‘Tis the Season for Mad Props

Love it or hate it the holidays are here again. Whether you’ll be stuffing your face with turkey and Nibblets, organic locally grown roasted butternut squash and Tofurkey, latkes and sufganiyot, candy canes and sugar plums, or a bottle of 2-buck Chuck, this next month will be filled with plenty of reason to summon your cheer face. We want to start the season of joy off on the right foot by giving you all mad props… well, lots of ways to get mad props anyway.

5 props for everyone you get to share in the joy of Blip.fm:

We think the holidays are better with friends. That why we’re putting the season of giving into high gear by quintupling (that means 5x) the number of props you get for every friend who joins Blip.fm (via one of your invitations). You give the gift of Blip.fm and we give the gift of mad props. Beginning at midnight on December 1 (PDT) and continuing for the whole month of December, you get 5 props for every new DJ that signs up via one of your invitations. You can use the automated import feature, the manual email invite, or use the invite link (all of which can be found on the right column of your http://blip.fm/home page, look for “Invite friends to join Blip.fm“). But make sure they use an invite link because we can’t give you retroactive props if they don’t use one of your invitations.

1 prop for every blip between December 25 and New Years Day (12:00 AM PDT):

Yep, you heard that right. We might be crazy for doing this, we don’t really know, but for one week only at the end of December, every single blip will bag you props. How’s that for the spirit of giving? We figure this might help alleviate the pain of not getting what you wanted from Santa (or your Babushka, if you roll like that).

10 props just for filling out your profile:

We didn’t want to leave anyone out, so for those who don’t have any more friends to invite and those who won’t be around to blip the last week of the year, we came up with a way to get 10 props for almost no work at all. Simply fill out your account settings (Name, birthday, gender, and postal code) and upload a profile picture and we’ll give you 10 props. That’s it. We’re going to start playing around with location based stuff and we need more people to give us their info; this way you’re giving us something too… doesn’t that make you feel festive? On December 1st you’ll see a “postal code” field pop up under your account settings, as soon as you see it you can get the free props.

5 Blip.fm hoodies for the DJs who get the most props (from other DJs) in the month of December:

Read this one carefully ’cause we don’t want any confusion. Starting on December 1 (midnight PDT), we’ll be counting all the props that you get from other DJs (when they hit the thumbs-up icon, shown as the number at the top left of your profile picture in the right hand column at http://blip.fm/home); this does NOT include the props you get for blipping or invitations, that’s your props bank, that’s different. The five DJs who get the most props between midnight on December 1, 2008 and midnight on January 1, 2009 will be getting an official Blip.fm hoodie. Cuddle up with Blip.fm this winter, we’ll keep you warm.

1 $100 gift card for Amazon or iTunes for the DJ who gets the most props in the month of December:

The DJ who gets the most props (again, from other DJs) in the month of December gets not only a Blip.fm hoodie, but also a gift card to his or her choice of Amazon or iTunes. This is our cheap-ass attempt at a grand prize, but you can think of it like a stocking stuffer that doesn’t suck.

Get ready for mad props this holiday season, the entire month of December. Enjoy the many sessions of leftovers and food comas, and keep the glee flowing.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the props you get for inviting DJs and filling out your profile are more props *to give out*, they are like the 10 props you start out with when you joined Blip.fm, they are not the same as props you have *earned* from other DJs. Only props earned from other DJs show up on your public profile (above your profile picture), and only those props count toward the hoodie and gift card.

From Uploads to URLs

We’ve made a change in the way new music is added to Blip.fm search results. Instead of uploading mp3s directly to our servers, we’re making it easy to save the URL of songs that are already uploaded on your own server. 

As many of you are aware, Blip.fm wants all artists to have the opportunity for their music to be heard on our service.  Previously, that was accomplished with an upload feature for artists and labels.  However, due to bandwidth costs, we have changed to allow users to save URLs to music not otherwise available through our search feature.  If you are an artist or label and would like us to host your content (e.g., because your content isn’t hosted anywhere else), you can contact us at artists@blip.fm, providing your name and full contact information, as well as a list of the content you represent; requests will be considered on a case by case basis.  If you are an artist or label and have previously uploaded music to Blip.fm, contact us at artists@blip.fm to request that we continue to host your content, or simply save the URLs for the tracks in your Blip.fm settings, as we’ll be purging prior uploads within 30 days.

In short, the “Uploads” tab in your settings is now called “Music”. Sorry if this causes any inconvenience for anyone.

Blip’n'Beer

This one is pretty awes. @Yan forwarded an email from one of our DJs about a simultaneous Blip.fm meet up in multiple cities around the world.

The idea came about when a few of our Brazilian DJs got together at a local bar in São Paulo, Brazil. Diogo Matheus, one of the creators of Blip’n'Beer, says, “a few days ago some blippers felt like meeting each other, and went to a pub in São Paulo Brazil with the purpose to get to know each other, because we have only met in Blip.fm despite living in the same city.” Now the idea has ballooned into a multi-city affair. There’s a website (http://blipnbeer.com) with six confirmed cities (and a bunch more tentative) participating in the next meet up this Wednesday, November 19th (8:30pm). So far the list includes São Paulo, Rio, Santa Marta, Belo Horizonte, Medelin, New York and Cleveland but check the website to see if your city is listed. I’m not sure how the time difference is handled between time-zones, so make sure you connect with your city’s organizer to double check.

Unfortunately both of the engineers at Blip.fm (myself and @Yan) can’t make this Wednesday’s meet up, but we’re going to see if our CEO @Jeff can represent. Of course all future events will have a strong Blip.fm showing… and probably some Blip.fm schwag. If you have a suggestion for a local SF bar that might allow us to take over the PA and blast Blip.fm all night please let us know: feedback@blip.fm. Right now I’m thinking 21st Amendment might be a good spot, but other suggestions are welcomed.

It’s a huge honor for us that our users have put this together. Music is inherently a social lubricant and it’s not just limited to the online world. It’s great to see people getting together in local venues to have a brew and talk music. Make sure you mark your calendar for this Wednesday’s event and we’ll be sure to let you know about future Blip’n'beer meet ups as well.

For more information about Blip’n'Beer, visit the official website or contact @giga2 on Twitter.

Reblip those blips

We’ve added a new feature today to Blip: reblipping. I’m sure you’re all like us and have from time to time come across a blip you really liked and wanted to blip it yourself to share it with your listeners. This used to require you to search for the song, preview etc… basically a lot of work and worst of all the DJ who played it never got any cred for it! Well it’s dead easy now to reblip, just click the circular arrow icon (kinda looks like refresh or recycle) in the lower right hand corner of a blip and boom, the song will be preselected. You can of course edit the message to your satisfaction. The reblipped blip will have a text link “(reblip)” after your message that will link back to the original blip.

And just to sweeten the pie, we’ll hook you up with a credit whenever someone reblips one of your blips. You can adjust your notification settings for reblips on your settings page at http://blip.fm/settings So get out there and start reblipping some tracks, it’s easier than ever!