading good (legal!) pic to their profiles.

We also let you make a list of the Super Producers you like!  All you have to do is go to your favorite Super Producer's page and click the "add to favorite" button.  Your favorite Super Producer will show up in the favorites section of your profile.

This is a big new area for Beatbuggy and obviously there is a lot more we can and will do.

Stay tune!  We are getting closer!  The much awaited private beta2 invites are days away.

Beat regards,

Jesse

posted by BeatBuggy Team under New Features  

Customization: For Music fanatics!

Hey people,

We're really excited to tell you about our customization.  We now offer a choice of Super-Music Producers inspired backgrounds and avatars.  This allows you to customize your profile with a wide array of music production skins, avatars, and colors to maximize your styling options and make your page look and feel like home.

We hope you enjoy this exciting new feature.  Stay tune though, as we plan on launching more stuff soon (including more skins, user-submitted skins, and a skins gallery).

Thanks,

Jesse

posted by BeatBuggy Team under New Features  

Are we musically compatible

How similar is your taste in music producers with your friends?  Today we're unveiling a super cool new consumer feature called Music Compatibility Test.  Tell us which music producers you like and we'll calculate your music compatibility with your friends on beatbuggy.  The more producers you rate, the better.

There's a lot of innovation just around the corner.  Stay tuned!

Jesse Foppet

posted by BeatBuggy Team under New Features  

Back in town

Whazzup folks!  I'm on the plane just back from Miami after a few days in the sun for some downtime before we work on phase 2 of the product.  I'm extremely excited!  The programmers have been hard at work coming up with great ideas.  It's really hard to keep things underwraps when people are constantly asking to see a small sample of the new service.  Man, it's hard!!!

What I can tell you is that we're in the "hey, this really hot" phase, where the programmers just coded up some neat algorithm for doing something and it actually works better than you imagined, or you've put some neat user interface together that just makes you want to use the site more, or some neat social feature that you immediately start telling your friends about because you want to see how the system will react with more and more people thrown into the mix.

It's when the site starts taking a life of its own.  We're at that point now and you can feel the electricity in the air.  Our working environment is absolutely on fire.  So stay tuned for our closed beta.  We're getting close.

Now it's off to find some dinner and then back to talking to the development team and attorneys.  Jesse said he had 6 Red Bull's chilled and waiting.  Sweet!  Yeah right, maybe 1 Red Bull for me.

Thanks for your patience, support, and enthusiasm. 

Duane

posted by BeatBuggy Team under General