November Newsletter - CD Give Away, SS Live & Andrew Ironside
1. What’s New?
The thirty-five songs recorded as part of the ShareSong.org Live Recording Event are now available. Check out all the sights (photos, streaming video, sheet music & chord charts) and sounds from this event which was especially designed to capture songs by Brisbane (Australia) songwriters to share freely on ShareSong.org. The day was a raging success, with Seventeen praise and worship songwriters, sixty singers and musicians, seven techies, and eighty audience members being involved. We hope that this event will the first of many events set up to capture the great praise and worship music being written by local communities to share with the world.
Andrew Ironside and Citipointe COC have released their new live worship album. “Open the Gates is not just a great album title or a key phrase of a song. It’s a lifestyle commitment to continually open the door of our hearts, our church, our cities and our nations to let the King of Glory enter in.”
Val Halloran has submitted five of her intimate worship songs of her “I Had No Idea” album. These songs tell of a deep personal journey and relationship between Val and her God.
2. Statistics
The
stats (http://sharesong.org/statsistics.htm)
continue to exceed our expectations, but funnily enough, are in line with
our wildest dreams. God is faithful to His vision.
We’ve
been getting up to 1400 visitors per day through October.
At the current rate of growth over the last few months it looks
like we’ll have more than 2000 visitors each day by the end of the year.
We
are also on track to reaching our goal of having 1000 songs in the
database by the end of the year. So
many songs being shared giving praise to our Lord!
Users
downloaded nearly 2000 files (sheet music, chord charts etc, excluding
mp3s) every day during the third quarter (July, August & September).
This is double the amount just three months ago!
Praise God!
At
the beginning of the year we set a goal to have 5000 regular users by the
end of the year. In the last
three months:
27,818
users downloaded 1 or more files,
12,230
users downloaded 5 or more files,
6,639
users downloaded 10 or more files,
973 users
downloaded 50 or more files,
308 users
downloaded 100 or more files.
We
have updated the download stats for the last three months for your
information. You can now see
which artists (http://www.sharesong.org/contributor_popularity.htm)
and individual songs (http://www.sharesong.org/most_used.htm)
have been downloaded the most.
These
statistics simply reflect the number of file downloads (excluding
mp3s). They are not the results of voting or any kind of rating
system. Keep in mind that the number of downloads can be influenced
by several factors including the length of time the song has been in the
database and the number of people an artist refers to the site.
Another factor
is individual taste. If these statistics represent
"popularity", remember that they reflect the taste of our user
base over the last three months, which may or may not reflect your own
preferences.
We
want you to know that these statistics are not provided in a spirit of
competition or giving partiality to some other others, but rather, we
provide them as tools:
1.
To encourage the songwriters.
Songwriters will be encouraged to see that one of their songs, even
if near the bottom of the list, has been downloaded fifty times.
That's fifty more than it would have been if it had not been uploaded! That’s
fifty lives that may be touched by coming in contact with that one song.
2.
To let users know what other users are downloading.
Some new users will come to the site and quickly want to know “what’s
hot” in the “charts”. But
I can tell you for certain that there are some "jewels" that
aren't in the top one hundred, so don't let these statistics keep you from
exploring the whole database! Happy hunting!
3.
Manifesto Update
We’ve
done an overhaul of the Manifesto to plan where we’re going in the
future. One of the things
that may be of interest to our users is that we’ve added a testimony
from two of the main players in ShareSong.org.
We hope this will give you an idea of where we’re coming from and
why we put so much effort into this volunteer ministry.
Check
out Marty’s Testimony at http://sharesong.org/marty.htm
and Russ’s Testimony at http://sharesong.org/russ.htm
4.
CD give away
s
As
well as making the ShareSong.org
Live and Sampler CDs
available to people who make a donation of US$10 or more, people who
donate to ShareSong.org can also chose from the following bonus CDs:
Dennis Burnett’s “Beyond Natural Limits” CD
Ray Watson’s “Secret Place” album
Sharon
Riddle’s
“Keep My Eyes on You”, and
Lenny
Smith’s
“Deep Calls to Deep”.
It’s
encouraging to see the way that so many artists are supporting us in this
way.
We’ve also added the current financial status of ShareSong.org to show where the money goes and how much of it is required to keep this not-for-profit volunteer ministry going (http://www.sharesong.org/donations.htm).
5.
International radio play
Sampler
CDs (http://sharesong.org/sampler.html)
have now been sent to radio stations all over the world.
From this, we hope to get some radio play of the songs from
ShareSong.org as well as gain further promotion for the other songs that
are on the site.
6. Database pagination
As well as working to build a significant database of free praise and worship music, we are also working to make it as functional as possible for users. You will now see that you can work through the songs in the database, one page at a time, with 10, 20 or 50 songs per page. This will make it easier for users to access all the material that has been submitted.
Please
pray for us that we would be attentive and obedient in this ministry as
God continues to bless us.
In
Him
Marty
Kendall
ShareSong.org
Coordinator
