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Watch StreetJelly from your iPad and iPhone

Q:  Can I watch StreetJelly from my iPhone?
A:  Yes, with the Photon Browser app.

There is a Flash compatible browser, called Photon, that can stream StreetJelly performances on an iPad, iPhone, iPod.  Below is a screen shot taken from an iPhone 4.  Photon is an alternative browser to Safari for mobile Apple products.  It works the same way as any browser:  just navigate to a website as you would on the regular browser.  Photon works for any Flash enabled website, including those with Flash games like Facebook.

The StreetJelly website is obviously very small on a phone, the better experience is on an iPad.  But this gives us good insight as we develop our mobile apps for StreetJelly.  It’s not just a matter of “shrinking” down a website to fit on a mobile device.  We want to make sure the experience fits for when you are mobile, verses sitting at home or work in front of a pc.  In the meantime, check out the Photon Browser.  Cost as of this time is $3.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Photon Browser for iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photon-flash-video-player/id430200224

Photon Browser for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photon-flash-video-player/id453546382

 

Taken from an iPhone 4 with Photon Browser

Taken from an iPhone 4 with Photon Browser

The World Didn’t End, It Just Started

Celebrate a great year with StreetJelly.comI know the world didn’t end last month from the Mayan doomsday calendar.  You and I are still here.  I’m pretty smart, huh?  Or I’m just a smarty-pants stating the obvious.  Don’t answer that.  I do know that great things are happening for StreetJelly.

Last month on StreetJelly I witnessed a growing community of musicians meet each other, start friendships, share the holidays, and even build a team to raise money for charity.  Here’s a recap of some notable days in December 2012.

End of the World Shows  On 12/21, the Mayan Doomsday, a few musicians scheduled “End of the World” concerts on StreetJelly.  That must have sparked everyone’s urge to perform one last time before the calamity of global destruction.  Starting around 10:30am, musicians performed one after another all day in one big long concert.  It lasted well into the night.  Fun was had by all.

Christmas Eve  12/24 was a special night.  Yes, it was holiday fun and most musicians were singing Christmas carols.  But a wonderful thing happened during one performance.  A group of musicians were all chatting together watching Maestro when the conversation turned to benefit concerts and performing for charities.  Long story short, this group has teamed up to start performing monthly concerts on StreetJelly for charities.  All tokens collected by these musicians on such days will be donated to a specific charity.  The team is currently working hard behind the scenes to put this all together – stay tuned for more details and a chance to contribute.

New Year’s Eve  Drinking songs, distortion, and …well …more drinking songs capped off the night.  Musicians were performing all night long, and a crew of us were able to celebrate the New Year in most of the US time zones (sorry Hawaii).  Our master jam band extraordinaire Clifton played for hours with his band at a local Shriner’s basement.  The sound took a few to get right, but everyone still enjoyed themselves.  Even when the laptop went flying, nothing was broken!

These were just a few of the great times in December on StreetJelly.  But what stands out to me is that all these events were made special by the people who took part.  It had nothing to do with marketing, or advertising, or social media shenanigans.  It all happened spontaneously from the nice folks that found StreetJelly in 2012.  That makes me very happy, as I know this can only lead to bigger and better things for the site.  It’s just getting started!

Newfie Sing-a-longs

Image69 Merv and Family

My business friends can all relate to the statements from our marketing departments: tell a story when promoting your business.  I certainly have the gift of gab, thanks Mom, so telling a story is never a problem.  But actually trying to pull out a compelling story from the day to day drudgery of business is not that easy.  I mean really, in my world of software development and data analysis, I beg that even the greatest bullshitter can’t consistently spin up interesting yarns every week.

Along comes StreetJelly, the streaming live music website I founded. (Dang, he plugged the site and hasn’t even started his story yet.)  I have already witnessed numerous great moments of live broadcasting: wonderful music, passionate singing, hilarious out takes (I’m looking at you, Maestro, lol), and so on.  All of which are moments you can never see again because we don’t record anything on the site.  Crazy, I know!

Last week I was watching ImageAndFamily on StreetJelly.  This is a family from Toronto who loves to perform sing-a-long tunes, Newfoundland fishing chanties, and singer/songwriter classics.  I’ve only met Merv and Amanda online through StreetJelly.  If I got it straight, Merv is from Trinidad and Amanda is from Newfoundland.  She’s the Newfie!  Their son, Robert, performs on keyboard and vocals with them.

Robert is 13 and autistic.  I would have known this if I read their profile, but Merv was telling me his story in a chat conversation.  You see, Robert didn’t talk or communicate much with the world before the age of 7.  That’s when Merv introduced him to music.  Something clicked!  Robert responded to music like he was a virtuoso of 75 years.  I’ve seen him on keyboards and singing on StreetJelly.  There’s great talent there.  The amazing thing is how music rescued Robert from his quiet world.  While playing keyboards with his family, he sings chorus and melodies in a sweet innocent voice.  Precious!  And Robert follows along with the chat window, says hello, and suggest songs himself.

