I think your site is great. I would like a feature telling where some the old folk artist are and what they are doing.

Posting events that would be of interest to people who are interested in folk music. Workshops, Festivals, etc.

I would like Folkalley to hook up with someone like Napster and give a link everytime you play a song that is available for legal download.

Or do it yourself. Maybe the artists would trust Folkalley more than the other places.

New listener. Great site & sounds! I would like a link for songs on your playlist. Many artists and titles are familiar, but many are not. I would like to check out the ones of interest, at my convenience.
A listing of Concerts, Festivals, Wokshops, etc., would be great. List by region??

I play a Bodhran (Irish drum for those who dont know!) and it sounds great with all folk music, but lots of groups dont want a bodhran joining in! its such a pity as the bodhran is just a background accompanying sound, which should never be played loudly unless the group request it. - Unfortunalty people think you just pick up a stick and hit the drum, - thats a bit like a child! but to play one well takes years of training!

As for this site I love it! and play it all day long! I have sent links to this site to loads of people all over the world! How about some more Irish folk?
keep up the good work!

sorry to take up more space here but I've just noticed the TIME - its your time not mine, here at the moment it is 11:45 am!!! just thought I would mention it as I would never post at 6 am

I think you should do a weekly show and set it up as a podcast. If you highlighted an artist, or talk about events going on, or whatever, I would be one of the first subscribers. I saw that you opened up a four hour feed for a cost, but how about a 15 minute one for free. I listen to a lot of podcasting... Coverville, IT Conversations... and even do one myself (what they sang to me), and I think it is an excellent format to share what's happening, and give a taste of the stream.

WE discovered Folk Alley about a month ago. It was like finding a rare coin lying on the beach. We joined both at home and at our business office. I too would like to hear more about the lives of the artists. Also, could there be album segments where album sides or entire albums were played?

Hello!

I think a wonderful addition to your website would be photos and bios of your wonderful staff. Thanks!

A quick response to posts: Wow, what a lot of great ideas! We had a full-day Folk Alley staff retreat on Monday (which means we got pizza in the front conference room) and spent a large portion of time brain storming new features. Making MP3 files available for purchase came up, so did Podcasting and more in-depth information on artists. I'm definately going to ask Jim about doing album sides (like the olden days!). Because of Internet rights issues, their might be a fly in that oinment.

As for links to festivals, please click on the Site Links sign on the post. There are artists, festivals, organizations and a lot more. The lists are far from complete (especially for our international friends), but we are always happy to add links. Ann

Do you review submitted CDs and sometimes add them to your playlist? I think that is what one of the posts implies. I think that the internet is the only hope for many artists to get any kind of airplay anymore, but I have yet to find the viable venue for this. What is the possibility of posting a rotation of artists where their work is available to listen to for a fixed period of time, say two weeks or so, and allow any listeners to review and vote on whether it is something they would like to add to a playlist and also provide a link if someone would care to purchase the music? My thought here is to focus on those artists that do not have the standard music industry promotion machinery behind them. The only way to break the stranglehold of the huge corporate goliaths is to remove them from the equation altogether.

It would have to be separate from your radio program, perhaps a separate feed or something. Maybe have a rotation where a fixed number of CDs are played in their entirety for the two weeks. This would alleviate the need to program the individual songs, which I know is time-consuming.

I do not know what legal ramifications of doing this would be, but if you do occasionally play submitted works of others, then this could be a step towards changing the face of the industry if enough people caught on to it to affect the marketplace.

It is only a thought, and not fully formed. I am just throwing out the seeds for planting the idea.

I think the whole concept of Folk Alley is great. Keep up the good work! But since you asked, I think it would be useful to add an automatic refresh to your playlist. My fantasy football league Internet site updates scores every 90 seconds when games are in progress. You could do the same with the playlist so that listeners don't have to manually update the playlist.

