This album came up in the cast tonight. I didn't have it in my collection, so I went ahead and shelled out the 84 cents (!) that it cost on soundike.com. Now downloaded and ready to play! (Yes, I know I probably could have found it for free somewhere, but... it was 84 cents. I can handle that.)
A few more statistics, this time on the "OtC" local music collection. Yesterday, I crossed the 225,000 track threshold. Quite a difference between now and when I started casting almost 6 years ago. The music files themselves consume 1,542 GB and would take 592 days to play in their entirety. (I really need to get that new back-up drive hooked up!) Almost all my files are of the mp3 variety. I know lossless is better, but to my ears, with few exceptions, FLAC or APE files don't sound enough better to justify the extra MBs per track. Thanks again to everyone who listens, watches, and chats in my webcasts.
PS- I removed the "Alphabetical by Track" and "Alphabetical by Artists" Source Playlist pages from the Weebly website's navigation. The new sortable "Expanded Playlist" page takes the place of those two pages. You'll see that as a subtab under the main Source Playlist tab toward the top of this page. I've added a new page to the "Gil's Playlist" Weebly website. Now you can see a list of all the past OtC themes - the good, the bad and the ugly. You can access the page on the "Past Themes" subtab under "Channel Info". Or you can click this link: http://gils-playlist.weebly.com/past-themes.html .
Looking back at the themes, I see there have been some really sucky ones. I remember viewers being perplexed by "Unbelievably Small" and "Ain'ts and Saints", just to name two. Happily, I think there have been more good themes than bad ones. Another thing I noticed is that some of the older themes were really broad. "Guy Names", for example. Or "Love". I attribute that to my smaller music collection at the time, plus fewer viewers, and fewer musically astute viewers back then. Heck, the host was less musically astute. I've broadened my musical knowledge considerably over the past five or six years. I'd be interested to hear what themes you particularly liked and/or would like me to do again. I try to keep the cast fresh, but there's no reason we can't redo a theme from two or three or four years ago. Just don't ask for a repeat of "Ain't and Saints"! That one will never see the light of day again! While preparing for tonight's cast on the theme of "Worry", I became curious as to how many themes we've done here on Off the Charts. Here's what I came up with.
Tonight will be the 232nd official OtC webcast. Sixteen casts had no theme. Most of these were early in the history of the program. Nine themes were done for two consecutive casts. One theme (Psychedelia) was done 3 weeks in a row once and 2 weeks in a row another time. (I admit, I love that Psychedelia!) Some themes have been done multiple times, non-consecutively. One theme (Jazz) has been done 6 times in this manner. "Summer" has been done 4 times. Three themes have been done 3 separate times (Psychedelia, Autumn, and Saxophonics). Several themes have been done twice. So if you subtract all the casts where there was no theme or where a theme was repeated in some way, I come up with 178 different themes in Off the Chart's history, from inception through May 4, 2015. I still have a lot of new, never-been-done themes in the works. I hope you all continue to enjoy the themes and the cast. Update May 9, 2015: My counts were off by a little when I first posted this. I've updated the numbers. My post from yesterday (it was actually early A.M. today) has generated a few comments on Facebook. For perspective, I thought it would be helpful to show what ads now appear on the Vaughnlive channel page if you don't use an ad blocker. (See image below.) There are four ads: one in the upper right, the new one in the video window, one below the video window, and a fourth below the profile picture at the lower left. I guess there is a fifth ad if you consider the "[V] Live" watermark to be an ad. (Note, this screen cap was taken with the browser on a View setting of 50%, which allowed the "Flir" ad in the lower left to show up. Otherwise, it's off the first screen. As a side observation, I see that the new video window ad doesn't shrink in size if you shrink the overall browser View percentage. That is why it appears to be so much larger in this picture, compared to the earlier screen shots.)
The purpose of this post and the previous one isn't to complain. It is just to document and discuss the recent change that Mark is testing out. I often comment on feature changes and service issues for websites that are important to me. I fully understand Mark has to generate revenue to pay for his streaming websites. JTV encountered the same issues, as will any similar service not being run as a philanthropic endeavor. Look where JTV is now. Gone. If they hadn't stumbled onto the Twitch concept, that whole organization would have been gone by now, probably. I'm sure Mark knows people are sensitive to ads, especially those that encroach on the viewer/caster experience. I hope he treads lightly and cautiously while doing what he needs to do to make this a viable, stable enterprise. Today, I noticed a new "feature" to Vaughnlive: banner ads covering part of the video area. Yesterday, this feature was not present. See below for an example. If you use an ad-blocking add-in, you might not see these ads. Being a good doobie, I turned off my ad blocker for Vaughnlive many months ago. Up until now, the ads have not been intrusive, so I've been content to let them come through in order to support the site. Ads covering up the video feed, however, are a different story. But wait. They aren't as bad as I first feared. After 15 seconds or so, after about 8 different ads have appeared, you have the option to turn them off. See next below. See the little [X] in the upper right of the ad? Click it and the ads go away until you refresh the page or until you go to another channel. Yes, it's annoying, but for now I've decided I can live with it. But Mark is getting close to the edge of what is acceptable, in my opinion. I'd be happy to pay $5/month for an ad-free experience. $15/month as they were discussing, I'm not so sure about. I don't want to start blocking Vaughn ads. (In fact, I haven't tested to see if my ad blocker will block them. I assume it would, but maybe not?) Mark, please don't make the ads so intrusive that ad-block becomes an attractive option.
