Today we launched a Reputation system which is designed to keep Kompoz a free, safe, and happy place -- a place where musicians can gather, collaborate, and share ideas.  We believe that this reputation system will foster collaboration and help members -- old and new -- grow and nurture this amazing self-governed community.  

The reputation system will reward points based on actions, and the value of those actions to the community.  So for example, when a project owner accepts a track from another member, that other member's reputation will increase.  When a member "Likes" a project, every member who contributed to that project will get a bump in reputation.  

Reputation is therefore a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you. It is earned by being a good collaboration citizen, and it is lost by being evil. Some features of this site (such as creating projects, uploading tracks, etc.) require that you attain certain levels of reputation. New members start with a zero reputation (no reputation), but can quickly earn points (and thereby community trust) by taking specific positive actions. The more reputation you earn, the more privileges you gain.

A major component of this new system is an endorsement feature, which will allow a member to endorse another member. Endorsements will increase reputation. Endorsements by PLUS members carry the most weight.  But endorsements should be dispensed with care.  If you endorse members who are evil, abusive, or are later suspended, your own reputation may be negatively affected (or worse).  Endorsements are a way of informing the community -- specifically new members -- that you trust the people you endorse as collaborators.  

It's important to note that reputation is NOT a rating system.  It has nothing to do with musical ability, talent, or popularity.  Instead, it attempts to measure one's positive impact on the community by awarding reputation points for actions that are considered good and beneficial to all.

You can read more about the system, the actions that are rewarded, and the privileges on the Reputation FAQ.

I launched Kompoz 6 years ago (January 2007) with the goal of providing a free music collaboration platform for all people on this planet.  Some amazing projects have resulted, and a mind-blowing 185,789 tracks have been uploaded.  It has been a wild, wild ride.  

The ride is not at all over, but unfortunately the free ride is.  

Due to rising hosting and bandwidth costs -- and more directly, due to abuse by hackers and file-sharing spammers -- non-PLUS members will not longer be allowed to upload files to projects.  

I believe that this move will ultimately make for a better Kompoz.  It will provide for a safer, more productive collaboration platform for those who are truly here for the art, for the friendships, for the musical growth experiences, and for the music. I hope you will agree.

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Ironically, this comes at a time when I have begun working on Kompoz 2.0.  Kompoz 2.0 will bring many new features requested by members (e.g., inline track commenting, HTML5 audio players, desktop integration, chat, tighter user groups, better spam moderation, and more).  I will re-evaluate the decision to restrict uploads to PLUS members with Kompoz 2.0.  By the way, here's sneak peek at the new logo.

It has been some time, that we have kept this secret discussion,

until we get all the information and all the things set up,

for this Kompoz Gathering..

As you know we've been discuss it a few times
and I know there is some of you who really want to get this, just like we do to make this
"Kompoz - Get Together" to happen.

So finally I take my guts to ask our friend Darlene Pappalardo to brew this plan.

After almost a month discussion, this is the result…

We are going to make a Kompoz - Get Together

in Naples , West Coast , Miami, Florida, USA

in September 2013

The event going to be 3 Nights and 4 Days
The hotel is on Marco Island, in the city of Naples Fla

We offer you an option to pick which week

(2nd, 3rd)

The day will be : Thursday – Sunday

The first week of Sept is not so good because of a holiday call labor day, first Monday in Sept.

We try to get you the best price we can get,
Darlene has kindly helped to get all the information, and ask exceptions from some of her connections.

We know that some of you may like to have some options,
maybe you come alone, and maybe you're not gonna stay over because you live around there, so we make this options.

1. Kompoz Big Mac - US$ 510

Included:

-       1 Bedroom for 3 nights & 4 days stay in the Hotel
on Beach Club Of Marco, Marco Island, Florida USA

If you want to check the hotel out, here is the link   Beach Club Of Marco

It's a condo room so there will be a Microwave, small kitchen, etc
you can bring your family, and stay with you but you need to pay an additional charge if they want to join the party event below

-       Event & Party , and Jamming Charge,  include:

"Hello Kompozer Party"

at Darlene's House in Naples, Florida

We’re going to have A Pool Garden Party
with barbecue & booze

And there will be a small stage for Music Jam

"Kompozer Live Show"

in one of The Restaurant Cafe in Marco Island

who also own by Darlene’s relative that give us their place  to play live music on their stage.

"Kompoz Till We Meet Again"

in The Hotel Convention Room where we’re stay
and we also going to have a music Jam
so we're going to serve some booze and snacks

We will provide Water, soft drinks and beer n wine for the event.
The conference-jam room will be available all 4 days to meet and talk and play if you desire.

-       Simple Breakfast for 4 days

which is will be organized by Darlene and me for you every morning, you can have an option to have a Coffee Cubano or Indonesian Coffee :)

-       1 Gathering T-shirt / Polo Shirt  (picture will be updated)

2. Kompoz 2 In One  US$ 160 ++

This package if for them who want to share the 1st package (Kompoz Big Mac Package) with another Kompoz member,

Maybe there are some of you who want to come and want to share your room with another member so that US$ 160 going to be an additional charge + the Big Mac Package US$ 510 , so the total package will cost  US$ 670 for 2 members

3. Kompoz Single US$ 160

This package is for those who live around Miami and Florida
who don't wanna stay in the hotel .

