Westsidewill – Wild Off The Air

Some questions have come up on voting, and we figured that we’d answer them below:

1) Voting resets Wednesdays at 11:59 PM (NEW)
There is actually a very good reason for this – the Thursday new show artists would only have 1 day to catch up in voting if the votes were not reset Wednesday at 11:59pm Central. So that means if you were in the lead Wednesday at 11:59PM you are the fan vote for the Friday Top 10 Show.

2) Vote Fraud
Look, we can see when people do it, we don’t usually edit the visual total because we like to let cheaters think they are winning. But WE DO edit the actual vote numbers that we have and use for the fan vote song. The reason for this is we like to be sure that this is an intentional act. We can understand a click mistake or 2 while you are using a proxy server and forget – however if we see it daily we know it’s fraud.

3) ONLY THE TOP VOTE GETTER IS PROMISED A SPOT ON THE SHOW
I had to type that in caps. If I had a dollar for every time someone sent an email our way asking why their song, #anything but 1 in the voting, isn’t on the top 10 show I’d be a rich man. Only the #1 song is getting a spot on the show via fan vote. The other songs are selected by our staff. We do this for the integrity of the show for our affiliates (no one wants to carry a show if it’s all junky so we make sure that the best songs do get heard.)

Good news everyone!

We’re fixing our busted mics and upgrading our database/other software thingamajigs so we’ll be off from Aug. 9 – 11 doing that.

Don’t worry we’ll be back Thursday NEW AND IMPROVED in the studio! Stay Tuned!

No show on Monday due to Memorial Day.

Since we have the day off we might as well know WHY we have the day off!

So for those of you wondering “What is Memorial Day?” Here is your answer:

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (May 31 in 2010). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service.[1] First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the Civil War), it was expanded after World War I.

Source: Wikipedia

You can read all about it in Wikipedia as well!

Have a good Holiday!

From now…until hopefully forever…we’re going to be featuring 1 song a week by a band/artist who is on WestSideWill Radio. What does all of that mean? Read and find out!

Requirements

- You must have submitted a song to WestSideWill Radio (if you have not yet done so visit http://www.westsidewill.com/howtosubmit) – and you must meet all of those submission requirements (be unsigned etc. etc.) Once your song is submitted you’ll be added to the rotation on WestSideWill Radio (which is pretty awesome in itself) and you will now be eligible to have your song featured in this blog.

- The song you submit must be available for download/purchase somewhere. We think it would be in your best interest to sign up for MadeLoud.com FREE and offer your track for sale through their site. You can check them out at MadeLoud.com

- You have to allow us to post the track you want us to preview on YOUTUBE. We will “tag” the song up so it can’t be downloaded off of YouTube (but wait! Youtube doesn’t allow for downloads! While true, jackers can still rip the .mp3′s off YouTube.)

- If you have a music video – that may be used in the place of allowing us to post the track to YouTube. Basically we just want to use the YouTube player to play the .mp3. If you’re signed up for MadeLoud.com we may just use that player instead.

How To Request a Feature

- Send a “request” to the same email that we ask you send your radio show submissions to. Submissions (A@T) WestSideWill.com

- Include in the email a little blurb about the track. Remember you’re trying to sell us on posting it in this blog. So it has to be something that sets it apart. Remember we have over 3,500 tracks here at WestSideWill Radio if we get that many feature requests it’s going to be hard to set yourself a part without an awesome blurb!

- Include the .mp3.

- Do not take offense if we do not want to feature your song. It’s not because we think you suck – it’s because we have a ton of submissions and there is no way we can get to everyone.

What To Include in Your Request email

- Your Bands Name
- Your Track Title
- Where to Download the song (for our listeners – not us)
- A pic of you/your band
- Blurb about the song
- A .mp3 of the song
- Contact email (we’re going to contact you to let you know you’re being featured and perhaps to ask a few more questions)

****Remember we’re only going to do one song per week – so we can’t get to everyone. We really appreciate the submissions that we receive – we just can’t promise that we’ll play everyone’s tracks.

If you have any questions you can post them as comments to this post!

The year was 2007 and the times were wild. Carolina Panther Cheerleaders were getting it on in bathroom stalls at a club just 2 years earlier and a fresh faced Website was trying to make a mark for unsigned artists.

Check out how “high tech” the original WestSideWill.com Was: http://web.archive.org/web/20070519081737/www.westsidewill.com/radio/index.html

Yes, it was quite the flashy site.

But on our 3 year Top 10 Show anniversary we are looking to the future, what is in store for WestSideWill Radio you ask?

