Newsletter #13 - March, 2016
Whazzup ProCollabers!
This newsletter is going to be fully-packed. We’ve had a lot going on this past month, so we wanted to fill you in on things as well as go over some survey requests/questions you guys had.
Membership Payment Plan
So far so good! Since we’ve launched the new payment plan, we’re pleased to report that everything is running smoothly. We want to thank everyone who decided to stick around and continue to take this musical journey with us.
Video Sync Challenge 2016 - Rio
If you aren’t aware already – we have a new challenge up. It’s a bit different from the past challenges, so click here more info.
What’s New?
Datasheet Likes
Once you complete a project and your song enters the Music Library, your thumbs-up show on your datasheet as well.
They also show to people outside of the community. The public can now give you thumbs-up as well. Any song that is in the Music Library is open to guests giving them a ‘like’. So members are not the only ones who can support your music and show their appreciation.
Downloadable Split Sheets
We've added a split sheet template as a downloadable PDF. The option is available only to the songwriters in the collaboration and shows on the Datasheet page of a completed project.
This is for those of you who want to put this stuff in writing and formerly sign-off on it. Or if you don’t want to go that far, at least provides an offsite record of agreed shares in the songwriting copyright.
You’ll also notice mention of a SHA1 Fingerprint on the split sheet. This is a mathematically calculated value that is unique to your master sound recording that will – theoretically - never repeat. I.e. that number is unique to your recording of the song. We’ll explain the value of this in more detail at a later time, but for now, you can get a gist of what’s happening by uploading your recording to this site, selecting the SHA1 option, and comparing the generated number.
Start Date on Active Projects Search
We’ve added the project start date on all active projects, so if you go to the Active Projects section, you’ll see when the project was created.
Forum Improvements
Forum posts are now paged, meaning you’ll be seeing only 10 posts per page rather than all posts on a single page. You can scroll through the various pages using the numbers at the top and bottom of the screen, or jump to the first or last pages in the topic. This should reduce the burden of page loading for most and be a welcome improvement!
In addition, you can now also search the forums by keyword. The search bar can be found on the top-right. Just enter a keyword or phrase and hit return/enter.
About Us Page
We redesigned our About Us page, so now it’s easy to find/contact our staff directly.
Log-In Update
We fixed the log-in issue that was affecting some members. Now you should be able to click the ‘stay signed in’ box and actually stay signed in. If you are still having problems with staying logged in, please let us know.
Updated TOS
Just another reminder that our Terms of Service have been recently updated, so please take a few minutes to read through it again.
Songwriting Copyright section Update
Please note that we have removed the 'Song' option from the copyright section as its usage was sometimes being confused and resulting in a mismatch of copyright assignments at the time of closing a project.
Now, when setting songwriting copyrights, you must select either 'Music' or 'Lyrics', or both. When assigning songwriting copyrights, the total must add up to 100%. If your track has both music and lyrics, a total of 50% must be assigned to the music copyright, and 50% to the lyric copyright. If the track is instrumental, it would be 100% for the music.
So as an example, in an Equal Shares project with both music and lyrics, where there are two songwriters, you would assign 25% for the lyrics and 25% for the music, for both of the writers.
Survey Q&A’s, Concerns & Requests
There has been a lot of great feedback on our online survey so we want to thank everyone who has already taken the survey and to also urge those that haven’t to take just 5 minutes to complete it as soon as possible.
There have also been some interesting questions and suggestions so we wanted to take some time now to address some of your points and to clarify some of the confusion.
Is ProCollabs affiliated with any other site?
No, we are not in cahoots with any other site, nor do we receive grants or are sponsored/funded by any other site.
ProCollabs was founded by, and is run, developed, maintained, funded and owned by Raven & MonkeyC. There are no hidden owners or partnerships with anyone else.
If we ever decide to partner with anyone or any other site – you guys will be the first to know.
Are there any multi tear or hidden fees?
There aren’t any ‘hidden’ multi tear fees, the prices are in the member account section, plain to see.
Membership to ProCollabs is a single, low (about $1.25 per month!), yearly fee, which includes 1GB of space. You can customize your account to best suite your needs by purchasing add-ons, which currently includes more space, private projects and project archive access. Add-ons are not required, but are available should you want/need it.
Maybe a joint-space where anyone can drop random files, guitar bits/riffs, random vocal lines, keys effects, bassline & beats would be a good idea?
Great idea! And we already have that implemented. It’s called the Community Media Library and you can find it under the ‘Community’ link at the top of the page. Please make sure to read our 'Media Library' tutorial about it.
Is there is a way to play the previous versions of a track once a more recent one is uploaded?
Yes, there is. If you want to hear previous versions of a track – just click on the track, then go to ‘Track History’. You’ll see a play button next to all the previous versions, provided that the archived version has not been deleted.
Watermarks seem to play every 15 seconds. Why all the advertising?
The watermarks on ‘completed’ songs are not for advertising purposes. They are there to protect your music from being illegally downloaded and misused. Whether or not a watermark plays on your track is decided by the song’s administrator, not ProCollabs.
We do add watermarks on public ‘active projects’ – again, to prevent people from stealing your incomplete works/ideas. If you are signed in, you will not hear the watermark, only non-members hear it.
For your completed projects, watermarks are set from the ‘Publishing Settings’ which can be found on the Datasheet page.
I Want to be able to "follow" a project and then have an easy way to return to it once I am ready to contribute.
This feature was recently introduced, so now you can just click ‘Follow Project’ on any open project and it will show up on your Dashboard.
Why aren’t their more musicians in my local area?
We hope it is clear enough when people sign-up, but some members may have missed this one – We provide an ‘online’ music collaboration platform, so we are not a ‘find local musicians in my area’ classifieds type of website.
Members from all parts of the known galaxy work with each other using the online platform that we provide. Time, distance, and location have little meaning.
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/proco
https://plus.google.com/+Proco
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!