We will also open a "Add On Jar"

If there is some of you who kindly want to give some extra support for the event, so we can make the event more "EPIC", and also for other things that can support our work on this gathering.
It doesn’t have to be money, maybe you want to help us with the food, or some stuff, or even some decorations stuff, we are open, for anything.

The price above DOES NOT Include:

1. Flight Tickets

2. Free Time expanses

3. Transportation

Notes:
You are welcome to stay longer at the Hotel and we will help you to get the same rate like what we have for the gathering, But me and Darlene are not going to be in charge after the gathering is done.

You can bring your own music instruments, it will help the others
who come outside USA who can not bring their instrument to play.

I hope we can make it come true, and we can get together,
and meet and play music together in person …

But whether you guys can make it or not we will still
hold the event regardless of the number of participants.

--------------------------------------------

Who those who want to join

"Kompoz - Get Together-

we need you to VOTE

for the best week for the event

2nd,  3rd week of September 2013

** we take off the 4th week because there is some people who can't come

--------------------------------------------

We need to make a list for how many people are going to come, so if you think and feel that there is a big opportunity you’re going to come and join us after you read this, we need you to tell us even if you’re not doing the payment yet.

We are open the registrations from February – July 2013

I will come from Indonesia to Florida earlier
to help Darlene to prepare and organize everything for the event.

We post this blog now to give you enough time to prepare yourself with everything for the gathering.

The latest date for the payment is on July 2013
because we have to book and arrange everything

If want to join please sent PM to:

me (Aliceleonz)
or Darlene Papalardo

with your package choice & and your T-shirt Size

This is not an official Kompoz Gathering,
just a few of us who decided to get together :)

Let's Get Together

The More The Merrier!!!

If there any questions, please free to ask ..

See You Soon !!!!!

Alice & Darlene

PS:
Special THANKS to Raf for making this awesome community,
we hope that you can join us

_________UPDATE__________

Feb 24th 2013:
1. There is only 2nd & 3rd week available , since there is some members who can not come at the 4th week.
2. We have approximately 15 people on the coming list

Apr 16th 2013
The fixed date for the gathering will be
Thursday to Sunday, September 19th - September 22nd 2013

Long overdue, the Kompoz Staff Picks has updated with 12 new collaborations featuring amazing musicians from all over the globe.  

Happy Thanksgiving to my American and Canadian brothers and sisters.  Peace and happiness to all.  

What started as a small issue affecting some instances of Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) in North Virginia became a full-blown outage of AWS in North Virginia. Major services, such as Reddit, Foursquare, Minecraft and Heroku, were down. 

Two of the primary Amazon services we use Elastic Computing Clould (EC2) and Relational Database Service (RDS) experienced "degraded performance" (Amazon's words).  We now know "degraded" means totally ph*ked in Amazon-speak!

Thanks for your patience!

So I ditched Project Folders a few months ago. 

Today, we are introducing Project Tags -- the right way to organize your project tracks.  Tags are labels, which you define within your projects.  You can then apply the tags to one or more tracks.  A track can have more than one tag.  Tags can be used for anything.  Here's a short video that demonstrates how to use tags within your projects.

We're happy to announce the official release of Kompoz Konnect -- an application for Mac OS X users.  Konnect allows you to upload files directly from your Mac to the Kompoz servers.  Drag-and-drop files from Finder to Konnect, then upload them in one step.  Konnect also allows you to download files from Kompoz to your Mac.  Features include:

• Upload files from your Mac quickly and easily.  
• Auto-detects track information, such as track type and suggested title. 
• Drag-and-drop from Finder to Konnect
• Download files from any project
• Download tracks from Kompoz, and add them directly into iTunes (including album art).
• Creates folders based on project names

I am happy to report that it was fixed yesterday.  And I'm even more happy to report that we didn't stop at just fixing the button -- we also added more cool Facebook sharing options.

The biggest change is that the Kompoz Player can now be embedded within your Facebook post.  As you can see in the screen cap to the right, Facebook will show the project art with a playhead overlaid.  When you press that, the project art is replaced by Kompoz audio player so that listeners can enjoy the song without leaving Facebook.

Actually, that's not the biggest change.  The biggest change is that embedding the player is automatic for any track.  You don't have to do anything special to make it work.  In fact, you don't even have to share from Kompoz to make it work.  You can simply update your Facebook status (like you might normally do) and include a link to a Kompoz track (must be the track detail page -- the page with the Kompoz player on it) in that status update.  Facebook and Kompoz will do the rest.

One more thing: we also added Facebook "Like" buttons throughout Kompoz.  You'll see them on the project pages and track pages (of course), on Finished (published) song pages, and on your blog pages. 

Read the full blog from: Engadget