Statistics look great now, thanks Chris. Also looks like the new recordings list is OK again, complete with artists' names.

OK, I've found how to access. Thanks for this important work, Chris.

As you mention, some pieces seem to have an unexpected success (something I have long noticed). Also, I find that during december there were about 600,000 downloads, but only 221 downloaders, which makes about 3,000 downloads per downloader ! According to my calculation, if I count 4 minutes as a mean per recording, each one must spend 8x24h00 days to listen those 3,000 tunes... Hence there are only 11 downloaders who downloads more than 100 tunes. As you wrote, there seems to be some robots who are pumping continuously the site. The most efficient one (65.49.37.163) downloaded 121,598 tunes, while there are only about 5,000 recordings. When you love, you don't count !

Well, finally we have to keep modest about the disemination of the site . How many real downloaders, that are people who brose the site, choose some tunes, donwload and listen them ? Apparently less than 200, so more or less as many as people registered as 'artists'. This is in line with the public we find in classical music concerts (at least in Europe): elderly people and younger people, most of them being musicians...

But this does not decrease the value of this site and the people who maintain and feed it ! Viva la musica !

Actually I currently process only the first 300 or so IP addresses I encounter. I did not want that right column to go on forever, and wanted to conserve some memory. It could mean that some power downloaders, and maybe many 'normal' listeners are not shown, and it certainly means that the numbers don't add up as they should. I'll see if I can display them all, or otherwise refine this by showing only the 300 or so BIGGEST downloaders.

Also, we should not assume that all these guys actually listen to the music. Mostly I think just steal them, for whatever reason best understood by themselves.

Indeed. Weird things happen on the internet. I've seen the Chopin Berceuse from my web site advertised as a "free ringtone" (at least it was free, they weren't trying to sell it for money). Not just a phrase or two, but the entire five minutes of it. I doubt that anyone is actually using it for that purpose.

Oh, most PS recordings are being misused as ringtones. These guys just don't care and grab everything they can get. My Iberia Evocacion seems to be very popular despite the nasty slip in the climax. But you never know that anyone isn't indeed using it. Myself, I have Mahler 8th for a ringtone. That will teach people trying to ring me

This topic reminds me of a remark made by the famous American humorist Mark Twain. He said: "There are three kinds of lies--lies, damned lies, and statistics."

In another related matter, I did see someplace on the Internet that my Catoire recordings were available for ring tones. What will they think of next? Maybe they could play the "Etude-fantastique" while attempting to decipher the intuitive icons, the settings, and "user friendly" features of the cell phone?

David

None of you ever said anything about the nice, new look of our site and forum. Chris put a lot of work into it. Looks great, doesn't it?

Yes Monica, I did notice (and liked very much) the new look. Thanks Chris!

The site's looking very smart.Good to hear the stats are back again.
Just one question.How do you find them?I'm sure they used to be at the bottom of the front page.
Something else I've always wondered about.Is there a link on the board index page to the front page?I haven't found one in the time I've been here and I'm thinking that people who find their way to the forums via a search engine might not realize that there's more here than just the forums.

We've (okay, Chris...) tried making a link to the home page, but couldn't do it.

To get to the stats:
1. Home page
2. About Piano Society
3. Recording Download Statistics

Thanks Monica, your a brick.
In the UK that's a good thing by the way, in case you're wondering. In the US too perhaps, I don't know.

Boy I'm getting old.

AFAIK there was never a link from the forum to the home page, and I did not try to make one.
What I tried is to make the banner on the forum a link to the forum index. That was only half successful (it works only when you click on the images) and then I lost interest.
But it's a good point, we should have link to the main page. I'll need to think about how to do that. Maybe the banner should link to the main page. Because that is what the text of the banner suggests.

Sorry, Charlie, but there was a link before. Although, it could have been on the old forum - I don't remember exactly.

Ohhhh, actually, here it means that I am fat! I like the song, though, Eddy. It's on my Pure Funk album and also on my Ipod "....letting it all hang out..."