Hi,

Big news today--we have a winner of our Battle of the Bands competition. After several months of competition and user voting, the grand prize winner is:
Blue

Check out her music at:
http://wemusicstore.com/loveblue

A lot of great bands competed, so check out the runners up as well.

Runners Up:
http://wemusicstore.com/aaron
http://wemusicstore.com/aprilonline
http://wemusicstore.com/BPmessenger
http://wemusicstore.com/danmalloy
http://wemusicstore.com/G13jl
http://wemusicstore.com/michellehotaling
http://wemusicstore.com/mjproject
http://wemusicstore.com/stereoreceiver
http://wemusicstore.com/TheBurningofRome

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all who competed!

--kortina

After some very lengthy debate we decided to drop the name PhilaFunk. One of the main reasons we changed, believe it or not, was that people couldn’t spell PhilaFunk. We got lots of “PhillyFunk” and “FilaFunk” mixups–plus we had lots of people not register because theythought that you had to be in the “Funk” genre to be on the site. Despite the general awesomeness and verbal beauty of PhilaFunk, it was a bad domain name.

So, we’ve changed our name to WeMusicStore.com. We were sitting around tossing around synonyms for social and music and sort of stumbled upon this one. When we checked it on whois and found that it was available, I immediately registered it. We think that this name is a better statement of what we are–a social music store–so are happy to have the change made.

Don’t worry, by the way–all of the PhilaFunk urls will redirect to their appropriate We Music Store urls.

The next part of this announcement regards some design changes. You’ll notice a new color scheme and some layout changes, as well as a trimming of some fat. There were a lot of features that were just sort of fluff and didn’t do much to help you sell or find music. The main thing they did was give you a way to annoy people or just take up valuable space and confuse you. So we ditched a bunch of the superfluous junk that we added when we were in feature creep mode and have a much cleaner UI that is focused on providing you with the tools you need to sell or find music.

I hope you enjoy the changes. I for one think they’re refreshing. Let me know what you think.

wemusicstore.com/kortina

.. I haven’t seen any errors for a while so I’m gonna crash….

I'm excited to announce that PhilaFunk will be one of the sponsors for the upcoming Philly Sound Clash, a competition set up by the Philly Car Share. The top 12 Philly bands in the competition will be featured on an album that will be distributed for free on PhilaFunk.com and available in CD format in every Philly Car Share vehicle for any driver to listen to and take home for free. If you're a musician, sign up and represent:

http://phillycarshare.org/soundclash/

The top 6 bands in the competition will compete at World Café Live on February 22nd, 2007. I'll see you there.

peace,
kortina
philafunk.com/kortina

* * *
Prize Details for the Sound Clash:
• 300 Demo CD’s pressed and in Digipacks from Disc Makers
• Promo Pak-200 18X24 Posters, 1000 postcards, 1000 Stickers, 1000
Flyers from Disc Makers
• One opening act slot for the 1st place winner on a like genre show
Downstairs at the World Café Live.
• recording studio time at Surreal Sound Studios
• rehearsal space time in Surreal Sound Studio (space has been used by
bands such as Bloc Party, Kenny Wayne Sheppard, Jeremy Enigk, Sun Volt and
others)
• Write-ups for a new press kit along with professionally done
one-sheet, along with full press campaign after winner is announced (release
will be sent to 100 local media outlets)
• Saturday night show at the M Room with a free beer Happy Hour
• Feature on "Tuned in to 6abc" for live local music.
• Feature article /press on the winning artist on Hot Kangaroopie.com.
• 2 tracks on the PhillyCar Share compilation CD(one live recording
from the Philly Sound Clash Performance on Feb 22nd and one original
recording sent as your entry for the contest ) on 4000+ Compilation CD’s
including Free distribution all around Philadelphia. Distribution includes
CD’s for the taking in all PhillyCarShare cars (innumerable impressions),
give aways at events and possible distribution through partnerships with a
variety of retail locations. (at no point will these CDs be sold for profit,
any monetary compensation will be geared towards pressing more CDs to
increase the compilations distribution count in Philadelphia).
• Some Cash in your pocket compliments of PhillyCarShare!

