It's now time to bring together a world class team to help us do that! All these positions are location-irrelevant and totally flexible. You can work part time, from anywhere - even the beach, if you're lucky enough to have a beach :-). We're just looking for great people with a passion for amazing service.

Current Vacancies:

News Interns - Community & Social Media Manager - Customer Support Agents

**

News Interns [Interviewing in London UK or by Skype on 5 February 2010!]

Could you break the news? We're looking for brilliant writers who want to break into music journalism to contribute to our Global News Service, which starts on 8th February. Interviews are already set up in London for Friday 5th February so get in touch NOW if you'd like to be considered! This is an unpaid three month internship, after which renumeration will be offered.

We're focusing on the UK first, but are happy to hear from people in other territories too, for later in the year.

Click here for the full job description and application details: http://www.musbook.com/jobpost/256/

**

Community & Social Media Manager [apply as soon as possible - first interviews February 2010]

We're on the look out for a dynamic, highly driven individual with star quality, to take a pivotal and highly influential role at the centre of the MusBook organization. With a deep love of music and social networking, you'll likely be a young graduate, self-motivated and entrepreneurial, and happy to work a three month part time internship before graduating to a fully paid role. You'll love everything about our mission, and want to be central to our success. You can work anywhere, anytime you want, and create your dream job from this exciting role...

Click here for the full job description and application details: http://www.musbook.com/jobpost/378/

**

Customer Service Agents [not actively recruiting until later in the year]

Whilst we've been in development, our customer service hasn't exactly been a model of efficiency... However as MusBook grows, we'll need to offer top notch rapid response email support to our users around the clock. We're currently recruiting for a part-time ustomer service assistant to help cover support for a couple of hours a week.

Later in the year, we'll also require customer support agents in Asia, Australasia and the Americas to complement our existing administration and development team in Australia and India and make sure that there is 24/7 service from MusBook.com. So feel free to send us your CV and we'll keep it on file.

Apply to any of these positions by emailing your CV to support [at] musbook [dot] com!

Make sure you include the job title and the word 'application' in the subject line.

This is Justin at MusBook Support.

As we're just launching MusBook 2.0 Beta this week, I know there will be a lot of people coming to the site for the first time. And as it's so new and exciting, it's also a little raw, and some people may run into difficulties...

We're here! If there's anything you don't like, don't understand, or want to know, then please don't hesitate to email support at musbook dot com. We're here around the clock - the MusBook team is in America, the UK, India and Australia, so there's always someone on duty to sort things out. From today, we promise an answer to all support enquiries within 48 hours (although obviously we try and get back to you more quickly).

More importantly, we need your feedback! We want to make MusBook into a world-class operation, and we really need your support as our baby starts to mature! So please, let us know what you think. Really! We act rapidly on all suggestions - sometimes as quickly as 48 hours... if you notice a bug, we'll try and fix it the same day.

Thanks so much for visiting MusBook, and we hope you enjoy your time here on the site!

Yours,

Justin Delleur, MusBook.com Support

support [at] musbook [dot] com

Hi Everybody!

So the new site is up! We hope you like it.

And now, the work really begins :)

We've just started our 'usability testing' process. Without going into to much detail, it's basically an extensive, ongoing analysis of how people use the site, what they need, want and expect, and how we can improve the site to best meet those needs.

It's not a process that ever really gets finished, at least not on a site like MusBook that will always be changing and expanding, but we do hope that by early January we will have reached a point where things will look really good, and MusBook will be a pleasure to use!

At that point, we'll start telling people about the site and making a real effort to take MusBook.com out to the world :)

In the meantime, enjoy the fast new site - notice how much quicker it is than the old version? - and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send us your feedback! We do respond incredibly quickly to all your suggestions, so however big or small your idea is, please send us an email (support at musbook dot com) - we REALLY appreciate your thoughts.

Yours in purple :)

- The MusBook Team

Well, our new design and server upgrade is FINISHED!

