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New Updates – Keeping out the Riff Raff

Posted on March 26, 2013

News – March 2013

New Feature – Room Banning.

Hopefully you will never need this feature, but we’ve updated the room banning capabilities on StreetJelly. It’s a fact of life on the Wacky Wide Web that inevitably there will be jerks in the chat during a show. Musicians now have more controls on keeping out the riff raff. Inside the chat message window, you may have always noticed the red-x button on each person’s message. When an artist clicks on this link, a new pop-up box will appear with these options:

Remove a user from your chat window (same feature as before). The annoying person will be removed from your chat window only. They won’t know it, nor will anyone else know it. This is basically an ignore setting.
Remove user from everyone’s chat . This is new and removes the offender completely from your show. It’s like bouncers are dragging the douche out of the audience. The viewer will get bounced to a “you’ve been banned” webpage and will no longer be allowed back into your show. This is a full room ban. It’s a bit extreme, but sometimes necessary.
Ban permanently from all shows for a musician. Same as #2, but that jerk-wad will never be allowed back into any show for that one musician.

The room banning features are available to all musicians during their shows. StreetJelly Moderators also have the ability to ban any user from a broadcast on behalf of a musician. Regular viewers, and artists viewing another show, still have the ability to remove (ignore) a user from their own chat window.

It’s worth repeating: StreetJelly is a family friendly site. We are not the cultural police, but please keep it clean. When in doubt, think of being PG-13 as your guide.

Give Yourself a Big Smiley

Posted on March 13, 2013

StreetJelly News: we’ve updated our Smileys to bigger and better fun!

There’s a bit of a story behind this. We originally used smileys, emoticons in our chat windows, that were borrowed from another instant messaging system. We had these in place during our beta phase and applied for the proper permission and licensing to use on the site. The paperwork took a while, but we finally heard back from this large national company. For whatever reason they declined our application to license their artwork. They didn’t even offer a chance to pay a licensing fee. Oh well, that’s the way it goes in this business.

We moved ahead with Plan B. We found a new supplier of artwork that was happy to take our money. I know, right! Originally, we didn’t choose this company because their smileys were so large and didn’t quite fit into the chat window. But StreetJelly evolves. Turns out, bigger IS better for the site. While performing, the musicians are often further back from the screen and have a harder time viewing and reading the chat messages. The larger smileys are much easier to see. And, we increased the font size and thumbnail pics while we were updating the code.

There is a lesson here, too. It’s about copyrights, ownership of artwork, licensing, and all that legal mumbo-jumbo that follows. Everything that applies to smiley graphic files also applies to songs and songwriters. We believe strongly in the rights of any artist, their art work, and fair compensation for use of their work. At StreetJelly, we do our best to make sure everyone is credited or compensated properly. We hold web licenses through songwriter associations, like BMI, ASCAP, SECAS, for the cover music performed by our musicians. These fees come out of our budget, not musicians’ tokens. We do this not because we’re supposed to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Check out our friends at FarePlay.org and all the great work they are doing to curtail illegal downloading of music. We support them, you should too.

Remember, if you didn’t create something, make sure you are giving credit or paying the person who did. It’s that simple.

Hope everyone enjoys the new smileys!

How do you Thank a Community?

Posted on March 6, 2013

Hello, this is a personal note from me, Frank Podlaha, founder of StreetJelly.com. I have the best seat in the house to witness the community that is forming around this little experiment of streaming live musicians for the world. It’s March 2013 and StreetJelly is about six months old. I am blown away by the support we have received by the members of StreetJelly.

We can all relate to having fans, whether we create music, art, or even websites. But it’s something even more special when this thing you create takes on a life of its own. And this thing takes on the life of the people, the super fans, who add their own passion to it. StreetJelly is not about me, Frankie the computer programmer from Tennessee.
StreetJelly is the community of everyone that works so hard to make it special.

Here’s one recent example. StreetJelly was a sponsor at the world’s first Virtual Music Conference. StreetJelly was on an international stage in front of music industry execs, vendor experts, and a worldwide slew of musicians. It was a lot of work. And the Jellyfish stepped up to the plate to help man the virtual exhibitor booth, mingle with conference goers, perform three days straight of music on the site, and overall “spread the jelly.” I hesitate to list names of all those that helped because I fear I may miss someone. But here it goes. Thank you Damian, Clifton, Aaron, Rick, Denise, Martina, Amanda, Robert, Jayro, Chris, Kevin, Jersey, Michael, Lindley, John, Diana, Maureen, and especially Merv for the many hours of tireless promotion of our community. (Oh crud, I feel like I forgot someone already.)

