RE: June site update - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

baystateoftheart

Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 30

Location: Massachusetts

albummaster wrote:

This is a longer than usual update, for which I apologise. First, I've just released another small round of changes (which follows another unannounced update last week) to improve performance across the site, support data moderation and refresh certain areas.

Second, and the main reason for writing, is really to communicate that after almost 20 years, BEA is in danger of closing. The combined effect of decreased ad revenue & increased costs are really impacting on BEA's ability to exist. In the background, I've been doing what I can to reduce server costs by decreasing the footprint of the site, which is quite large due to the amount of historical data BEA uses and the processing requirements for calculating aggregates etc. But continual firefighting feels like a losing battle. The BEA database is growing all the time, with every new album, chart, rating etc, and obviously while I'm spending a LOT of time JUST on keeping the site alive and optimising the back-end to reduce costs, the less time there is left over to spend on functional improvements to the site, which then affects how busy the site is because certain features are 'missing', or not as slick as they could be. There are hundreds of feature requests outstanding (both small and large) in the backlog, harvested over many years from the forums, PMs, emails etc, but these cannot be implemented because time is spent elsewhere (and the site can't afford extra resource at this stage to perform the work).

Controlling costs is one thing, but the site really needs to be able to generate a small amount of extra income to allow it to keep going as there is only so much headroom available. Premium membership continues to be the most viable idea for accomplishing this, for those that want extra features (probably via a very low-cost subscription). This has been mooted for several years now and has already been partly implemented on the site in terms of stub text and menu options etc, but the non-urgency of implementing it in the past and the fact I don't have a massive back-end support team around me, meant I've kept this on the back burner (there was also not as much financial pressure in the past to get this done as there is today - hosting costs have increased exponentially compared to ad revenue and it's a real struggle right now). Premium membership (and the site more generally) should not be seen as containing a static set of features and the site would be able to evolve more quickly if it was viable to work on it for longer periods and/or recruit additional resource and some of the great ideas in the product backlog could then be implemented.

Alongside Premium Membership, the ability to purchase points on a one-off basis may also be added. This would be an option for those people who don't want to be tied to a subscription, to give people access to Level 7 features, without going through the effort of earning points (extra points won't get somebody premium membership features, but they would allow somebody to jump the membership ladder if they wanted a quick fix to create year/decade/custom charts, without having to go through the grind of earning points).

A BEA shop has also been mentioned in the past which could sell some tiny amounts of merchandise, but given the site is so small, and my graphic design skills so poor, this is less likely to happen than some of the other options, unless there's a graphic designer lurking here that would like to get involved.

Lastly, just to be clear, there's absolutely no obligation for anybody to ever put their hands in their pockets to use BEA, and existing members would carry on as normal with no impact to their life. The site will continue to be free (ad blockers & all, so free in the absolute sense of the word if you choose to do that), but it might give the site a fighting chance of survival if there were one or two revenue streams operating alongside to help the site meet its expenses and help it become more viable longer term.

Thank you for reading (if you got this far) and look forward to hearing your views, if you have any.

AM

Oh no! So sad and concerned to hear this! Even if it has few or no bonus features, please add a subscription option ASAP, and I will gladly pay to help keep this site going like I pay RYM. I suspect others will as well. Then you can add features to make it appealing to a larger group of people over time.
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Join us in the canon game Smile

/ Add me on RYM

CassidyInc

Yeah I'd be happy to kick in a little bit monthly or whatever, I quite like it here : )

MadhattanJack

Just to end the list...

Gender: Male

Something I've always wanted to know (and sorry if this is a stupid question) is, what do "Full individual chart history" and "Extended overall chart history" mean? Would the site show you every change made to the chart you're viewing from Day One? If so, then I guess those features would be nice to have, but they're hardly major selling points.

If you ask me, heavy users of this site need bigger charts and bigger page sizes when viewing them, and not much else. I'm guessing you'd get about a hundred $12 annual memberships within the first 2-3 months if you just allowed/enabled those two things. Not a huge amount, but it's probably more than you'd get from merchandising through a 5-percent-royalty POD operation like Zazzle or CafePress.