That's right, after several months of excruciating work, we're nearly ready to unveil a lovely new purple MusBook.com!

We hope to make the switchover within a few days. Before we do, we're moving forward fast (starting right now, Friday evening!) with a massive bug-testing / troubleshooting effort to get you a new, fast, professionally-designed MusBook just as soon as we feasibly can.

So we'll be in touch again next week.

Stay tuned!

- The MusBook Team

Well, the last two weeks at MusBook have been a manic focus on integrating our new design with our new server... and just about nothing else! Talk about one track minds... we're totally focused on that, and that alone.

If you've sharp eyes, you might detect the very first sneak peek of the new site attached to this blog post, but - without tempting the gods of fate by saying exactly when - the likelihood is that you'll see a lovely shiny new MusBook replacing this prototype site within the next 10 days or so.

But it's not just a facelift; we've gone through the entire site, sifting out all the unnecessary bits and creating a lean, mean social network machine that you'll find very easy to use, and FAST!

Now before you get too excited, it will still require a lot of testing and refining, and that's what we'll be doing over the next month or two, with a view to formally 'launching' early in the New Year. But we're now only a few days away from what will ultimately be the actual MusBook.com site.

Then we'll invite the world to come and have a look :)

Thanks for sticking with us in these final days of the prototype site... we really appreciate it.

Yours,

The MusBook Team (support [at] musbook [dot] com - all feedback gratefully appreciated!)

Hi Everyone!

BIG thank you to all you pioneers sticking with us as we move through the final stages of our pre-launch journey! We've faced some tough challenges, but with your help and feedback we've managed to successfully navigate our way through the hazardous maze of building a social network from scratch, and we hope to have the site finished and ready to take to the world by early in the New Year 2010!

As MusBook.com is not the product of a VC-funded silicon valley enterprise, but of a global team of musicians, we've had a tough challenge in learning what's necessary to conceive and create a project of MusBook's magnitude! But the great news is that over the past six months Peter and Simon have assembled a world class network of programmers and designers - as well as musicologists and business advisors - and we now have a strong, focused and highly resiliant team in Australia, India, the UK, and the USA, who are working flat out behind the scenes to bring you a world class site. Not long to wait now!

Here are the four things taking up most of our attention right now:

Site Speed

By far our biggest problem has been site speed. On a bad day, with many people using the site, it has been taking up to 20 seconds to load a page! Not good.

That's all about to change. We're in the final stages of testing a new set of dedicated servers, and we'll be transferring the site over in a matter of weeks. Optimization will follow, and you should see the results - or at least start to not notice the delays - within the next three weeks. No news is good news!

Design

It won't have escaped your attention that we haven't yet got a proper, professional design for the site. OK, perhaps we should have got that sorted earlier, but it's finally arrived, and our developers started preparation work today, getting ready to roll that out as soon as the new server is active. We'll have it implemented fully on our beta test site during the next fortnight, and you'll see it roll out on the actual MusBook.com site soon. What colour? Well, you'll have to wait and see...!!

ConSanFron

Whilst we're passionate about everything MusBook stands for, there's one idea in particular that's close to our hearts, and that's the Conservatoire Sans Frontiers... the music conservatorium without borders! We want to begin to assemble the world's music education resources so that access to the wisdom of the world's greatest music teachers and musicians is available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. We've finally got our hands on the first prototype of ConSanFron, and it won't be long before we roll this out to the site as well.

Big Secret Project

We might be working on something that could be so transformative to musicians and music lovers that we're not even allowed to tell you that we're working on it! If such a secret project exists, it could profoundly change the way people will look at their relationship with music performances, recordings, and research! Perhaps we'll be integrating it into MusBook in a big upgrade later in 2010!

Then again, perhaps we won't ;-)

Usability

Perhaps the most pressing and important task though, is to improve the usability of MusBook.com. This will start as soon as the new design and server are up. We'll be assembling musicians from all around the globe, both digitally and in person, to play with the site, and we'll study how they interact with the site, and how we can make it better and more intuitive.