Here’s a quick list of WestSideWill’s and MY goals for the future:

- Build a robot hot Joel…at least we’d have one intern who actually does work then.
- Allow a random play function on our site so you can enjoy all of the artists that have submitted music instead of just having to enjoy the radio show.
- Teach a parrot to speak, then replace Dave.
- Have a few different apps out there for the Android, Blackberry, and iPhone (sorry other crappy phone makers!!!!)
- Date 2 strippers at once.
- Voting Widgets should be out at some point for social networking websites, that way you can get votes from your fans without having them leave whatever page they were on.
- Date 3 strippers at once.

There you have it our goals for the future laid out before you – personally I think they are all very reasonable.

Thanks for being with us the first 3 years and we hope you’ll be with us for the next 3!

Check out the 3 year watermark Top 10 Show episode HERE Starting on Friday May 7th at Noon central time

Here’s just a reminder, bands you can upload your photos to your WestSideWill.com Artist Directory Page.

As you may…or may not know…the WestSideWill.com Artist Directory profile pages normally show up as one of the top Google results for you as a band/artist. It’s always a good idea to have your face/symbol/whatever up there so the fans can see you!

It takes like 2 seconds so I suggest you do it.

If you have log in issues email our guy Doug for your login info.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Isn’t that what they normally say when they’re doing some sort of renovations on a building or whatever you do renovations on?

Well that’s what we need to put here. You see – the thing is that we can’t do a show today because updates to our database are taking WAYYYY longer than expected – but we have to do this stuff now or…things get wacky.

We were gonna have a big April fool’s thing about Dave & I quitting…but again the updates would have slowed it down so it wouldn’t even have made sense.

For all of the artists who have submitted songs this week – DON’T WORRY! We’ll get you on next week.

For all the artists who submit songs next week, don’t worry! We’ll get you on next week.

Next Thursday is gonna be a HUGE show. Get Ready!!!

We will of course be back tomorrow for the Top 10 Unsigned Artist Countdown!

Today, March 1, marks the beginning of what we think is going to be a great era at WestSideWill Radio.

Starting today artists can sign up for a free account at MadeLoud.com and then use the features found at MadeLoud.com on their WestSideWill.com Artist Directory pages!

What features are we talking about? Great Question:

- Artists can embed their MadeLoud.com media player on their directory pages. This media player will allow fans/listeners to sample the songs that you have submitted to us, as well as a few of your other tracks. The best part is that songs can be downloaded or purchase directly through that player (if the artists chooses to allow it.)

- Artists can make their tracks featured on WestSideWill Radio available for purchase or download through MadeLoud.com and link to them on their artist directory pages. If an artist has a track submitted to us that is available for download they can mark it as such and a button will appear when the song is featured on any of our shows, and permanently on the artist directory pages.

Why is all of this such a big deal?

Whulp, in simple terms, these features will allow you to connect with fans and listeners via WestSideWill Radio in a way that isn’t available on terrestrial radio. When’s the last time you turned on a the FM radio and been able to download that song as you were listening to it? What’s that you say? Never. Well that my friends is why WestSideWill.com is changing the game.

Now when fans are checking out our Top 10 or Daily Unsigned Artist Showcase, any artist who signs up for MadeLoud.com can reach these listeners in a way that FM radio just dreams about. There is no gratification like instant gratification – and thanks to MadeLoud.com artists can give our listeners the type of gratification they crave.

Of course MadeLoud.com takes a percentage of your music sales, but what site doesn’t? If you choose to not offer any songs for sale, then the profile is 100% free. It’s 100% free even if you do offer tracks for sale, a percentage is only taken once you sell some music.

The point is the free profile from MadeLoud.com is going to give you a chance to reach unsigned music fans in a way never before possible through WestSideWill.com

Try it out, I’ve linked to the MadeLoud.com registration page below:

Here’s just some quick notes on voting:

- The fan vote ONLY SELECTS THE #10 SONG! The staff picks the rest. This isn’t a popularity contest folks!
- Voting closes at 4pm Central on Thursdays
- Cheating is frowned upon (That includes using multiple computer from the same office/library/whatever)
- If you cheated…don’t wonder why you aren’t on the Top 10

That is all.

Truth time, a lot of bands/artists either have fans trying to cheat the system, or they are doing it themselves.

Here’s the thing, if we can’t trust you all to not cheat the system we are going to get rid of it. We can SEE that you cheat! We like to believe that the bands/artists have NOTHING to do with the cheating, but just in case you all do let’s go over what isn’t allowed:

- YOU CANNOT VOTE VIA PROXY SERVER. WE CAN SEE THAT YOU DO!
- CLICK BANKING (GOING FROM COMPUTER TO COMPUTER IN A COMPUTER BANK/COMPUTER LIBRARY IS NOT OK)
- CHANGING YOUR IP IN ANYWAY SO THAT YOU CAN VOTE MULTIPLE TIMES ISN’T OK.

Look it’s fine to send out an email to your fans and tell them to vote every day – it is not ok to vote yourself multiple times each day (Remember Voting closes at 4pm Central on Thursdays!) Ok? Ok.