That said, merch wouldn't be a bad idea. I used to be a graphic designer myself -- that was many years ago and I'm not very reliable in general, but anybody could submit a design or two (or ten). We could also have a "new logo" contest... That might be fun, and the winner could get a free t-shirt or something, but you'd probably have to enable uploaded-image attachments on at least one of the subforums.

spigelwii

Age: 32

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Whatever I can do to help keep this site going is worth it to me. Happy to subscribe at $x per year. I support people on Patreon that are providing a service, what's wrong with doing the same for a website I use seemingly every day?
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music is good

albummaster

Janitor

Gender: Male

Location: Spain

Site Admin

Thank you to baystateoftheart, CassidyInc, MadhattanJack and spigelwii for your support and kind words.

"Full individual chart history" is basically being able to view any version of an individual chart (seeing prior versions/revisions of a chart etc).

"Extended overall chart history" is being able to view the overall/aggregate charts further back in time than regular users. This is primarily in relation to graphs across the site and the overall chart history page, but also the 'view chart at point in time' feature (up to 15 years is available, instead of just 5 for regular users).

I appreciate both of the above features are not for everyone, but some people do enjoy those aspects of the site.

MadhattanJack wrote:

If you ask me, heavy users of this site need bigger charts and bigger page sizes when viewing them, and not much else.

Bigger page sizes is one of the options being proposed. Larger charts may also sneak in further down the line.

MadhattanJack wrote:

I'm guessing you'd get about a hundred $12 annual memberships within the first 2-3 months if you just allowed/enabled those two things. Not a huge amount, but it's probably more than you'd get from merchandising through a 5-percent-royalty POD operation like Zazzle or CafePress.

Not unreasonable as an estimate, and not a huge amount, but might pay for two months hosting. The site has a massive shortfall in terms of finance. Need some angel investor to come in really Laughing

.

Having a design contest would be a fun idea. Merchandising is not something I'm anticipating as a money spinner, but little bits here and there add up. However, the main concern is all the above becomes too time-consuming in terms of support/admin etc and neutralises any positive effects for the little income that these activities might generate, so it's something I'm thinking about very carefully (still a chance this might not all happen).

hwex9000

Gender: Male

Location: Chicago

Please count me in as well, whenever subscriptions become an option. This site is very important to me.

DommeDamian

Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction

Gender: Male

Age: 24

Location: where the flowers grow.

Count me in. I have visited this site at least thrice a day ever since 2017. It's wanna the few places on the internet I genuinely hope stay alive and well. For several reasons, but principally cause I have saved all my music ratings here, and I have a lot of private charts with lots of descriptions. I'm a bit like a child here pleading their mother not to leave them, so if I can do something to help I am right here.
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My Top 100 :
www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=4...amp;page=1

My music:
- www.hyperfollow.com/dommedamian

albummaster

Janitor

Gender: Male

Location: Spain

Site Admin

Thank you both for your support. Ad blocker technology definitely killing small sites.

spigelwii

Age: 32

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Addressing this question directly to albummaster:

Is the potential shuttering of BEA imminent? I would never dream of asking you for additional financial investment beyond what has already gone into hosting, but I'm wondering how soon we'll be able to subscribe/donate to the cause of keeping it open. I (and I'm sure many others) wouldn't mind starting TODAY just to give you and all of us an idea of how long you'll be able to keep it running (with the caveat of costs could go up over time obviously), but it would be nice to get a sense of the immediacy of the situation.
_________________
music is good

albummaster

Janitor

Gender: Male

Location: Spain

Site Admin

spigelwii wrote:

Addressing this question directly to albummaster:

Is the potential shuttering of BEA imminent? I would never dream of asking you for additional financial investment beyond what has already gone into hosting, but I'm wondering how soon we'll be able to subscribe/donate to the cause of keeping it open. I (and I'm sure many others) wouldn't mind starting TODAY just to give you and all of us an idea of how long you'll be able to keep it running (with the caveat of costs could go up over time obviously), but it would be nice to get a sense of the immediacy of the situation.

I really want the site to still be here for its 20th anniversary next year (and also after that). The fact the site is still here after almost 20 years isn't to do with its financial performance, but more to do with personal stubbornness. However, financial headroom has now reached a critical level. Hosting fees are insane for this website, and ad revenue has fallen off a cliff, so it's not a great combination.

It's very generous of you (and other people here) to talk about giving money now, so thank you everyone, but I really want to be able to offer something in return, rather than accept donations (I feel very awkward about not giving anything extra in return otherwise, if that makes sense).

There's still a bit of work to technically implement a payment gateway into the site (probably Stripe), so it's not something that can be switched on straight away as it also needs to be tested etc (and subscriptions are fairly complex to manage), so it won't be live for a little while yet. Hopefully not too long, but at least two months depending on how much time I get to spend on the technical side of the site.

AM