This process starts in mid November, so if you're in either London (UK) or New York (USA) and would be happy to donate half an hour of your time (and we will ply you with the tea/coffee/beer of your choice!!)

***

We'll post another update in a week or two, but in the meantime, back to slaving over our hot computers.... ;)

As ever, we enormously appreciate your feedback: support (at) musbook (dot) com.

Yours,

-The MusBook Team

Hi all

What a difficult night/evening/afternoon/morning it's been here in Australia/India/England/the USA!

We've stabilized the problems that occurred (it was all related to the new RSS feed), and we'll get back to you again later once everything is fixed. But for now, please be aware of the following two faults:

1) the front page of MusBook is displaying an absurd amount of imported blogs from various orchestras, individuals etc.

2) If you've updated your profile, or if you've joined the site since 21th September, there may be problems with your profile displayed.

Our development team in India is working late into the evening to get this sorted, and we'll update you again in a few hours.

Other than these two issues, full service has been restored to the site and you can continue to enjoy MusBook.com as normal. Apologies for the downtime earlier - we think the site was only unavailable for around 15-20 minutes, so we hope it didn't cause you too much inconvenience.

Thanks for your patience. A site like this is so large and complex that it's not easy to get everything right first time. But with your support, we'll succeed.

More in a couple of hours.

Yours,

- The MusBook team.

We're currently experiencing a problem with the site, as you may be aware.

Don't worry, but bear with us. These things happen. We're going to need a few minutes to sort this out.

We'll issue an update on the blog within the next hour.

- The MusBook Team

Well, we finally have RSS! What this means is that from today, if you've filled in the 'social media' section of your profile information, then your external blog posts and podcasts (and, on your profile page, your Twitter status) will syndicate directly to MusBook.com. All you have to do to make this happen is... NOTHING!

That's right... once you've copied your blog feed into your account then it's all automatic; without having to lift a finger, your work - be it music or words - will be injected straight into the growing MusBook.com community. It's terrifically exciting, because once we have thousands of musicians and music organizations from around the world signed up to the site, there'll be a constant self-renewing stream of exciting new music and musical material for you to enjoy. It's going to be amazing.

For musicians and arts organizations, this will be an unparalleled opportunity to connect your content directly with the global music community. And for music lovers, well... the best-ever direct access to musical work from everywhere, regardless of where you are! The world became a global village some time ago... it's finally time for the world of music to catch up ;)

**

Pictures

Although we don't yet have pictures coming in from external RSS feeds, you'll now see pictures from anything posted directly on the site, such as job listings, blog posts, and products. We'll also be introducing a lot more colour to the site soon, with many more icons on the front page feed so that you can see at a glance who is posting what. It'll be more interesting to look at too.

**

Filtering

Well the big question now is what will happen when thousands of blogs and podcasts are syndicating to the site every day...  the reality is that the information is never going to stop, so to prevent us all from getting overwhelmed, we're going to have to start working on sophisticated filter systems that get you the information you are interested in, and filter out the things you're not interested in. An even bigger challenge: we have to manage to do this whilst at the same time maintaining a pure user-driven meritocracy that protects traditions and eschews fads, with none of the over-hierarchical problems of the old music industry.

We won't get it right first time (in fact it's likely we'll fail dismally the first time, but that's OK!), but with your help, we'll do our best. Ideas always very welcome,. ideally on this blog, or in confidence to support @ musbook.com. We really do react very fast to brilliant suggestions. If there's something we should be doing and you can see it and we can't, pleeeeeeeeeease tell us!

Thanks for listening! and enjoy the new tsunami of music coming your way :)

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hello Everyone,

Well, this is the final week where you will find the front page of MusBook to be moderately boring! ... We've finally taken delivery of the new functionality on our test site, and we'll be stress testing it over the weekend whilst our development team in India take a well earned break for Puja day!

