Hi & thanks for stopping by to read for a minute!  I'll use this soapbox page to let you know how things are going with Music Sojourn, changes and improvements that we are making to the site, and other things that might impact what we do to bring you the music on Music Sojourn.

Topics:  (see bottom of page for archive links)

1. Updated Survey Questions ... what's most important?
2. MP3 Streams update - Dead365?
3. Q: So how do we keep this web site going?
4. I Hate POP-UP and Pop-under Ads too! 
5. New Site Navigation Scheme
6. ECHOES Series update - click here for news
7. We don't need that stinkin' PAYOLA (Or do we?) (from Salon)
8. So How do we survive without Pay-for-Play? (from Salon)

1. Updated Survey Questions: Are ads driving you nuts, would premiums be great?  What's most important to you?  Let us know by taking our survey - its only 1-2 minutes.

1. Dead365?  We are waiting for word on when our own streams will be turned off (it was supposed to be June 30). So enjoy them while they are still running. Meanwhile, we are adding other streams that we find that are pretty similar in quality and content to what we do, so you can still find links to play some good quality MP3 streams from our streams pages, even after ours go away. Plus, we have added a "preview" link for each stream labelled: "What's Playing Here" which will pop up a small window showing the song playing at the moment on that stream, plus the prior two songs, but without launching the player or interrupting whatever you are listening to at the moment.

2. A: We don't - YOU do via your DIRECT SUPPORT!  Basically, we run this site with the revenue available from Direct Contributions (THE Primary source of funding), Advertising Revenue (very little), and the small percentage (5% - 7%) that we get from your CD Purchases through Amazon & CDnow.  There are no private funders, loans, or generous benefactors.  If we don't get the funds to pay the bills from the above sources, we'll have to stop.

If you have not considered a direct contribution to Music Sojourn, we would encourage you to do so, even at a level as low as $4.00!  If everyone who uses Music Sojourn regularly contributed only $4.00 every once in a while, we could expand what we do here significantly.  If you're a regular listener and there's a specific reason why you would not contribute to our efforts, Let me know.

SPECIAL THANKS to those of you who have contributed directly by check or money order!  We realize that it is not as convenient, but it provides us with an extra 16% that we would lose to the credit card processing costs!  For more information, click here.

3. I Hate POP-UP and Pop-under Ads too!  Someone recently wrote to say: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE drop the Colonize.com pop-under ads! They are a painful annoyance every time I visit your site. I am quite sure that virtually all, if not all, other visitors would agree with me."

I Agree with you!  Unfortunately, Pop-ups & pop-unders of all kind are going to get more and more prevalent because it seems to be the new thing that works for advertisers (not just on MS, but everywhere). We are not placing them specifically, the ad vendor (Burst) has the ability to dynamically add them to their banner space on our pages. I personally don't like them either, but the "colonize" ads in particular are supplying almost 50% of our meager ad revenue from banners. The good news is that they will eventually stop and be replaced by something else. For whatever reason, it usually the most annoying ads that seem to work best.

For a while, the vast majority of ad banners running were pay-per-click, which means, as we see it, that those banners were essentially running on our site for free unless somebody clicked on one, and then we might get from $0.01 to $0.25 depending on the banner (AND, almost nobody clicks on them).

Over the past few months, we have made a good effort to make sure that the obnoxious ad banners that you see on the site are actually contributing something toward keeping Echoes and our other programs available. Almost all of the ad banners you see on the site now are paying some small cost per 1,000 displays, meaning that they at least help support us for the aggravation (else, you'll see public service or survey banners). So while I hate the pop-under ads too, when I get one, I just click the little 'x' button to close it and get a little satisfaction knowing that it helped us keep things running, if just a tiny bit.

Just like any public (or commercial) radio or TV station, there has to be some kind of reasonable mix of revenue sources for us to continue to be able to provide programming at all. If we thought we could drop all ad sources and survive on listener or subscriber support alone, we would do it. But the evidence that we have indicates that we need both, which is why we keep the ads, even though they don't pay very much at present.

We might try a special contribution category to eliminate specific "obnoxious" ads like this one - i.e., once we reach contributions of a certain $ level, we'll yank the ad!

4. New Site Navigation Scheme: Hopefully you have noticed the changes on the LEFT border navigation column.  This should make getting around the Music Sojourn site's 3 main areas, Artist pages, Streams, and Programs, much easier.  When you are in the ARTISTS section, the navigation links will take you to additional index pages for artist topics. When you are in the STREAMS section, you'll get the links for the stream genre index paes, and when you are on pages for our produced PROGRAMS (like Echoes, FM Odyssey, etc.) you will get links to the index page for all of the program series.  There's also a GENRES link which takes you to an index of the site by Genre, and you'll also see it on the index pages for each Genre (like "Ambient" or "Celtic").  Eventually, there will be a different set of links on "Info" pages like this one, but for now, it shares the "Programs" links.  As always, your feedback and ideas on our changes are always welcome!

Scott Ericson