Dear HR members,
As you have probably read, David, alias Dragon, has decided to let the Audiofanzine team manage the HR website, and so we need to give you more information about what is going on so you will be part of the adventure.
These last few years, David did not really have time to develop the website like he wanted to (this happens often when you do your website apart from your regular work). When we started talking, we discussed Home Recording's history, and about Audiofanzine, and David got really enthusiastic about the synergy we could have between the great HR community and the work from Audiofanzine's team.
Audiofanzine beginning
First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Philippe. I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old and then started composing different types of music in my home studio when I was 14. In 1999, I wanted to make my own album without any label, and that turned out to be a very difficult but rewarding experience. When I was finished making this first album, I decided to share my experience in order to help other musicians.
That is how Audiofanzine started.
How it became a (small) company
At that time, I was finishing my studies in Computer Engineering and I worked on Audiofanzine just as a hobby. I watched as some other similar websites came and went, dying out because their webmasters became too busy with their everyday life, families, jobs, etc.
At the same time, I realized how important Audiofanzine was to me, and that I don't want to ever stop Audiofanzine because of another job or anything else! I wanted to put more content, to develop features, etc… Then it was obvious that I needed permanent people working on it with me, and for this reason, my personal website had to become a company and I had to find a business model. As you will see later, this never changed my philosophy, which remains to help musicians to achieve their goals.
Who are the people working behind Audiofanzine?
We all are guitar, bass, keyboard players and amateur sound engineers. Audiofanzine has really been made by musicians for musicians. All the folks who joined my team the past few years have come from the community of Audiofanzine (FR). They liked the website so much that they wanted to be even more involved in this exciting project.
Today, we are 420,000 members on Audiofanzine FR. This could be done only because we were able to offer musicians (almost) everything they wanted from a website. By the way, some professional musicians started as beginners on Audiofanzine and we often receive warm thanks from members who Audiofanzine has helped. Today my goal is that English speaking musicians from all around the world could have the same great experience from using our services, and maybe in the future be as happy about the website as our French members have been for the past 9 years.
What we do
Audiofanzine has two kinds of content: editorial (technical articles, tests, news items, videos…) and user based (forums, user reviews, classifieds). There is a real link between editorial work and community exchanges, and we think that this has many advantages for members. For example, a product which we test also has user reviews, so the editorial content has to be perfectly true and accurate. I think this is a healthy model
One other example is how we have developed new features and writen new articles based upon member's requests. The feedback from the community is good because then we can follow the community's needs.
To relieve any concerns you may have...
Audiofanzine is, like Home Recording, 100% free for visitors and members and will always be.
The forums are self moderated by their members: our moderators are not employees so they don't follow any music industry imposed censorship. On Audiofanzine, the main role of moderators is to animate forums and check that the technical threads are relevant (the Gentlemen's pub, like the Dragon Cave, will not be moderated).
Absolute respect of your privacy: no spam, no sharing of your personal data, no opt-out newsletter...
The advertising is never aggressive: no pop-ups, no interstitials, no in-content text advertising, and only relevant ads that are interesting for musicians and sound engineers.
Our articles are fair and are not constrained by advertisers. This is a very important thing we will always keep because it is essential to keep our members' trust.
And finally, what is going to change on HR with Audiofanzine?
The main thing to remember is: we value and want to keep your membership, so we don't want to make you unhappy.
For the next few weeks/months: nothing that would have any impact on HR's forums will happen (some relevant links to AF on the categorized HR forums are added, that's it). We will first talk in the forums with you, feel the atmosphere here and see what are the most important things for HR members. Whatever the changes are in the future, we want to keep the HR forum's spirit. In the meantime we will occasionally publish some good articles we make and hopefully you will like and use some of our features, like the well organized product classifieds and the user reviews. One thing we are currently doing for you is translating many user reviews from French into English (we have 42,000 user reviews on Audiofanzine FR).
In the mid term: we will move Vbulletin forums to our new technical platform, which will include at least the same features as Vbulletin, but it will be done with our own PHP code and we will add some fine tuned features thanks to your feedback. One more time, it will be done while paying attention to your needs. By the way, one good thing is that the forum will be a big 6 servers cluster, so it will be quick and reliable – one thing HR members were asking for.
Now I think we shared most of the important things we wanted to tell you. Any questions and comments that help us go forward are welcome.
