J. Dan Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 This came up a while ago in a thread about what the future holds, and if thought of this then, and have decided to do it. A lot of keeping ahead of other bands and being relevant with younger crowds is all about pushing the envelope with the show and the technology - not just standing there playing the same songs 1000 other bands are playing with nothing new to offer. There's the tribute thing, and outfits, lighting, video, theme, etc....we're working on all that....but here's my plan: So I'm compiling info on all the songs in our list. The plan is to have a page the crowd can hit from a mobile device that would give info on the song we are currently playing. So they hit it and it shows song title, artist, year...they could dig in more and see lyrics, wiki page, chart position, etc. When we go to the next song, they would just need to refresh, and it would all be updated. If they want to go back or forward in our set, they could, but at any point, refresh and land on the current song. How? One single page designed to display song data on a mobile device. On stage, I have an iPad online with a secure back-end web page. The set list is loaded as hyperlinks. I just click the song as we go through them and it sets a server variable to make that the set position when they refresh. So far all of this is very easy to do. Now, to make it interactive, they could "like" a song, maybe rate it, or even post comments that we could read after the show. How's THAT for seeing how songs are received by your audience? So far all just a thought, but nothing I couldn't do. Thoughts? Ideas? Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Ideally a patch change or controller would advance the song...but I don't know how to do that, and clicking is easy. Also, wish is could automatically make their browsers refresh when we change songs....but again, if they're there, they know when the song changes. Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EscapeRocks Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Very cool!! We started doing this on a small scale. Anyone with a mobile device can watch the same video bring displayed on our screens. We haven't pushed other info yet, but are working on that. Our video show runs off a high horsepower MSI laptop running a dedicated video show software package. We can control it from iPad or iPhone over a wifi we setup at the shows. We've been working on QRcodes that will launch the show's video site. All in all, the interactive nature of this has been very popular with our audiences. We've had QRcodes for awhile and it has helped people find us online after discovering us at a venue. We love doing this, and the feedback we get, as a tribute band, is we're giving the full concert experience. David Gig Rig:Depends on the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted January 31, 2014 Author Share Posted January 31, 2014 Very cool!! We started doing this on a small scale. Anyone with a mobile device can watch the same video bring displayed on our screens. We haven't pushed other info yet, but are working on that. Our video show runs off a high horsepower MSI laptop running a dedicated video show software package. We can control it from iPad or iPhone over a wifi we setup at the shows. We've been working on QRcodes that will launch the show's video site. All in all, the interactive nature of this has been very popular with our audiences. We've had QRcodes for awhile and it has helped people find us online after discovering us at a venue. We love doing this, and the feedback we get, as a tribute band, is we're giving the full concert experience. David - nice hearing that one of the people I respect most on here is showing some success! Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Jx Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I think, if I were doing this, I wouldn't force the user to refresh to see the new song. There are multiple ways to have the page update automatically The old school way is to use a Meta refresh tag. You could also use AJAX calls to the backend for refreshes, or you could use something like SignalR which is a push technology. I think it's a great idea and if you don't mind, I might copy the idea for my band. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted January 31, 2014 Author Share Posted January 31, 2014 I think it's a great idea and if you don't mind, I might copy the idea for my band. Go for it, that's partially why I posted it! Just don't bring your show to St. Louis! Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EscapeRocks Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 David - nice hearing that one of the people I respect most on here is showing some success! Likewise, my brother in arms. David Gig Rig:Depends on the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Jx Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 If you want to share javascript/backend code, let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EscapeRocks Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 One thing I want to mention. I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir, so this is aimed at those who may be just starting out. All of these show enhancements are great, but you had better be bringing the music before you go over the top with these things. We didn't introduce videos, etc until a couple years ago, after our music was solid. Sorry for the thread tangent. I was just mentoring some kids today, who will be good, but were talking all these show ideas before they had music ready. David Gig Rig:Depends on the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EscapeRocks Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 If you want to share javascript/backend code, let me know. Thanks Eric, I'll keep this in mind. My bass player/über geek is our media guy If we get stuck I may hit you up. David Gig Rig:Depends on the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Jx Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I think I would make entry to the page contingent on the end-user "liking" the band's facebook page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 I think I would make entry to the page contingent on the end-user "liking" the band's facebook page. We had talked about that, but decided against because if somebody is just kind of curious, that little bit might be enough to stop