Dear SEAMUS members,
I hope your fall is going well! We received a great number of submissions for the national conference at Georgia Southern University, and the ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commissioning Competition is quickly coming to a close with a large number of submissions. Thank you to everyone who submitted and best of luck to all the students!
I am writing to let you know about some changes to SEAMUSonline.org, and some exciting new benefits to your membership.
Changes to Membership Payments
First, I recently worked with a team of web developers to overhaul the entire membership payment system. This new system was implemented on November 4th, and will solve a number of issues that we have been facing with our payments system. The main problem has been that PayPal made changes to their system this past year, and that broke the communication between our payment system (which was only a year old), and their database. So payments made on PayPal via the recurring payments were not updating in our membership database. Previously, you will remember from your membership renewal reminder email that PayPal required that any new payments automatically set up recurring payments as the default, and each member had to manually remove this from her or his own account. The despite all the extra work needed to get this fixed, the good news about these changes is that this is no longer the case. Standard one-year payments are now the default. Currently, no recurring payment authorizations are in effect. This will make things work much more simply. You will still receive a reminder email each year when it is time to renew.
If you had recurring payments authorized for SEAMUS with PayPal, you will have recently received an email notification stating that these payments are no longer authorized. This simply means that you won’t be charged automatically next year, not that your current membership has been cancelled or is invalid. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused as we transition to the new system.
Introducing the Searchable Electroacoustic Repertoire Database!
Now for the very exciting news! SEAMUS will now be hosting a massive searchable database of electroacoustic music! This database will be open to the public, and we hope it will be a fantastic resource for performers, concert programmers, scholars, and listeners. You can now go to your SEAMUS profile and list your electroacoustic works, including lots of information about the materials needed to perform or program it, and links to more information about the piece. Media such as SoundCloud, Vimeo, and YouTube will automatically be embedded in your catalog. When people browse to your public SEAMUS profile, they will be able to see your catalog of works, along with whatever means of social media and communication you provide as a contact should they wish to reach you for performance. The best part of this is that anyone in the public will be able to visit the SEAMUS website and search the entire database of member works by keyword, duration, media type, and more!
Please note that SEAMUS is not publishing these works, nor are we hosting the media files. Media would be connected to sites such as SoundCloud, Vimeo, and YouTube. You retain all rights to your work, and can remove a piece from the database at any time. This is simply a way to promote your work in what we hope will soon be one of the greatest resources in electroacoustic music. Only SEAMUS members are able to update the catalog, as these works are connected to your member profile.
Catalog Your Works
We are looking to make the public launch of this database on Monday, November 23, 2015. We would love if when we announce the database publicly, it already contains the information for many, many member works! With over 435 active SEAMUS members in good standing, we can really start off with a huge number of pieces. So please log in to your SEAMUS profile and add those electroacoustic works to your catalog! You can do this by clicking the “Add a New Work” link in the sidebar. These will become immediately viewable to the public on your member profile, and will be searchable on 11/23 when we officially launch the database to the public.
Thanks for your continued support of SEAMUS, and for your patience during the membership payments system transition! I’d like to quickly acknowledge the incredible efforts of fellow board members Ryan Carter, who diligently managed all the PayPal issues with me, Keith Kirchoff, who co-created the repertoire database, and Scott Miller, whose leadership has been essential to all of these developments. The entire board is working hard to provide the members of SEAMUS with as much value for your membership as we can. Look forward to a number of new initiatives regarding SEAMUSonline.org coming soon. And I’ll follow up with more information regarding the database launch!
All best,
-Adam-
All best,
Adam Vidiksis
Director of Technological Development
SEAMUS