We'll be back on Tuesday, fixing any last minute bugs and tweaks, and then hope to get the RSS out on the site by the end of the week.

From then on, you'll be able to synchronize you blogs, podcasts and vodcasts from external sites, so that they pop up on your MusBook profile (and indeed on the front page feed as well, so that you can reach out to the whole music community - great publicty!)

Obviously, as the flood of users who will start to join MusBook over the next week or two start to add their content, we'll have need for a filter system so that you get the information that interests you (and so that the front page feed doesn't refresh itself with a hundred new feeds every second!). But we'll introduce all those things gradually.

Similarly, the RSS functionality will have many refinements and improvements that will need to be made, so don't hesitate to let us know what we can do to improve your experience, and we'll get it sorted as soon as we can!

In preparation for the new RSS...

Log in, click 'edit profile information', anc check your 'social media' section. There, you can add your blog or podcast feed. It's usually a long web address ending with either .xml or .rss.

Any questions? Just leave a note on this blog and we'll be pleased to help!

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hi Everyone!

Classical Music Jobs

We've upgraded the 'Classical Music Jobs' section of the site. Jobs now expire after their closing date, and you can also limit the listings displayed to just one country, so that you can filter out all the jobs that aren't based in your country.

There's probably still plenty we need to change, but we won't find out exactly what until we start the user testing process in a few weeks. So if there's anything blindingly obvious that we've missed, please let us know and we'll fix it.

Twitter

We've now, with some limitations, reinstalled the twitter compatibility to your profiles. Again, we'd love to know what you think.

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hi Everyone

We just wanted to let you know that we've temporarily taken our integration with Twitter offline. Reason being, our new maxim is perfecting what we have, rather than introducing more and more features!

We'll bring the Twitter facility back, but only once we've cleaned up the MusBook status system, and worked out the best ways of combining it (feedback always welcome!) - whether it should reflect Twitter status, provide MusBook-specific status for users, or even something entirely different, like relay what you're listening too. In it's current form, it was updating the MusBook status with your Twitter status, but not doing the same in reverse, which wasn't really very good.

Anyway, we could be a few weeks with that. But be assured it's on the list.

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hello Everyone... What do you think about the front page of MusBook.com?

We've taken away the preview panel and the welcome message that was there before. It's a kind of tacet acknowledgement that - unlike most Classical (and Jazz, and Contemporary!) Music sites on the web... MusBook is ultimately not about editorial, but about aggregation.

New users will eventually get some kind of welcome message the first time they log in (it will appear above the feed, where the preview panel used to be) to tell them what to do, so don't worry about that. We want to know what it looks like to you if you've been using MusBook for a little while now, and you know how things work.

Do you like it? Hate it? - we do have the option of putting it back to where it was, but this layout just might be a little more effective.

Coming up later this week...

At the moment, the front page feed shows only things that people actually post to the site. And as not very many people know about MusBook yet, that's why it's not very busy at the moment. But imagine if it instead showed every single new blog post, podcast, or live music event from the websites of every orchestra, venue, artist in the world.....    [filterable, of course, so it doesn't get too busy]

...well that's going to happen starting about a week from now! If you've been a member of the new MusBook site for a while, you might not have seen this, but in your account (click 'edit profile information') there's a new page called 'Social Media'. There, you can just type in the address of your blog, podcast or vodcast feed, and it will be syndicated directly to MusBook.com! Rather than having to go out there and promote your feed to people, it just gets sucked into the MusBook ecosystem, and anyone using the MusBook.com site will be able to see your work, share it, comment on it, and ultimately... follow it back to your MusBook profile, and then to your external website!

If we get this right, it could be a whole new way of reaching out to each other - whether as a musician trying to get your work seen and heard, to an established music group or organization as part of your overall marketing plan, or most importantly a music lover who wants to keep track of many different performers and venues.

