Newsletter #11 - January, 2016.
Whazzup ProCollabers!
Happy New Year!! We hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and spent lots of time with their families, friends and loved ones. Now let’s get back to the music already!
Christmas Challenge Results
A huge congrats to Team #2 – Roo, Vuya and Xan - for taking 1st place in the Christmas Challenge with their rendition of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’. And of course, to Team #1 also – GoodVibes and TomdeGroot - with their unique rendition of ‘Silent Night-Holy Night’. The final scores were so close!
Both teams have been awarded with their prestigious ProCollabs Grammy, and you can check out their songs which are now posted in to the Music Library.
Valentine’s Day Challenge
For our next challenge, love is in the air! Well not for another month really, but for us songwriters, composers and musicians, it all starts now. In fact, it already started.
For this challenge, collaborators will tell a story of love and romance and carefully craft it with words and music.
We hope to see many more entries this time around; so if you didn’t already, check out the details, recruit yourself a winning team, and start getting competitive! The full details can be found posted in the forum.
New Features
This month, we’ve added a number of new features in response to your feedback.
Multiple Recipient Private Messages
Now you can send private messages to multiple members in one go. Just separate your ‘send to’ list with commas and you’ll be able to start a private group discussion with up to 10 members.
Member Activity Meter
There’s nothing more frustrating than sending invites and PMs to someone who is not currently active on the site, and then receiving no response. So in order to enhance the experience of our active members, the new Activity Meter will tell you if a member is a regular, or a no-show. Check it out on profile pages and in the Search Artist area. We've also posted a short tutorial to explain how it works.
Talent Remover
We’ve added a shortcut that will help Project Directors to easier maintain their projects and keep the ‘talents needed’ list up to date.
As you know, we regularly stress (and will continue to stress) the importance and responsibility of the PD to properly maintain their project. Now, whenever you accept in an audition for a required talent, just click on the orange minus button to immediately remove it from the list.
The All New ProCollabs Mentor
This month, we are pleased to introduce the role of the ‘ProCollabs Mentor’. A mentor will be someone who has/had many years of real-world professional experience within the music industry and whose main purpose will be to help raise the bar with regard to projects that get completed on ProCollabs.
A mentor might swing by a project to give some constructive suggestions as projects progress. They will also be available to support members and to help by answering questions and giving general advice and guidance wherever possible. For example, you may reach out and request a critical listen of your project.
Of course, you’ll be free to take or leave any advice; you may well disagree in some cases. Music is a personal thing, but an opinion from a qualified third-party can be immensely valuable to those who truly want to improve their art.
In general, we’d appreciate any requests and questions that are directed to a mentor be asked in the ‘Mentor Q&A’ section in the forum, so that all members can have the benefit of any feedback given and can also jump in to the discussions.
For one-to-one private messages - please do keep this type of contact to a minimum as our mentors will be volunteering to undertake this role on the site and so we should all try to respect the use of their time.
With that said, we’d like to introduce our first ProCollabs Mentor, whom you may have spotted on the site already – Mr. Tom Chianti, also known as Tomic.
Tom has been involved in the music industry for over 3 decades – working as a Producer, Publisher, Audio Engineer, A&R Coordinator, etc. He has worked with and for many labels, such as Columbia and Epic records - with artists who include 50 Cent, Jon Secada, George LaMond, just to name a few. He currently runs his own studio ‘The Cube’ in New York City. You may also recognize Tom as one of the former hosts/guest Panelists’ on Music Scene Investigation (MSI).
We hope to have more mentors available in the future and as the site grows. If you feel that you also have the skills, time, and experience, and would like the title too, please do let us know.
Member Survey
To date, we've received a number of replies to our online survey and we greatly appreciate the time you've taken to fill it in. Overall, feedback has been positive. The new features mentioned above and some other enhancements have been brought forward in development thanks to your feedback too.
For those of you who did not take the survey yet, please take 5 minutes to fill it out – it helps us to know what you like, dislike, and would like to see on ProCollabs. Take the survey now.
Tutorials and Help
For the new members who've recently joined – please feel free to browse through the tutorial section.
Please do take the time to understand the collaboration process and particularly the subject of copyright in a joint work, and how we have implemented it on ProCollabs. This is a key responsibility of all collaborators.
We also encourage you to contact our moderators for questions, assistance or clarification at any stage of your project. We're here to help you get the most out of the site!
Spread The Word!
Word of mouth counts. Spread the word about ProCollabs, if you enjoy collaborating with others, then invite your musician friends to join.
And please do stop by our social media pages and show us some lurve. We're happy that our numbers are growing, but they can triple if you guys can help pimp us too. Below are the links to our Social Media pages.
https://twitter.com/procollabs
https://www.facebook.com/procollabs
https://plus.google.com/+ProcollabsMusic
New Members
Warm welcome to all of our new members this month!
We encourage all newbies to introduce themselves in the forum introduction thread and get collaborating asap. There's no shortage of talented and creative individuals in ProCollabs Projectland, so jump on it! Talents in need include guitars, vocals, keyboards, drums, strings, brass and others – all in various genres!
We'll be sending out more updates soon. In the meantime, get yourself on over to procollabs.com and let's make some new and exciting music together!
~ The ProCollabs Team
