blog.maestro.fm

Random user:

“Yo, Maestro guys, seriously, you need to make this easier to use. And give me some more recommendations.”

Another random user:

“Yea, agreed! Oh, and make it a little prettier too if you could, I like pretty websites.”

Yet another random:

“I can’t figure out how to use searching on this site either. I bet there’s sooo much stuff I don’t even know about, if only I knew how to look for it! Make fix-y.”

Ok ok ok, alright, you spoke and we listened.  Well, at first we tried to ignore you, there’s a lot going on that we have been hard at work at!  Maybe ‘ignored’ is a bad word, let’s say ‘postponed official recognition of.’ That sounds better. But your feedback kept coming, and somewhere along the line in the past we promised that we would listen to all your feedback and base what we build on what you want. Behold the result…the new Maestro.fm 2.0!!

So, you say, what’s new?  Oh man, there’s so much new stuff, you’re going to love it, I just know it in my tiny little heart. Let’s see…

• Recommended playlists as you listen
• Find playlists for your favorite artists
• Easier to filter through your collection
• See what other people are listening to
• Watch your playlists rankings
• Buy MP3s from other playlists
• Upload individual songs
• Upgraded message center

Wow, a cute little list of some of the new features and enhancements, how quaint! Well, apparently you loyal readers of ours don’t like to read immense blabbering blog entries, so you get what you wish for.

Random user:

“Yay! Look at all that new stuff, this is gonna’ take a bit of time to get into, but I can’t wait.  What does this all mean for ME anyway?”

I am just so glad you asked that Mr. Random User that we did not make up in any way, shape or form.  The goal of all these changes is to make Maestro easier for you to use for listening to your own music, and easier to use for finding and listening to new music.  Simple huh.  Well, there’s other stuff too, but spelling it all out would ruin some of the fun.  Because now, we want you telling your friends and sharing more playlists elsewhere.  That’s right, it’s only fair, don’t you agree?  Invite everyone you know to join Maestro! Or, simply send out playlists and music to your friends and they can listen away to their heart’s content. But you really want them to join, because when they put music on Maestro.fm, that means more music for you to listen to.

Hopefully, you’ll find Maestro.fm simpler to use, more aesthetically appeasing, and are pushed to navigate around the site, learning about all the crazy and wonderful little abilities that we have enabled. For instance, did you know that your playlists are ranked on the network, so you know how your work is stacking up?  Or how about that [insert unknown thing here], or that you can search simply by song lyrics (which we have for most songs on the network) and find music you’re looking for!  Uh huh, I bet you did.  Better jump into this thing quick and get into it, because there’s only more heading your way in the weeks to come.

Well it has taken longer than expected, but Maestro now has a Mac OS X version for our Maestro Connector. Thanks go to Marcus Zarra for helping us when we needed it most.

For those new to Maestro, the Connector lets you scan your music collection stored on your home Mac or PC, sync your iTunes playlists online and access everything remotely through Maestro.fm.

Once you scan your music collection with the Connector, you can manage playlists from anywhere, send them to friends or add them to your MySpace or Facebook profiles.

Check it out here if you’re a Mac user. Hope you like. Have fun.

So, a lot of you are probably wondering what’s been up with us, or maybe even asking who the heck are these guys anyway? Well, we’re a startup technology company in Atlanta, GA USA, and we’re up to a lot, so let’s start catching up! Oh yea, and we tend to spend a lot of time in NYC and San Francisco as well.

There is a small group of us working full time down here in Atlanta, developing and engineering the Maestro experience, not to mention playing around with music all day long. Our goal is to provide you, the user, with the ability to leave your music collection at home, and have full remote streaming management and access to this collection from any web browser. In addition, throw in the ability to explore and play with your friends’ music simultaneously, and you’ve got the start of what we’re doing here. Basically, you’re looking at just a little startup company with big dreams, who’s determined to change how people experience, interact with and discover music. We could go on all day about this, so maybe let’s just cut it off here…for now.

If you are reading this, you’re probably signed up as a Beta user of our website, which we launched about 2 months back, so thanks for the support. If not, what are you waiting for, join up now! The more people that hear about us and join Maestro, the better we are able to understand your wants and needs, and mold our software to fit your desires. Heck, we started this whole thing because we were all sick of the limited functionality available to us when we left our music at home, and experienced the same annoyances you probably go through too. Your voice is just as important as ours in moving Maestro forward.

Just keep in mind, we are still in early Beta stages. And let’s be honest, we’ve got a few issues we are well aware of, and probably a couple we aren’t. What do we know? We know we’ve got some usability and network timeout issues, and believe us, it’s a top priority and it’s getting much better, so thanks for sticking with us. We know we don’t work on Macs yet, and we’re working on that as well. What don’t we know? Well, if we could answer that, we would already know it, wouldn’t we? So let us know; toss us whatever feedback is on your mind in our forums, or directly at Maestro feedback.

Thanks again!

The Maestro Team