Important Updates - New Top 500 / Update on music on the web

**Bernie** · July 25th, 2002, 05:45 PM

Some quick site updates for everyone.

New Top 500

Great news! In the next few days a special form to vote for your favourite 25 Disco songs will be going live. Your selections will be the basis for the revised Top 500 Disco Songs list.

The 25 song limit will be STRICTLY enforced. No more, no less-exactly 25 songs. I appreciate everyone's cooperation on this. Votes will only be accepted through the special forn and not through the forums or e-mail so don't post them here cause they won't count.

Everyone will be permitted to vote ONCE so grab a pencil and paper and start getting your list together with the correct spelling of song titles and artist names. Please check out the existing Top 500 Disco List and the Disco Vault A-Z (see menu on top) for ideas and help with names and titles. All submissions will be closely tracked and duplicate entries will be thrown out.

Take your time submitting the form since it will stay up through the fall and possibly into December so that everyone gets a chance to participate and get their lists in order. Tell everyone-family, friends and co-workers about the form because all will be welcome.

I'll post the URL to the form in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

Update on Music on the Web

A while back many may remember that I called to everyone's attention the looming reforms to music on the web. The CARP committee finally set the standards and as everyone feared they enacted groundbreaking fees and record keeping requirements that will change the web landscape.

For the last few years I have properly licensed and paid for all the music that I have featured for you to listen and enjoy. I kept at it for as long as I could despite great expense and time consuming record keeping. However, about two weeks ago I received a new contract that I simply can not comply with. It contains rate increases as well as exhaustive record keeping requirements that are unreasonable. In a little while another group will send me a new contract that pretty much will mimick this one and rescind the old one.

Since the beginning I've strived to keep this site free for all and do not want to charge anyone any fees for it. That has not changed.

Long story short, I worked out an arrangement to rescind my contractual obligations with the various groups. this means that by July 31, 2002 there will no longer be music files anywhere on the site.

It's apparent that the industry doesn't want the little guys in the field even though we help promote music worldwide for them for free. I tried guys, but I just can't do it. They say either transfer my older agreements and sign the new contracts or delete the audio files. I've been wrangling with this for the last two weeks and it really has upset me, but life goes on and I'm still doing my work on the new site.

All the best.

_________________
Defender of the Disco beat,

Bernard Lopez

================================
owner & publisher of http://www.discomusic.com
================================

[ This Message was edited by: Bernie on 2002-07-25 17:46 ]

**nrgbeat** · July 25th, 2002, 06:07 PM

Bernie, does this mean you will not be able to feature mixes by dj's?

**Nano** · July 25th, 2002, 07:21 PM

Hey Bernie, that's bad news, but don't get upset. This site is much more than the audios.
(Of course, it's not the same listening to a 30 secs sample on CDNow, if it exists at all. But there's always a way to check out. And there's still freedom in the mail system, FTP and other forms. You can even build a collection in MyPlay.com if you want.)
Anyway, it's just a slight change of direction. Maybe you can put more text in the site, for example with the Disco Encyclopaedia idea. I would be glad to help with whatever I can bring, be it info, transcripts of old interviews, excerpts of books, etc.

**Blaxman** · July 26th, 2002, 08:08 AM

Bernie, dont worry, I think like Nano said. Your site is not just a sample site!!It is much more than this. Believe me, and mainly:
Believe in yourself!!! You're doing a great job, far better than record companies are doing to the music.

Saddly the sharks are hungry. :sad:
Now the companies will sit down over that songs.......maybe......perhaps......who knows......one day........they will release them.....for 100 bucks!!

Poor culture! :sad:

Peace

**Funky Dude** · July 26th, 2002, 09:26 AM

I'm happy to hear there's going to be a new top 500. I swear it BETTER have Brass Construction's "Movin'" because that is one of the BEST disco songs ever and the best disco song to make the UK/US top 40 but obviously it never charted in Australia probably because we were swamped by ABBA fever in 1975/76 :lol: . Anyhow it's going to be a tough choice trying to narrow my list to 25 so I'm going to have to think hard on which to pick to be the best as I've got so many good disco songs on record, CD, cassette and MP3 but "Movin'" by Brass Construction will definitely be in my top 25.

As for the loss of the sound samples, it is so sad that it has to come to this :cry: . I hope this won't happen with funk45.com. I swear these corporate mongrels are so damn SCABBY that they even charge for having 30 second sound samples which I think is really slack (Australian word for unfair). Without sound samples how the HELL are people going to discover music they never heard, I think the rules these corporates set are shithouse!!! And unfortunately for me my computer is so buggered that I get lots of errors and when using Real Player I get some error when playing Real files on the net which causes the program to close, so I haven't had a chance to listen to mixes or samples lately. I'm going to have to back up all of my important programs and files to CD and re-format my hard disk and load everything all up again.

Anyhow despite this the forums are exciting as ever (except for the fighting, that brings me down to a low), so while there are forums here I'm-a-stayin'.

**paul** · July 26th, 2002, 11:48 AM

Hey Funky. If I don't see Movin' in your top 10, I'll yell at you too

**markydefad** · July 26th, 2002, 12:04 PM

Hey Bernie,

I like your new Disco 500 voting idea.

