Sale ends Friday!
So, in a week or so The Singing News is again supposedly going to rope off part of their site from the public, with full access limited to subscribers. This move begs a question. Actually, a few of them.

1. Is it for real this time? They’ve been giving us deadlines for what, years now? Always very general, not specifying when or what they plan on doing. What with an explicit date given this time, and it being so near, I’d say it looks like they might really be planning on giving it a go this time.

2. What exactly does the site offer that would make a non-subscriber subscribe to get access to? This question was raised over at the SGLovers message board as well. The obvious answer is, well, nothing. There’s always the chance that they’re going to roll out something new to go along with the “subscribers only” policy. I sure hope so.

Got a couple more questions/observations about their site too, although they really don’t have anything to do with the upcoming change.

1. Why does any newsworthy event shut them down so quickly? When something big happens, like George Younce’s death for example, they immediately go dark until they slap up a simple text screen. Makes you think they’re running the site from a back room at their office. You can get a commercial web server for 20 bucks a month that would handle more users than they would ever see. Since it’s not money keeping them from having an adequate system, what is it? Ego? I dunno.

2. A Mac? They run their web server on a Mac? Most recent numbers I found indicate that Macs had 0.73% market share in the web server market. Less than 1%. Hey guys, there’s a reason for that, ya know? Maybe that’s why you choke whenever lots of people want to visit you. (As you consider becoming a “premium site”, you should carefully consider that last sentence: When most people want to visit you, you crash. Ponder the ramifications of that for a minute.)
- posted by SGM Blogger @ 10:47 PM or here to Email me