Disc Shelf

[Louigi Verona]

Dear friends!

I am happy to inform you that my long-planned project is online as public beta: www.disc-shelf.com

A lot of time went into the development, and now it is there for everyone!

Disc Shelf is a service which allows musicians to upload their music and beautifully present it to their listeners in form of albums: singles, EPs, LPs, audio books, promo discs and WIPs (work in progress). Each album receives a unique URL for distribution.

The whole idea of the project is to allow you to link to your musical works and offer your listeners a wonderfully designed album without ratings, comments, some weird menus and without it looking like a web page. Instead, it looks more like a virtual compact disc.

So, to sum it all up.
Why use Disc Shelf? There are so many similar resources on the Internet...

However, Disc Shelf offers several unique features, such as:

* Disc Shelf offers a concept of a virtual compact disc, something which looks more like a record rather than a web page with a playlist
* the ability to highly customize the look and feel of your album
* cd booklet
* the service is very easy to use, it is not bloated with unnecessary features
* the ability to embed your album into other websites (coming soon)


So guys, you are among my first musician audience to test the service. I invite you over to www.disc-shelf.com

Register, try it out and tell me what you think - your constructive advice may be of much help because I want the service to be really useful to all of you!

Louigi Verona.

[psishock]

Hello Louigi, nice and clean site you have there. I'm trying it right out, and so far i like it. ^^
A quick notice, some upload bar could be introduced while uploading, not necessary essential, but its nice. Also really much waiting for the promised embed playback function, it would be a great way to share WIP and finished music pieces with other sites.

edit: how can i save my edited settings? ^^ (album name example or private, public status)

[Sam_Zen]

Although I have my own ways of publication, this look very neat, Louigi ! Good luck with it.

[Louigi Verona]

once you've edited you have to scroll down and find the "Done" button. When you press it, settings will be saved.

I plan to take the booklet editing into a separate tab so in the future the Done button will not be so far down and it will be less confusing.

As for embedding, I am working on it and plan to have the feature online in 1-2 weeks.

[Louigi Verona]

upload bar could be nice, indeed. I think I will do it, but I have to admit this would not be too soon as it is not an essential feature - besides many modern browsers have a bar on them, like in FF you have a small bar below.

Are you Signal Chain on Disc Shelf? If yes, have you put your album into private or secret mode?

[psishock]

upload bar could be nice, indeed. I think I will do it, but I have to admit this would not be too soon as it is not an essential feature - besides many modern browsers have a bar on them, like in FF you have a small bar below.

true, i'm a FF user atm, and also said that it's not really necessary, but nice to have one .

Are you Signal Chain on Disc Shelf?

Yes i am ^^.

If yes, have you put your album into private or secret mode?

Public WIP is the set mode atm.

[Louigi Verona]

Ah, yep - I see it )

[uncloned]

is it possible to make a XML playlist that lets me host my own mp3's?

When I coded my site I used full URL identifiers such as

Code Select Expand

 <track>
  <location>http://clones.soonlabel.com/y/it-is4you.mp3</location>
  <image>http://clones.soonlabel.com/you-icon.jpg</image>
  <annotation>It Is For You</annotation>
 </track>


for the streaming player.

It would save much time and effort this way not to mention it gives me total control of my content - and therefore the need for legal / copyright issues  drops away.

Design look good! Very nice concept LV - I wish you the best with it.

[bvanoudtshoorn]

As I said at TiS, nice, LV! I have a small gripe, though -- when you're viewing an album, you can't use the scrollwheel on the album info panel. :/

Also, it'd be nice if the website link linked.

[Louigi Verona]

Chris: nope, it is not possible. If your site goes down, it will look like Disc Shelf screwed up.

However, I really am confused as to why you think Disc Shelf will restrict you in any way (it will not). I see copyright frightens the hell out of people. By hosting your music on Disc Shelf you are not restricted in any way and can delete the files any time you want and you really have full control of your content, not to mention that we are friends (a special Internet type of friends, but still) so there is no need to go formal here.

Barry: url tag will be fixed, scrollwheel is atm impossible, I will try to code that but to be honest it is pretty tricky.

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Barry: url tag will be fixed, scrollwheel is atm impossible, I will try to code that but to be honest it is pretty tricky.

Fair enough. It would also be nice to be able to associate links with particular albums and/or tracks, and perhaps also leave specific notes on tracks. That way, I could for example link through to my personal website's music section, or explain some of the background of my tracks, as I do here, at TiS, and on my website. I know that I can do this in the album info pane, though, so it's not a necessity.

As another idea, what about allowing people to upload a customised CSS file for their particular album/profile? To make it secure, you'd have to ensure that you only allow valid CSS information (that doesn't use text-prefixing etc.) and that only alters certain predefined classes/ids. That way, the body of the page could be modified, but the banners and CD layout could be static. Just an idea.

[Louigi Verona]

URL actually works, there is a typo in description:  [url href="url"]title[/url]
or //url

I will correct it when I get my hands on the code (Friday eve).

As for customizing feel of the page, this is generally in the plans, however soon it'll be possible to embed your album anywhere you like.

As for track comments, this contradicts the main idea of the service. It is a virtual compact disc. You don't get comments to tracks in discs, but you can have a lengthy booklet.

It would also be nice to be able to associate links with particular albums and/or tracks

this didn't get. what do you mean?

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Don't worry about it. If the track comments idea doesn't fit the idiom, then this definitely wouldn't.

[Louigi Verona]

Well, you do have links to albums. And they are permanent - no problem putting them on a business card or whatever.

[Louigi Verona]

Okay, several things fixed - first of all, booklet editing is done in its own tab, so now you don't have to scroll down to find the Done button.

Also fixed description of the url tag.

In the near future: url tag will not look ugly blue, you'll be able to give it any color you want and it won't have a left margin as it does now (sorry bout that).

Color tag will allow FF0000 kind of values instead of standard colors 'green' 'red' etc as it works now.

And most importantly, soon the embed function will be available and you'll be able to plug your albums anywhere you want.