Question: Are you encouraging or discouraging members from posting their lists this time? It would make it more suspenseful if we didn't see all the lists--BUT, I'm sure after doing all that work, people are gonna wanna post their lists.

Oh, I think I just answered my own question.
Hmmm????

**NickNack** · July 26th, 2002, 01:44 PM

A little bit of good and bad news, eh, Bernie? Well, I'm with you for the long haul. I think anyone who read up on the audio issue would have realized it's damn near impossible for 'the little guy' to comply with the new rules. So, the giants get their way and, sadly, quite a few sites will be shutting down. DON'T YOU EVEN CONSIDER DOING THAT!

I don't think any of us were here just for the audio files.

Back to the music: HANG ON IN THERE, BABY.

**BrunoRepublic** · July 26th, 2002, 02:52 PM

I view this as a blatant example of how The Man will attack any effort to break the corporate monopoly on mass media. Evidently, it's not enough that all the radio stations are owned by a handful of conglomerates, or that the independent labels are completely shut out of the marketplace. Nope, they have to come up with new regulations for the internet that reinforce their control, and continue to destroy the product that their industry is built on.

*sigh*...

**Voyage** · July 26th, 2002, 10:07 PM

Bernie the new Top 500 will be very interesting and I'm sure everyone will participate on it. It will hard to make some choices :sad:

On what regards the music sample thing, it's sad how everything has gotten. Like Nano and Blaxman said your site is more than just a sample site...it's much more than that! Anyway the samples you have hepled me a lot some months ago to identify and discover some songs I didn't know.

And don't feel bad Bernie, I'm sure everyone understands you.

Voyage

**california mike** · July 27th, 2002, 11:24 AM

for the top 500, are we making lists of our favorite 25 songs.... or do we put our lists in a ranking order? still think each song should get one equal vote. big difference between 1 point and 25 points given depending where it was on the previous list.

**jim** · July 29th, 2002, 10:54 PM

On 2002-07-25 17:45, Bernie wrote:
Some quick site updates for everyone.

New Top 500

Great news! In the next few days a special form to vote for your favourite 25 Disco songs will be going live. Your selections will be the basis for the revised Top 500 Disco Songs list.

I have my Top 25 ready! Sorry Mike I say it should still be 1 ponjt for #25 and 25 points for #1. If not then why have any rankings from 500 to 1

I'll post the URL to the form in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

SO WHERE IS THE LINK?

Update on Music on the Web

A while back many may remember that I called to everyone's attention the looming reforms to music on the web. The CARP committee finally set the standards and as everyone feared they enacted groundbreaking fees and record keeping requirements that will change the web landscape.

For the last few years I have properly licensed and paid for all the music that I have featured for you to listen and enjoy. I kept at it for as long as I could despite great expense and time consuming record keeping. However, about two weeks ago I received a new contract that I simply can not comply with. It contains rate increases as well as exhaustive record keeping requirements that are unreasonable. In a little while another group will send me a new contract that pretty much will mimick this one and rescind the old one.

Since the beginning I've strived to keep this site free for all and do not want to charge anyone any fees for it. That has not changed.

Long story short, I worked out an arrangement to rescind my contractual obligations with the various groups. this means that by July 31, 2002 there will no longer be music files anywhere on the site.

I say this is not fair.
What's next,licensing how many times a song can be played on the radio?

[ This Message was edited by: jim on 2002-07-29 22:55 ]

[ This Message was edited by: jim on 2002-07-29 22:56 ]

**sutnop** · August 7th, 2002, 08:30 AM

don't worry Bernie
Sample Files or not

You Are Still
The Defender of Disco Beat

Stay Strong

These sharks can never stop you
they can only hold you back

They can not stop you in your quest
only but up obstacles in its way
a solution could be to rent server space in another country........

Since As far as I know the Senate and the WHite house still only rule over US of A
and not the World.

**jim** · October 23rd, 2002, 12:04 PM

On 2002-07-25 17:45, Bernie wrote:
Some quick site updates for everyone.

New Top 500

Great news! In the next few days a special form to vote for your favourite 25 Disco songs will be going live. Your selections will be the basis for the revised Top 500 Disco Songs list.

The 25 song limit will be STRICTLY enforced. No more, no less-exactly 25 songs. I appreciate everyone's cooperation on this. Votes will only be accepted through the special forn and not through the forums or e-mail so don't post them here cause they won't count.

Everyone will be permitted to vote ONCE so grab a pencil and paper and start getting your list together with the correct spelling of song titles and artist names. Please check out the existing Top 500 Disco List and the Disco Vault A-Z (see menu on top) for ideas and help with names and titles. All submissions will be closely tracked and duplicate entries will be thrown out.

Take your time submitting the form since it will stay up through the fall and possibly into December so that everyone gets a chance to participate and get their lists in order. Tell everyone-family, friends and co-workers about the form because all will be welcome.

I'll post the URL to the form in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

OK so where's the new list?
We know what's on it? But where are the rankings?