End-of-the year, hear hear

Hey there, friends of wikiloops :)

I hope you have spent happy holidays and are in that special "between the years" mode of relaxation - good time for music making in my books, but maybe also a good moment to sum up what has been happening on wikiloops in 2024 :)

I was tempted to name this post "the stuff you didn't notice", as I believe there is only a small number of people following the wikiloops blog, while most are occupied digging thru the music on this platform.
That's fine with me, in case you are one of those individuals, here is what 2024 was about, plus a bit of opinion by the owner of this club here.

Let me recollect some of the things that happened on wikiloops in 2024:

We discussed AI use

Probably one of the most active forum threads in 2024 dealt with the need for rules on the use of AI in music production on wikiloops, with a quite wide range of opinions. AI sure is the hot topic of the recent years, and breaking into more and more fields of art, including music generation.
I feel the past months have proven we do not need to be affraid of wikiloops being flooded with AI generated stuff - and the initial rule-set of "If you did not compose that, do not upload it here" do cover the limits of what goes on wikiloops accurately, since 2011.

We had a great 6th wikiloops meeting in summer 2024

Good memories! For those who happened to miss it and would love to get to watch some footage, that can be found here.
[img]https://wloops2.r.worldssl.net/galleries/8868/files/62e630a50d5ec036bf4de49abbedb726.jpg[/img]

We kept it fair

2024 was election year in the United States (to those from the "I missed it"-camp: wikiloops is based in germany, just sayin') - those election years always cause a bit of alert on my end, as they most often come with a higher demand to remind people of our "no politics on wikiloops" policy. There really was not much intervention needed this time around, so, I'd like to praise you all for keeping the campaigning off of wikiloops. That really shows some respect towards wikiloops community standards, and I appreciate that very much.

We updated to v16 of wikiloops

The new version was rolled out at the end of November, bringing on some new features like the frequency analysis on the player, and improving the interfaces looks with a new set of icons.
The member search page got a complete facelift, and I am yet waiting for someone who notices the band pages look a little less messy compared to before ;)
What you should not miss: This platform is developed as a collaborative effort, which includes community involvement.
The feedback from the community was once more of great help to smoothen out some initial bugs, and I hope those who took part in the process would confirm that we are in this together - if the community is missing a feature or reporting a bug, we'll take care of it.
I'm not sure how many communities still operate like this, this is not facebook, you know, this is one of those places that really don't exist any longer.

We gained a lot of new members & a load of new music

I'll offer the detailed annual stats some time in january - what I can say today is that wikiloops gained well over 12k new members in 2024, and more than 19 thousand new tracks were shared in the past twelve months. That does seem like a lot of music making to me!
The only thing that strikes me is why we did not reach a single soul in Nigeria in 2024 - just look at this map:
[img]https://wloops2.r.worldssl.net/blog/wikiloops_map_2024_2.png[/img]
On a more serious note, look, it's the world coming together for music, on wikiloops.com.
How cool is that?

We welcome the class of 2024

Before I'll end, and also to those who are still new to wikiloops:
Please do understand what you have gotten into here :)
This is one small dudes idea gone pretty big with the help of many.
That's why you do not need an ad-blocker on wikiloops,
and why we are not busy pushing product on your newsfeed.
Because we like to keep it focused on the fun and the music - sounds simple, but isn't.

We made it happen the independent way

I can't help but end thanking those who support wikiloops.
If there is anything cool about wikiloops,
you supporters are to praise for keeping the house of the loops going.
I sometimes wonder whether it is so apparent to new wikiloops users that being a wikiloops supporter is not equivalent to being a premium-payed customer.
What you "purchase" when supporting wikiloops goes beyond enjoying some extra features, you actually keep this place independent & functional.
Sincere thanks for that, we would not be here without you!


Let me add this ant-eater to the mix, just because I like it,
and to proove once and for good that I am not some AI bot:
[img]https://wloops2.r.worldssl.net/galleries/1/files/110225350002c8fd8644abc16dc925b2.jpg[/img]
May you have a good change-over into the new year &
lots of musical and other creative ideas for the new year!

from flowsdorf, germany with <3
Richard Kaiser
a.k.a Dick