Brody Sheale
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6/24/2014 4:11:25 PM
The relaunch is not happening.
We're sorry to have to inform you that the long awaited relaunch of the site is just not going to happen. The IT person has been unable to fix the stats to the requirement of the principals behind this relaunch. This was set as an essential requirement from day one when this project was undertaken but with the stats not meeting their high standard, it's not going forward.
This saddens us deeply because quite a lot of work was done towards completing the project. There were no other foreseeable obstacles ahead to returning the site to the status as one of the best music sites on the web. However, after being told more times than we could count that the new stat page would be ready in 2 days, then another 2 days, etc. (for the last 6 months, up to and including this past week), it became clear that IAC artist stats are unfixable within the context of all previous IT programming of the site.
Let me illustrate just part of the problem. Log in and open up your stat page to View Plays By Month. Pick a song that has been played and remember how many plays it has for this month. Then open your artist page and play the same song for a few seconds, then X out the player. Now play it again for a few seconds, and X out the player again. Do the same 4 or 5 times. Refresh the View Plays page now and you will see that you can easily game your song to have endless plays, as long as you want to sit there and click. Anyone can have a sitewide #1 song if they don't mind clicking a lot. On top of that, whatever issue was causing the stats to be inflated before has now returned so once again, artists are getting credited for a ridiculous amount of plays when all you have to do is visit alexa.com to see that the site is not performing like this. You'd do better to divide the plays listed by 10 or 15 to get a more accurate count. The stats and charts here are embarrassing and this is why this was an absolute priority to be fixed before moving forward.
I deeply regret having to be the bearer of such disappointing news. Our aim was true and much perseverance was put forth in the last year to try to bring the site back to its original foundation. Not that it's any consolation, but regardless of this bad news, the spirit of indie music will live far beyond any one site.
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