We really need your feedback. Please, please let us know if this benefits you, or if you don't like it, or what we can change. The easiest way is just to leave a comment on this blog post, but you can also contact us privately at support (at) musbook (dot) com.

Thank you for listening!

Yours,

- The MusBook Team

Hello Everyone!

Well, we're less than a week away from having fully-fledged RSS facilities on MusBook.com, which means less than a week until the MusBook front page becomes a neverending flow of new blogs, news, videos, podcasts, live streams, and .... well anything and everything in the online world of Classical, Jazz and Contemporary music! All musicians will have to do is create, all listeners will have to do is consume. We'll do the rest!

In the meantime, we've been doing a little housekeeping.

You'll notice some small changes like the hyperlinks on the front page boxes(in the right and left hand columns), so that you can click to jump straight to your favourite section of the site, without having to use the main navigation bar.

On the 'people' page, you can see at a glance who plays which instrument, because there are now cute little icons (like on the music teacher map) that show you what people play!

We've also made a load of tiny little changes that you won't notice - cleaning up the sign up process, changing the wording on some buttons, making descriptions clearer, eliminating a couple of style bugs, and other such things that sound trivial, but if they're wrong, can really get in the way of a good user experience.

In the near future...

We've got the first draft of our development plan for the next 3-6 months through, and it's looking really exciting. We're approaching the time when the site will suddenly take on a life of its own (hopefully as soon as the RSS functionality and Consanfron are ready, you'll see the difference in a BIG way!). And then, the site will become more and more useful, because of course, the more people there are using a network, the more interesting it comes...

More in a day or two....!

Yours,

The MusBook Team

Hi Everyone!

From today onwards, we'll be creating  a new release of the MusBook.com site every weekday. Sometimes it'll be a very minor release - just a few bugs for example - and other days it will be a major release, like a big new feature or set of tools.

This will happen at 1am PST / 5am EST / 10am UK time / 2.30pm IST / 7pm Melbourne time each day.

We'll generally write a blog post within an hour or two of the update if there's anything notable to tell you about!

As we grow, we're introducing new ways of working - as well as security and backup procedures - that will make the site better and better. You'll see increased stability from today - we're moving fast towards a kind of beta state where you shouldn't be seeing many errors on the site any more. If you do - please let us know, and we'll fix them immediately!

We're also working on improving the site performance, and planning the next few months of development including a complete visual redesign - your feedback as always would be gratefully received! support [at] musbook [dot] com

Yours,

-The MusBook Team

 Hi Everyone!

Well, you might have noticed that the past couple of days have seen an explosion of visitors and new members of the site, and we're excited to welcome many new people here to MusBook.com!

But this is just the beginning of the beginning of the beginning. There's SO much to do!

Social Media - YOUR blogs, podcasts, and video webcasts...

Today, we uploaded something really small that you won't have noticed. But it's REALLY important. If you go into the 'edit profile information' link in your profile you'll now see a 'SOCIAL MEDIA' tab, with four boxes. All you need to do is add the RSS feed of your blog (could also be an XML feed).

Then, this will happen...

At some point in the next few days, all the blogs, twitter and podcast links that you've added will appear across the MusBook site! - Whether you're a musician sending out your latest music clips, or a music writer blogging to the world, you'll no longer have to rely on your own audience... your work will be sucked into the MusBook ecosystem, and thousands of people will be able to see your work here on MusBook.com!

Better than that, as people share, 'like', or add stars to your videos, blog posts and music tracks, they'll ascend through the different sections of MusBook.com and get seen by more and more people... yes, that's right, for the first time, we'll all be able to forget about promoting our work and just go and make great stuff! It will all just happen automatically.

So... click on 'Edit Profile Information' (it's under 'My Profile, top left near the home button), and add your blog/podcast feeds today... you could be amongst the very first musicians, composers and writers to be part of the MusBook.com world!

