Lonnie Knows Everything

Guys,

Over the last couple of years I’ve blogged about my experiences with TuneCore which have been for the most part, very positive. The guys there have been extremely responsive.  Then along came WaTunes offering similar services for free, and it’s hard to resist free isn’t it?  The service was never very easy to use but given what they were offering you it was not something to complain about.

As time went on the interface gradually improved and I worked directly with Kevin Rivers many times. Not many company owners will directly interface with their users.

I posted a pretty positive review of the service and encouraged people to give them a shot.. and that is where my apology comes in.  I have been working n new material off and on for some time now and when I went to make a release last night I found out that the WaTunes guys have bowed out of digital distribution which is very unfortunate, to say the least.  It’s certainly put me in a bind.

With that in mind I needed to find an alternative, and it looks as though TuneCore’s rates have gone up since I left them for WaTunes.

I don’t know of any other “free” options out there, but one company that has been around longer than all of them and offers the ability now to upload your content is Cd Baby.. $35.00 per album and $9.00 per single.

I need to do some further research.. Anyone have any other suggestions?

You know, I’m in some way a god father of these chat bots you find now days because I was one of the originators of the chatter bot/artificial intelligent things you find out there.

I started my ICQ bot in the 90s, it worked on AIM and was later crudely adapted to Yahoo and then later, many more protocols… but in my time that I was actively involved I was legally threatened by AOL who was for some reason really butt heart by what i was doing, fucking panzies if you ask me…  At any rate, I had my day in the spot light .. I was interviewed by people around the globe andwas in print in some publication out in Russia.. I wish I could get my hand on a copy! ( think of me folks! ) … I was also mentioned, inaccurately .. in botspot .. Perhaps it was all this attention I had gathered that got the AOL lawers on my ass… I fought them for two years and eventually lost, mostly out of fear… but I’d love to take them on again :) … I doubt they’d challenge me these days given the landscape shifts..

ANYWAY … my former site was icqbot.net which googling can land you some fun responses, but yes … now days AOL owns that name and they had to pay me a pretty penny for it ..  a pretty $50 ( lame )

During that time a fledgling project called GAIM was starting up and AOL aimed their guns at the author, he wrote me for advice and I gave him some suggestions on how to legally position himself based on my experience, I had of course failed.. but I learned a lot in my time.. in the end the GAIM project became the Pidgin project ..

I let my AI project die, in the public eye .. but I’ve kept the home fires burning.. I’ve been working on maintaining the engine ove the last several years… The “botspot”article claimed i was using the eliza engine at a time I was not using that engine… it began that way briefly, but evolved into it’s own project that was adaptive.. I also had a version briefly that used the megahal version before AOL’s lawers hit..

Why do I write now? because I have never really talked about all this before.. and there’s so many projects out there now based on my work that it’s insane.. there are adbots and various other things that .. sadly, originated with me …I’m not proud of it, I’m not asking for money.. but if you want to know the history.. it begins here..:)

AND BY THE WAY – If you’re the author of Gaim.. now pidgin… you wrote me before asking for advice! write again, I have some ideas… and when I tried contacting via the pidgin page, the had no clue….. ciao people.

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Do yourself  a favor and ignore this app!

1. Everyone appears to be fake.. sure there are some real ones, but most aren’t ..

2. If you decide you don’t like the app … try cancelling! you’ll be in for an adventure… there is no method of cancelling your account and contacting them is iffy at best.. most report no luck in getting their account deleted, I did have luck.. kind of

3. if you cancel your account be prepared to be banned.. I had a test account that I requested cancelled, after wrangling, they finally cancelled it and then banned my iphone from their service entirely.. extreme! instead of deleting the account, they banned the device entirely..

All things you should know about before signing up to begin with, which is not part of what you’re made aware of … beware of this app …

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I’m in total shock, I was told last night but it didn’t really sink in .. as anyone who knows me will realize I’m really bad with names .. when I checked the yearbook this morning my heart sank … this was someone I knew and was someone who was a really cool/nice guy .. I hadn’t talked to him in  a long time, but the shock was still as strong as ever..

It really puts things into perspective I think .. you meet people you enjoy and then you lose touch and one day they are gone forever.. it really makes me want to try harder to keep the bonds I have ..

Suicide requires both extreme cowardice and extreme bravery .. it’s the easiest way out but the hardest path to take .. for someone to be driven to that point means something.. at least he’s found peace from whatever tormented him so strongly .. I think we (his friends and family) can all say we wish we could have helped him..

Doug will be missed .. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend

These are my meaningless words ..

- Lonnie

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I’ve written about WaTunes before back when I was evaluating their free service as an alternative to TuneCore, After spending some time using the service, and after having been with TuneCore since 2007, I decided to write up a comparison of the two services .. so check that out if you’re not familiar with either.

Recently the guys over at WaTunes added AmazonMP3 to the list of stores you get your music included in as part of their VIP offering, which is minimal in price especially when you consider the competiton .. This doesn’t mean that the “free” users are out in the cold, you have the option to opt-in for a $10 fee per album to get your content in Amazon.

But wait .. there’s more!

In addition to AmazonMP3, it seems the WaTunes guys have worked with amazon to offer you the ability to sell physical cd’s via their “On Demand” service ..  which is included free for VIP users, and as part of the $10 “opt-in” fee that you pay for AmazonMP3 ..

So this cool up and coming distribution channel just got cooler in my opinion!

If you’d like to read WaTunes’ news article on this, head on over here!

Ps. Other than the fact I’m a user of both TuneCore and WaTunes music services, I’m not otherwise affiliated with either.

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