Older News - October-December 2005

Website's 9th Birthday!

Posted by Yaginuma on 12/19/05 08:55 PM

Get up and dance, its the Videogame Music Archive's 9th birthday! We've been through many milestones, and have established our place in history. Thanks to the new Google ads, this is the first year (and month) that the site is also financially self-sufficient! We're currently at 75,000 page impressions per day. Thanks to the staff for their hard work, for the fans of this site who keep us going, the sequencers for capturing perfection, and the composers for their creativity that has inspired us all. The extra revenue will be used to fund some new giveaways. Or just dance some more.

44 Comments

Staff shift

Posted by Forteblast on 11/24/05 02:18 AM

The following staff changes have been made:
- Arrow and Black_Wing have left the site due to time constraints
- B1itz Lunar and Horn have been hired as updaters
- Secret Agent Man has been hired to do some programming and other back-end work

Please give a big thanks to Arrow and Black_Wing for their work on the site, and welcome our new staff!

40 Comments

Site Finances: Super Mario-velous

Posted by Yaginuma on 11/14/05 08:58 PM

VGMusic has gone thru a rocky year so far in terms of its finances. Check out this graph I prepared. Currently, the site finances are in very good shape. We have enough funds to keep running for another 6 months without any problems. Even better news, since adding ads from Google across most pages on the site, we now make over $2/day, which should help significantly in offsetting our server cost. Since the site is doing well financially, I'd ask you instead to considering giving to another worthy cause, such as Child's Play Charity. Of course, if you insist on seeing some new bumps added to the chart, see our donation page for options on how to donate.

18 Comments

Slashdot Discussion of Midi Remixes

Posted by Yaginuma on 11/12/05 06:47 AM

I wanted to point out an interesting discussion on Slashdot, "The Place Of Modern Midi Music?", which was posted early this morning. A Slashdot user poses the question: "Is a remixed midi file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it Piracy? What do the you think?" Consider taking some time to add your own comments on the Slashdot article page to get your views heard.

16 Comments

Another restore

Posted by Forteblast on 10/28/05 11:00 AM

The site suffered some temporary downtime in the last couple of days to restore from a complete backup this time. The site's functionality is now completely restored, and Mike and I have learned a considerable amount about how things work. :)
The forums were supposed to have been completely backed up, but it appears that a couple of hours of posts and private messages were not recovered. I know that at least one person sent me a PM that is now gone. Forum users, check your "Sentbox" and "Outbox" to ensure that PMs you sent are still in the system; if not, you'll need to re-send them.
Also, if you've tried to e-mail staff members and had your mail returned to you, please feel free to re-send your messages, as staff mail is operational again.

6 Comments

Server issues

Posted by Forteblast on 10/16/05 11:53 PM

A minor server issue has necessitated a rollback to the last backup. I saved a forum backup just before the restore was applied, but when I tried to upload it back to the forum, nothing happened. Unfortunately, as a result, all posts and private messages made since October 9th are now gone. If you registered after the 9th, you will have to re-register. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Also, staff e-mail was down from 3:30 PM yesterday to approximately 3:30 AM today. If you sent any e-mail to staff members yesterday, please re-send it.
New-files submitted since the 9th were saved separately and have been re-uploaded. There is no need to re-send them.

UPDATE: Staff e-mail is down again. We are working on the problem and hope to have it operational again as soon as possible.

0 Comments

Often imitated...

Posted by Forteblast on 10/04/05 12:17 PM

As many of our long-time fans know, there have been many sites that have tried to duplicate VGMusic.com. I of course have no problem with people who wish to create video game MIDI sites, but often times they do so by downloading all the files they can - or all the ones they like - from VGMusic.com and posting them. Also, there are a good number of sites that use some of our MIDIs (ringtone sites, for example) without telling us. Sometimes the ringtones are sold at a profit, which brings up all sorts of copyright problems.

So, I invite all of you out there in internet-land to let us know when you recognize a site that has been using files from this website without obtaining permission. I can then use it to create a list of 'imitator' sites. We may not be able to do anything about others using the tunes we've worked hard to sequence, but we can blacklist them here, at the very least. Also, when you make a MIDI, make sure you put something akin to "Only for use on VGMusic.com" in the tracklist - or a list of other approved sites.

I'll start off: videogamemidis.net is one site that has leeched several thousand of our MIDIs. I personally wrote at least four of them, so it's particularly bothersome to me. I'm sure there are many others. If you know of one, leave a comment on our forums by using the link below.

UPDATE: The webmaster of videogamemidis.net has agreed to cooperate. See my latest post for information on how to contact him to say you want your files removed.

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