Yours excitedly,

The MusBook.com Team :)

 Hi Everyone!

We'll post a full update soon, but today and tomorrow are big troubleshooting days - rather than focusing on development of new features, we're zipping through a long list of tiny little tweaks and improvements that have been noted over the past week or so.

But the most obvious one is that the Music Teacher Map is starting to become full of sweet little icons!!! We will have the rest of the icons up by the end of the week, and then it will be the most gorgeous map, with little instruments all over the world showing where all the music teachers are!

If you're a music teacher, don't wait - sign up now!

More Soon!

Yours,

The MusBook Team :)

Hi Everyone!

We're delighted to announce that the first prototype of Music Teachers' Map is now available!

http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

This global map of teachers will allow anyone to scroll to their area, see at a glance all the teachers nearby who teach a specific instrument, then get in contact and arrange a trial lesson. Because the map links through to MusBook profiles, it will allow prospective teachers and students to get to know each other in advance of meeting, vastly improving the chance of finding a teacher who really works for you.

Plus, it's a fantastic reputation-building tool; existing students can leave testimonials for teachers, and later next week we'll offer a much more comprehensive 'teaching' page that will display all your teaching philosophies, results, qualifications etc. etc. etc. -- directly from your profile.

We'll also be introducing all the icons soon, so you'll be able to see musical instruments represent music teachers visually on the world map!

Please check it out, and let us know your feedback: http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

Yours,

The MusBook Team

Hi everybody!

Profile Page Widgets

Our development continues apace. Today, we're pleased to introduce Profile Widgets -- when you click on a user's profile, if they have entered events into the calendar, or put any products for sale in the shop, added videos, or uploaded recordings to MusBook.com, you'll be able to see them on the right hand side of their profile page.

This is a great way of promoting things that you'd like other users to see or hear. If you're a musician, include your latest recordings... if you're a music lover, draw your friends' attention to the videos that most inspire you!

Needless to say, this is just the start -- in the near future, you'll be able to do all sorts of other things with your data (and indeed share the widgets on other sites).

Front Page update

We've replaced the old drop-down selection boxes with a smart rotating panel that shows you all the latest new high profile content on our site. Starting, of course, with the great new MusBook TV (more on that below). Just click on the image to go straight to the content you want to see.

We'll be updating the front page panel every couple of days with interesting new features, so don't forget to check in regularly!

MusBook TV

We'll introduce a comprehensive TV platform in a month or two, but for now, we wanted to get MusBook TV off the ground, so we've updated the TV page and... there it is! Our great new channel can be watched 'as is' like a normal TV channel, or you can click 'on-demand' if you want to see our whole archive.

Enjoy!

Justin @ MusBook.com Support

Hello!

New Music Page and Shop

Well, you might have noticed that our Music and Shop sections came online today for the first time. Don't get excited! They're not very good yet. Everything works, at least, we think it does, but some sections are yet to be added, and you might well run into the odd bug or two.

For the rest of this week, we'll be honing and tweaking, gradually improving everything, and basically giving the site a really hard time!

As ever, your comments are very very welcome. support [at] musbook [dot] com is how to reach us!

Upload Your Photos

That's right, we've finally got the photo album functionality that you requested. If you've done a great concert recently, and you want to share your pics with everyone who was there (and indeed anyone who wasn't!), then all you need to do is click 'Photos' in the 'My Tools' menu. We'll be adding some easy-to-access links to this later in the week, but just so you know, it's there and ready to be used!

Add Content

That's what this site is all about, so if you've been finding it a bit hard to work out where to click to add things, then worry no longer! There's a great little 'add content' dropdown on the right hand side of the menu, which will allow you to add a job listing, a blog post, an event, or a new product... in just a single click! As we add more services like that, you'll be able to reach them from this useful little submenu in just one click.

In fact, you should really be able to add a photo album that way shouldn't you? I'll go and suggest that to the developers right now!

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook Support