I don’t know what else makes a more amazing story than being let into the living room of Merv and Amanda and sharing in with their family sing-a-long.  Try that with a digital download mp3 site!

Busking Online has Arrived

First Performer Street Jelly

teo_doro from Guam is our first live performer on StreetJelly.com

Busking, playing music in a public forum for gratuities, has now officially arrived on the internet. Last night, August 17th, 2012, all the way from Guam, we had our first musician perform live from his webcam. Teo_doro was awesome!

StreetJelly.com had only been live for about a day. Somehow, word-of-mouth from Nashville and Knoxville TN had reached Teo.  The Nashville transplant found the site, signed up, and just started playing.  That is as spontaneous as it gets.

Things went well, all systems checked out.  Actually, we were amazed that the sound and video quality was quite well from Teo’s stock Gateway laptop with built-in webcam and built-in mic.

We can’t say enough how pleased we were of the outcome.  Our vision of bringing real LIVE entertainment for everyone – and helping musicians earn money for their craft – is still alive and well!

The Hype

Guest post by Austin Church, writer extraordinaire.

See No Evil... aww hell, you now the rest.

Can you actually make a living doing what you love?
Yes. All you need is a webcam and microphone—and some sounds!—to start making money. We’re glad that Justin Bieber was able to get his start on YouTube, but now that he’s a household name, everybody and his sister’s cat is throwing up videos, hoping for the NEXT one-in-a-million chance to get a record deal.

It’s hard to stand out on YouTube!

Street Jelly offers an alternative to that lottery ticket approach. We want you to get discovered, but we’re not going to B.S. you. If you want to be the next rags-to-riches, you’re going to need some help. We’ve designed Street Jelly with that goal in mind. You can get visibility, build a fan base, and let the quality of your art and performance determine what you make and where your music takes you.

Play to the crowd, get to know your listeners, and maybe even play “Freebird” every once in awhile just to prevent a riot. You’ll be busking your face off in no time and making Mick Jagger jokes to tease a few more tips out of your adoring fans.

Signing up is easy. We’ll walk you through it step-by-step, and for those of you who are still new to live streaming, we’ve got some simple tutorials for picking out inexpensive equipment and getting everything to run smoothly. Virtual stardom awaits, and Beyonce thinks you’re ready for this Jelly.

The Birth of Street Jelly

I miss street musicians!  I miss the surprise turning the corner of a city street to find a completely new sound.  There’s something special when discovering a musician plugging away at their art, in their most raw and vulnerable moment:  performing live for everyone and anyone that will listen.

Artist Streaming Music LiveBut it’s my own fault I don’t see and hear street musicians that often, I don’t live in the city anymore.  I’ve spent the past two decades in the ‘burbs, commuting to and from the office complexes of the tech world.  Sure, that pays the bills, but the culture of life can be easily sucked out of you.  Yes, I could frequent the downtown bars and nightclubs for the occasion live local bands, but that’s just not my scene.

FM radio these days blows.  Morning radio is even worse.  Who wants to hear two knuckleheads try to be funny on the radio while you’re stuck in traffic?  I want music!  My iPod is loaded with a 1000+ songs.  But every time I flip through my playlist, I see nothing I want to listen to at that moment.  Inevitably I flip through my Pink Floyd section and start thinking of the line, “I got 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from …choose from …choose from.”  The spontaneity of mp3 players is missing; same thing with those online music streaming websites.  Satellite radio is good, all music and no talking!  But I think I’ve heard every playset on Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, The Bridge, etc.  Thank goodness I love the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius!

Live music, the Dead-Head inside me thought, I need more live music.  That got me thinking about the days when I lived downtown in the vibrant city of Nürnberg, Germany.  The streets, subways, tram stations, any little alcove could be hiding a street musician.  The music was as diverse as one can imagine: classical violin, jazz on trumpets, and my favorite horrible rendition of John Denver’s “Country Roads” that every hipster German tried to sing in a thick Bavarian accent.  Oh, good times.

That trip down memory lane subsided, but not without a quick googling of the web for places to find street musicians.  I’m not very patient surfing the web endlessly, so the few Google responses turned me off that I would find live music online or where street musicians regularly meet.  Then the entrepreneur inside me kicked in.  “Shit Frank, just build a dang street musician site yourself!”

Yes, I happen to be a software engineer.  I know, how convenient!  A dear friend of mine once said I am creative and methodical. So I flipped on the creative and methodical switches (and the insanity switch, too) inside my crooked little brain for full speed ahead.  The work began back in March 2012.  I’ll skip over the details of actually building the site and starting a business.  We’ll save that for another blog post.

A few months later…  Street Jelly was born!  Live streaming music, worldwide, 24 hours a day!