Philippe
As you have probably read, David, alias Dragon, has decided to let the Audiofanzine team manage the HR website, and so we need to give you more information about what is going on so you will be part of the adventure.
These last few years, David did not really have time to develop the website like he wanted to (this happens often when you do your website apart from your regular work). When we started talking, we discussed Home Recording's history, and about Audiofanzine, and David got really enthusiastic about the synergy we could have between the great HR community and the work from Audiofanzine's team.
Audiofanzine beginning
First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Philippe. I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old and then started composing different types of music in my home studio when I was 14. In 1999, I wanted to make my own album without any label, and that turned out to be a very difficult but rewarding experience. When I was finished making this first album, I decided to share my experience in order to help other musicians.
That is how Audiofanzine started.
How it became a (small) company
At that time, I was finishing my studies in Computer Engineering and I worked on Audiofanzine just as a hobby. I watched as some other similar websites came and went, dying out because their webmasters became too busy with their everyday life, families, jobs, etc.
At the same time, I realized how important Audiofanzine was to me, and that I don't want to ever stop Audiofanzine because of another job or anything else! I wanted to put more content, to develop features, etc… Then it was obvious that I needed permanent people working on it with me, and for this reason, my personal website had to become a company and I had to find a business model. As you will see later, this never changed my philosophy, which remains to help musicians to achieve their goals.
Who are the people working behind Audiofanzine?
We all are guitar, bass, keyboard players and amateur sound engineers. Audiofanzine has really been made by musicians for musicians. All the folks who joined my team the past few years have come from the community of Audiofanzine (FR). They liked the website so much that they wanted to be even more involved in this exciting project.
Today, we are 420,000 members on Audiofanzine FR. This could be done only because we were able to offer musicians (almost) everything they wanted from a website. By the way, some professional musicians started as beginners on Audiofanzine and we often receive warm thanks from members who Audiofanzine has helped. Today my goal is that English speaking musicians from all around the world could have the same great experience from using our services, and maybe in the future be as happy about the website as our French members have been for the past 9 years.
What we do
Audiofanzine has two kinds of content: editorial (technical articles, tests, news items, videos…) and user based (forums, user reviews, classifieds). There is a real link between editorial work and community exchanges, and we think that this has many advantages for members. For example, a product which we test also has user reviews, so the editorial content has to be perfectly true and accurate. I think this is a healthy model
One other example is how we have developed new features and writen new articles based upon member's requests. The feedback from the community is good because then we can follow the community's needs.
To relieve any concerns you may have...
Audiofanzine is, like Home Recording, 100% free for visitors and members and will always be.
The forums are self moderated by their members: our moderators are not employees so they don't follow any music industry imposed censorship. On Audiofanzine, the main role of moderators is to animate forums and check that the technical threads are relevant (the Gentlemen's pub, like the Dragon Cave, will not be moderated).
Absolute respect of your privacy: no spam, no sharing of your personal data, no opt-out newsletter...
The advertising is never aggressive: no pop-ups, no interstitials, no in-content text advertising, and only relevant ads that are interesting for musicians and sound engineers.
Our articles are fair and are not constrained by advertisers. This is a very important thing we will always keep because it is essential to keep our members' trust.
And finally, what is going to change on HR with Audiofanzine?
The main thing to remember is: we value and want to keep your membership, so we don't want to make you unhappy.
For the next few weeks/months: nothing that would have any impact on HR's forums will happen (some relevant links to AF on the categorized HR forums are added, that's it). We will first talk in the forums with you, feel the atmosphere here and see what are the most important things for HR members. Whatever the changes are in the future, we want to keep the HR forum's spirit. In the meantime we will occasionally publish some good articles we make and hopefully you will like and use some of our features, like the well organized product classifieds and the user reviews. One thing we are currently doing for you is translating many user reviews from French into English (we have 42,000 user reviews on Audiofanzine FR).
In the mid term: we will move Vbulletin forums to our new technical platform, which will include at least the same features as Vbulletin, but it will be done with our own PHP code and we will add some fine tuned features thanks to your feedback. One more time, it will be done while paying attention to your needs. By the way, one good thing is that the forum will be a big 6 servers cluster, so it will be quick and reliable – one thing HR members were asking for.
Now I think we shared most of the important things we wanted to tell you. Any questions and comments that help us go forward are welcome.
Philippe
x9.......