At the very end of last Monday's cast, I realized I forgot to turn Guest Chat on. I guess I assumed that if Guest Chat is on, it will stay on until I turn it off, even from one cast to another. I guess it doesn't work that way. Probably for good reason. Oh well. Next time.
Hey, I just noticed: Off the Charts went over 20,000 total views sometime during last Monday's show. 20,000 in less than 8 months casting on Vaughnlive. Thanks to you all. I appreciate your interest and support.
Vaughnlive offers the option to allow unsigned-in users to participate in chat. I've always been leery of using that feature. I've assumed that anonymous viewers would offer mostly offensive ban-worthy comments. Then last Saturday I was in Jake's cast for a couple of hours. He had Guest Chat turned on, there were some guest chatters, and there were no problems at all. Hmm, I thought. Maybe I should reassess?
I turned on Guest Chat for last Monday's OtC cast ("Shadows" theme). As on Saturday night, again no problems. We had a few guest chatters, all of whom were "plus" contributors to the cast. At least a couple of them were new viewers who expressed interest in joining the cast again sometime. The one person who had to be banned for spamming the chat was a signed-in viewer. It was kind of funny as two of the guests disagreed with each other as to the merits of 80s music. They were going to settle their differences with a duel. Good-naturedly, of course. If Guest Chat encourages more participation from more folks, then that's a good thing for all of us. My intention is to continue to allow Guest Chat unless and until it becomes a problem. Off the Charts has a great group of viewers. Thanks to you all. I created a couple of Bitly links for those who may be interested.
http://bit.ly/15V21VK for the Off the Charts Vaughnlive channel page http://bit.ly/15V3Lyn for the current Source Playlist - Featured Songs page (same as the Source Playlist tab above) These appear on the Vaughnlive OtC page in the About section. Also, I belately updated the About section. It still said the cast was on hiatus. Oops. |
AuthorGil is the host of the "Gil's Channel" webcast on Vaughnlive.tv. References
These sites are particularly helpful when it comes to learning about and tagging music. Some are blogs. Others are labors-of-love reference sites. And to be complete, I'm including the well-known sites I use often.
45 RPM Records of the Ohio River Valley 45cat (7" vinyl database) 45worlds (non-7" singles db) The "A" Side (informative blog) Album Liner Notes (reference) Allmusic ASCAP Repertory Search (db) The "B" Side (informative blog) Billboard Hot 100 (historical) Blues & Rhythm (magazine) BMI Repertoire Search (db) Both Sides Now Publications British Dance Band Encycl'p'a Bullfrogs Pond - #1s by Date. Bullfrogs Pond - Artists. Bullfrogs Pond - Yearly Chart. Classic Jazz Online. Classic Urban Harmony. The Cosimo Code. The Database of Popular Music. Dave's Music Database. The Dead Rock Stars Club. Discogs (database). Donald Clarke's Music Box. The Doo Wop Society of So Cal FAU Recorded Sound Archives. Garage Hangover (60s 45's) HeyPally's 78 rpm Page. It's Psychedelic Baby (blog) The Jazz Archive Site. JazzBiographies.com Jazz Discography Jazz Downloads (1917-1955) JazzStandards.com Jeff's 78 Labels Label Discographies Lyrics.net (searchable lyrics) Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebook Music VF (US & UK hits db) Noal Cohen's Jazz History The Online (78) Discog. Project Rhythm & Blues 50s Oldies Man Rock & Country Encycl & Discog Second Hand Songs SESAC Repertory Search (db) Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Hvn So Many Records, So Little Time Songbook (Doc's Songbook) Soulful Kinda Music Spectropop Express Spirit of Rock Webzine Tony's Rock & Roll Links Traditional Music Library (ref) Tredwells Music Centre The Vocal Group Harmony Site Wikipedia YouTube Archives
October 2020
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