I am humbled by all this help. But just saying “thank you” doesn’t feel like enough. I think the best way to show my gratitude is to continue to work as hard as I can to help create an even bigger and better community. Below is a recent quote about StreetJelly from William Buckley of Fare Play on a Digital Music News article. He sums up well where my heart is:

Nice guys finish first. http://www.streetjelly.com/

Six months ago I had the pleasure of having StreetJelly founder, Frank Podlaha, as our first guest on FarePlay Radio. It was one of those rare moments when you find yourself having a conversation with someone who genuinely cares about helping others.

In many ways Frank and his growing stable of musicians epitomizes everything that FarePlay stands for. Passionate individuals going after a dream no matter how hard the climb. Musicians chasing a dream that perhaps someday will lead them to a career as full time musician.

If you’re a musician you should check out StreetJelly. Frank is a tireless promoter of “his” acts. If you just love music you might find someone you want to follow. And if you’re walking past someone playing on the street you might just pause for a few minutes and check them out. They’ll like that, even if you don’t tip them.

Music is like the air we breathe, we can never get too much.

Thanks Frank.

Thank you, Will. And thank you, StreetJelly Nation! Onward!

StreetJelly Poem by Damian Trujillo

Posted on March 3, 2013

A StreetJelly poem by Damian Trujillo

Got StreetJelly?

The day is long on the StreetJelly
Pupils start to dialate as you pick up that tele
Pick up that stratocaster, gibson acoustic delight
did you hear a stray cat strut by tonight

At 8 am you may hear a crooner
Sometimes the music will come along sooner
24 hours a day what can go wrong
lost connections, oh my in the middle of the song

From the west coast sunshine
To the Canadian lines
From the New York subways
To the mountains of the west and high

From England and Ireland, Netherlands too
Oh StreetJelly Oh StreetJelly the things you do
Some sing like the angels, others unique and true
Free, free, free the music for you

Got StreetJelly?

–Damian Trujillo, Sheridan, WY, March 2013

Who is going to set this to music?

The Jelly Dictionary

Posted on March 1, 2013

Special guest blog by Aaron Samuels a.k.a. “Maestro”

Jellytalk, or “Jellese”

For those of you not entirely hip to the StreetJelly lingo, or even if you just need a refresher, below is the rapidly developing StreetJelly lexicon. This will be updated as the new terms come in.

Jellyfish – a frequent swimmer of the StreetJelly ocean. If you peruse the broadcasts often enough, you’ll find out quickly who we are.
Jellyfly – any one watching the broadcast but not participating in the real-time chat conversation. It’s all good. We got love for our Jellyflies, and sometimes the fish are in fly-mode. We just like to tease them because it’s much more fun to be a fish than a fly.
Jellybird – a performer on StreetJelly, our bread and (peanut) butter.
Jellyhead – see “Jellybird”.
Jellytainer – see “Jellybird”.
Jellyking – Frank Podlaha, naturally. All hail. The world will sing when he is king…and he is king. So we sing.
Jellyfire – a descriptive term for when a Jellybird is performing with passion.
Jellyswarm – any significant viewership for any given broadcast.
Jellyrat – see “drive-by”.
Drive-by – the act of briefly jumping on to another performer’s performance just to let their viewers know via chat that you are performing. Not cool. Performance over-lapping is going to happen and that’s totally fine, just let viewers make up their own mind about who they want to watch.
Greenwall – When enough individual token donations are delivered to a performer, the chat wall turns a delightful green (with gold accents). It takes a minimum of nine tokens to greenwall a jellybird.
Whitewall – When enough blank chat entries fill the room, we call that a whitewall. Use this technique sparingly if at all.
Spreading the Jelly – getting the word out about the awesomeness that is StreetJelly.
Bluewall – a Greenwall of Rocker Pins. You want this to happen to you.
Jellymood – I’m in the mood for love…simply because you’re jelly…
Purple Rain – A song by the Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Jellyfish request this song on a regular basis, so you might wanna work it into your repertoire, if you’re a Jellybird.
AFJ – Away From Jelly. Not exactly fly status, just temporary absence.

What’s your favorite term? Have another to add? Continue the dictionary below…


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