I also second the suggestion to provide links to web site's like Apple's IPod music site enabling listeners to conveniently purchase songs they just heard. Ideally, you could negotiate an arrangement similar to the one you have with Amazon.com where Folk Alley is compensated when a purchase is made.

It would be nice if there could be links to lyrics and/or guitar tabs for songs. I can't tell you how many times I've done a quick google search for lyrics + "song title" when I hear something good on you webcast, but since I'm lazy, a link that did that automagically would be very cool.
Thanks for the wonderfull site and keep up the great work!

I think it would be cool to do a "unknown" singer/songwriter slot live with Jim.
Have some of the "unsigned" talent come on air and sing a song and help us discover some more of that untapped talent out there!

Album sides, part of a CD. Part of a day or times set aside for requests. Part of a day or times set aside for local/ independent artists.
Insert "on air comments" into playlist. Titles would be redundant- but appreciate who's in the line up and their instruments etc.
Do you include klezmer music?
Occasional themes-I'm looking forward to plenty of Irish/Celtic misic on St. Paddy's Day!

Album sides, yes, or maybe an entire CD. Possibly 'birthdays', when on the birthdate of a particular artist (or artists) one song an hour of the birthday person is played. Maybe weekly feature the music of someone who isn't widely played - kind of a 'best kept secrets' segment.

I love the playlist, sometimes I hear something I like and can't get right to the website to find out who it is. In fact, I think FolkAlley is pretty great now!

Is there a way to start a new topic for discussion? I cannot find a link to it if it exists.

Actually, since the previous posting I just read your response to the same question from a different individual. Oh well!

A suggestion similar to this has been made, but here's my version. I would love it if your site had a feature that let registered users upload their own mp3s (they themselves singing and playing) for interested listeners to download. So many of the people who post to your message boards have CDs or at least individual songs recorded, and I would love to have the chance to hear them. And as an artist, any feedback I received on my own songs would be really valuable. The Washington Post has this feature. Material is reviewed for appropriateness, and only whole songs are accepted, no snippets or excerpts from songs. A lot of us are at the stage of our careers that we're more concerned about getting our music out where folk fans can hear it than about getting paid for a download. And this feature could potentially have room for material that is quirkier and less polished --though potentially at least as compelling -- as what your radio feed would normally showcase.

These are some really great ideas. I have one small one of my own: in the comments section, it would be great if you were able to post a comment as a response to a specific post. I think it would help facilitate the commenting, although it's already taking off at light speed!

you have absolutely the best folk music site ever, keep up the excellent work,thank you.

I see one thing that would be easy to do (I think) that would make the usage of the website a little easier. I watch the message counts on each of the topics of discussion and have to jump around from page to page sometimes to see it all. It would be really nice if you could add the message count next to the topics listed on the left side of the main page ("recent entries"). It would be nice to see it on all the pages, but some other pages don't always display all the available topics.

Also, I had sent a message to the letters@folkalley.com email address and never saw a response. It may be that no one cared to respond, but I had asked about the the sales ranking listing when you click on a song and wondered exactly what that statistic represents. Is it ranked by Folk Alley based on sales through your link, or what? Is it an Amazon ranking? Is it a measure taken for a fixed period of time, or accumulative over all time? If someone knows, it would be a nice piece of information to understand what the ranking actually means.

Jack-- First - great idea about posting comment counts somewhere where you can see them more easily. I think it's really annoying in the older threads that the only way to keep count is to, well, count. I would also like to see if Movable Type could ping someone if they request it when a new comment is added to a discussion they are following.

As for not answering your E-mail, please don't hate us! Our goal is to answer everything, but I remember when your question came in, the only person who knew the answer was out of the office. Donna forwarded the message, but he must not have understood that we needed him to answer it. Folk Alley is run by a small staff (none of us full-time to the project) and sometimes accidents happen. About the count, I have no idea. But I promise to find out!

Ann - Thanks. I wasn't complaining, I only made the comment because I was not sure that the message ever got through.