them from checking it out. If they get engaged in it and like it, then you have them a bit more roped in. I thought of prompting them to like our page upon EXITING the page. Anyway, as long as I'm not actively pushing content, but instead having them refresh themselves, there shouldn't be any javascript and I plan on keeping the mobile device page very simple and low burden on the device, as well as low bandwidth. Everything will be handled on the server using php/MySQL. In fact, rather than setting a server variable, I think I'll just use a data field to store current song position. Have a setlist table with all the song ID's and set position (i.e. set 1, song 5). That just joins by song ID to the songlist table which contains all the info. So, the web page is build on the server depending on song ID. If none is sent, default is the current one stored (by me clicking it on my iPad). If they scroll back through the set list, you can send the songID variable to the server to tell it which one to display. Pretty simple. Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Jx Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 Everything will be handled on the server using php/MySQL. PHP is the Nickleback of programming languages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 Everything will be handled on the server using php/MySQL. PHP is the Nickleback of programming languages. It's cheap. Back when I did a web site with ASP and Access (early 2000's) the cheapest hosting was around $150/yr. a hosting site with php/MySQL runs about $25/yr. For that, I just looked at some online references and figured out how to do the same stuff in php. It's really all basically the same. Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted February 2, 2014 Author Share Posted February 2, 2014 OK, hopefully quick question.... I want to put a link (icon) they can click to post to their status that they are listening to XYZ by ABC performend by US at YadaYada Bar. I can easily fill in the details, but how do you create a link to post that? I searched but all the results are facebook internal related, not posting a status on the user's page from another site. Also, how to make the band and bar hyperlinks in their stantus to the respectives sites - well not hyperlinks, but tags. So my band is tagged and the bar is tagged in the update. I want them to click something on my page that posts their status of listening to that song, tag my page, tag the bar page. I know how to populate all the info on the server, don't know what that link needs to look like. Help? Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DulceLabs.com Posted February 2, 2014 Share Posted February 2, 2014 OK, hopefully quick question.... I want to put a link (icon) they can click to post to their status that they are listening to XYZ by ABC performend by US at YadaYada Bar. I can easily fill in the details, but how do you create a link to post that? I searched but all the results are facebook internal related, not posting a status on the user's page from another site. Also, how to make the band and bar hyperlinks in their stantus to the respectives sites - well not hyperlinks, but tags. So my band is tagged and the bar is tagged in the update. I want them to click something on my page that posts their status of listening to that song, tag my page, tag the bar page. I know how to populate all the info on the server, don't know what that link needs to look like. Help? I think you need to get into the Facebook API and use plug-ins for this...Try this link.. the landing page may not be exactly what you need but poke around.. you may find something that you can use. Hope it helps.. sounds like cool project. http://developers.gigya.com/040_Demos/020_Social_Plugins/0355_Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Jx Posted February 2, 2014 Share Posted February 2, 2014 I'm not a facebook expert. However I think what you need is facebook's share functionality. You would need to create permanent URLs that serve as canonical references to a given song at a given place and time. And those would be what is "shared" to facebook. Facebook's spiders would crawl that page and look for open graph meta tags to determine how that post appears on the user's timeline. There are other ways to approach this by registering as a facebook app, but I believe the user will end up being prompted with a security confirmation screen that asks "this app wants the ability to post to your timeline". That adds friction to the process that you may not want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted February 2, 2014 Author Share Posted February 2, 2014 I think you need to get into the Facebook API and use plug-ins for this...Try this link.. the landing page may not be exactly what you need but poke around.. you may find something that you can use. Hope it helps.. sounds like cool project. http://developers.gigya.com/040_Demos/020_Social_Plugins/0355_Share I'm not a facebook expert. However I think what you need is facebook's share functionality. You would need to create permanent URLs that serve as canonical references to a given song at a given place and time. And those would be what is "shared" to facebook. Facebook's spiders would crawl that page and look for open graph meta tags to determine how that post appears on the user's timeline. There are other ways to approach this by registering as a facebook app, but I believe the user will end up being prompted with a security confirmation screen that asks "this app wants the ability to post to your timeline". That adds friction to the process that you may not want. The combination of these is exactly what I was looking for. I'll use the API to initiate the share, and a URL to our page to link to it. Not the same as a tag, but at least anybody seeing it can click through to our page. Only problem is that it doesn't seem like I can have links to both our page and the bar page. The spiders pick one. That's ok, I'll just do ours. I can still list the location in the body of the update. I'll keep digging through the API and maybe I can figure it out - basically, my initial idea was rather than a share, that it just be a text status update, and "tag" us and the bar. Either way, looks like there are lots of doable options to achieve the end result I'm looking for. Thanks! Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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