* * *

PhillyCarShare is a non-profit company that seeks to maximize the economic, environmental, and social benefits of reduced automobile dependence in the Philadelphia region through community-based car sharing. I am a big fan of the Philly Car Share because it makes it easy for people to do a good thing. The easiest way to get people to make socially beneficial decisions is to make the right decision also the most convenient one for them. That's what Philly Car Share is doing.

To learn more about the Philly Car Share, check out their site:

http://phillycarshare.org/

* * *

Congratulations to MJ Project, the winner of the PhilaFunk National Online Battle of the Bands week 8. You can check them out at
http://philafunk.com/mjproject

Weekly winners are posted at
http://philafunk.com/_/battle_votes/winners

Week 9 of the competition begins this evening, and registration for week 10 starts, so go friend the following user to compete:
http://philafunk.com/week10
To vote for bands competing this week, go to:
http://philafunk.com/week09/friends
Peace,
Kortina
philafunk.com/kortina

Congratulations to Michell Hotaling, the winner of the PhilaFunk National Online Battle of the Bands week 7. You can check her out at
http://philafunk.com/michellehotaling

Weekly winners are posted at
http://philafunk.com/_/battle_votes/winners

Week 8 of the competition begins this evening, and registration for week 9 starts, so go friend the following user to compete:
http://philafunk.com/week09
To vote for bands competing this week, go to:
http://philafunk.com/week08/friends
Peace,
Kortina
philafunk.com/kortina

So I'm going to try to start posting the winners as soon as the competition week closes, now that I have a better scoring system in place after a few weeks of doing this.

The Burning of Rome won the PhilaFunk National Online Battle of the Bands week 5 and Aaron Mitchell won week 6. You can check them out at
http://philafunk.com/TheBurningofRome
and
http://philafunk.com/aaron

Weekly winners are posted at
http://philafunk.com/_/battle_votes/winners

Week 7 of the competition begins this evening, and registration for week 8 starts, so go friend the following user to compete:
http://philafunk.com/week08
To vote for bands competing this week, go to:
http://philafunk.com/week07/friends
Peace,
Kortina
philafunk.com/kortina

Bulletproof Messenger won the PhilaFunk National Online Battle of the Bands this week. You can check them out at
http://philafunk.com/BPmessenger

Weekly winners are posted at
http://philafunk.com/_/battle_votes/winners

Week 6 of the competition begins this evening, and registration for week 7 starts, so go friend the following user to compete:
http://philafunk.com/week07
To vote for bands competing this week, go to:
http://philafunk.com/week06/friends
Peace,
Kortina
philafunk.com/kortina

I had a radio interview at KYW about PhilaFunk yesterday. You can read the details here:
http://philafunk.com/_/blog/2006/11/29/kyw-radio-interview-anda-few-tweaks/

You'll notice a bunch of new features on PhilaFunk today that I've been working on over the last few weeks. Let me give you the quick rundown:

Stars
You can now star all your favorite bands, songs, and albums by clicking the little star pics. This feature is pretty straightforward, but arose out of my need for a better way to save stuff as the site grows. You can check out the stuff I've been starring at:

http://philafunk.com/kortina/stars

Improved Mailing Lists
Besides fixing a few bugs I notice with the subscription process, I also added a couple of slick new features to the mailing list system. First, it's even easier for someone to join your mailing list now--every time they go to your profile page (philafunk.com/you), they'll see the "Subscribe to this list" box on the left hand side of the page under your profile picture. And, as before, anyone can join your PhilaFunk mailing list, even if they're not a member of the site.

I also added a subscription aggregator--or in non-geek terms, a page where you can view all of the new posts from all of the mailing lists you are subscribed to. So I now I can go to just one page to see what's happening at PhilaFunk Live, what Alex is up to, and where Iqram's next show is.

Also, I added a feature on the Event Invitations page that allows you to send a post about the event to everyone on your mailing list. This is a great way to invite PhilaFunk members and non-members who dig your stuff to all of your events.

Browse By State
I implemented this feature after going through pages and pages of users looking for NYC people to put on the next flyer. I thought it would be a useful feature for me and perhaps you'll find it useful, too.

Speaking of flyers, I'm working on the NYC flyer right now, so if any NYC people want in on that, shoot me a message.

Peace,
kortina

Andrew Kortina has invited you to Braddigan from Dispatch Playing Upstairs on:

Wednesday - Dec, 13 2006
08:00 PM

You can find more details and RSVP at:
http://philafunk.com/_/events/show/145