Maybe a stupid idea,but how about for the society to have reps in universities and conservatories?

No not a stupid idea at all. I have been in contact (1 1/2 year ago when the site was much smaller) with both the local musical program where I live and the conservatory in Gothenburg but never really done anything about it. How do you think we should do it?

I am thinking about something like this:

1.Piano Society has representatives in universities/conservatories
2.Piano Society Reps promote the society membership and recruit pianists/composers
3.Piano Society Reps organise concerts featuring Piano Society Artists.Organise concerts sponsored by the Society

Any other ideas?

Not a nad idea at all but it takes a large organisation than we have today (me and Chris). I'll give this a serious thought.

Well to be frank, this is not really a "society" despite the name. There are no real members, just people submitting one or more records. Only very few of them keep active, many seem to disappear once they are a recording up the site. Things would have to be drastically formalized and organized before we can think of expansions like that. I fear it would mean the end of the 'amateur' status of the site (which it has, despite there are many professionals too).

How about this?
Two sections in the society:

Alpha: "amateur" section, in which people keep to what they already do

Bravo: "gold" section.Access to this would be by membership purchase.Something like $10/year

The Bravo section would be the one involved in my idea

very good idea. I suuport that one too, simply I am an active most of the time regardless either my recording is on the site or not. I am a music lover and no biased to anyone.

avguste wrote:

How about this?
Two sections in the society:

Alpha: "amateur" section, in which people keep to what they already do

Bravo: "gold" section.Access to this would be by membership purchase.Something like $10/year

The Bravo section would be the one involved in my idea

I agree with Chris' view that this would frighten away many amateurs, also this would establish a sort of "caste system". I like it that bankers, engineers, physicists as well as professional pianists post their playing here for the world, regardless of their profession. It would be a shame if Piano Society lost it's "classless society" feeling and became like the rest of the piano world. The way Piano Society is right now college students and composers are free to join and participate, I do not see why we need to change...

Good points arensky. We certainly want to stick to our happy-go-lucky, free-for-everybody approach for as long as possible. This is what makes PianoSociety unique.

Some more observations along this line:

- It is almost impossible to draw a clear line between amateur and professional pianists. And we don't feel like doing that anyway. There are only good and bad pianists

- The idea of people buying into a certain 'class' or 'section' does not seem to sit well with the open concept of our site.

- We have repeatedly considered the matter of membership fees, but always rejected it as long as there is no desperate financial need. We would sooner make people pay for downloads than requesting pianists to contribute.

I am now curious to learn more about your International Society Of Collegiate Performers. But where on earth is it ? Your personal pages (which are rather sparse and not particularly up-to-date) do not give a clue. And the link http://www.iscp.excell.org is not going anywhere further than the domain provider's main page. Is the iscp website down ?

The host provider(free host) got hacked very badly and as such he was under the obligation to shut down business.I am hoping I will have the site back up either this week,either next week.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
As far as what is the International Society of Collegiate Performers,well I will try to explain.

During my bachelor degree studies,I found out that all the universities supposed to be performance oriented,really only cared about academics.Also noticed that universities didn't really help performance students find performance opportunities,nor provided information about colleges where academics count for nothing and such.
Following my 4 years of study,I decided to create the society to try and remedy to the above issues.
Some of the goals of the society:

1.promote performance vs academics.
2.provide performance opportunities
3.raise enough funds/donations to pay one full year of bills/studies of a performance student(student selected thru competition)

The above goals are of course bound to change depending on the success of the society and the membership

As Chris said, we have had a couple of discussions but never loud on the forum. Here is the latest which I have not still given up.

A system where 5 downloads can be made per day for free and in 128 kbit/s. With membership which costs $10 for a year, you can download as much as you like, use streamers directly off the site and have no bandwidth limit. But to where goes the money? Well, the extended idea is that the pianists get the income if they join the pianist partner program. For becoming a pianist partner, you must have at least 30 minutes of recordings up on the site. And also upload another set of at least 30 minutes per year. How do we split the money to the pianists? Two options:
1. Equal.
2. Per downloaded recording.

For the second suggestion, we should develop a system where the pianist can log in to view the current income (as with other affiliate programs as Google Adwords etc.) and regular checkouts are made when they reach a certain limit. This is a pretty advanced system and we must start with suggestion 1.

Is it possible that people will pay $10? I think it is. If you compare with classicalarchive who takes $25/year for midi and mp3 recordings, we are very competetive. Though they have a much wider range of artists and recordings.

Also, I am pretty sure that this system will attract a lot more pianists as it is really possible for a simple side income.

How many unique IP addresses download music do we have? We had 22,319 in October and if we play around a little with that 1% pay $10, that would be about $2,200. If there are 5% paying, we get $10,000 which really is a lot. However, it is not for certain that people pay as mostly, our visitors are youngsters without an income.

If we roll out a system like this, the technique must work perfect. I have tested a solution that really works so I do not think it is a big issue.

We can also have pianist partner programs. Pianists who attracts another 5 pianists get a bigger piece of the cake etc.

I'm a youngster without an income BUT I will be able to pay $10 of something what's $10? nothing! but.... I think we need to get more youngsters so the will be hear the classical music. Because I feel classical music is dieing.

My opinion.

You can post your recordings but to upload the recordings you need to pay some $

Not bad Robert
I like that idea.
I am working on restoring my site.If you want,we can use it for its intended purpose:list performance opportunities and such

hey, that sounds like an interesting idea. a little 'side income' can be pretty helpful for college students!