Time to come out from behind the mask and try to give a personal face to Audiomatch.net

Hi, my name is Roy. I am currently a student at UNC-CH. I am responsible for the front-end work on Audiomatch.net, while Apu is responsible for all the backend work (which is the really impressive stuff, I'm just a coding monkey).

So onto what happened with Audiomatch ...

In short, we've had to temporarily shut down Audiomatch.net. This is because the mySQL server that powers the site is being overloaded (primarily from my other other project).

However, I did find a job this summer in Korea, and I will have some cash to spend on some new hardware for Audiomatch (~$110/month, along with the current $110 I pay for the frontend service). When i do purchase this hardware, we will roll out Audiomatch.net 2.0 (no release date, but "whenever we're done," which I want to ideally by late August). In essence, it will feature a rewritten plug-in (done), a better website interface (being worked on), and a simple API you can use to "pass through" all data to another website (will full documentation on how to use it; if you know how to upload PHP files, I will write a small script that will let you upload all data that gets sent to Audiomatch to your own website. What you do with that data is completely up to you.

We've also been passing around cool ideas that will make MP3 management a lot easier; the idea is to make Audiomatch.net a passive service that gives you great metadata on what you (and your friends listen to) while also "cleaning up" your collection of bad metadata (more on this later).

We've mentioned this before, but we will be requiring a small fee to use Audiomatch.net. We don't intend on living a life of luxury with this money; all we want to do is be able to purchase more hardware and expand the service.

We truly believe what we're doing is for your benefit; in the end Apu and I want to create a kickass service that makes our lives easier (you see? We're not _completely_ altruistic... most of these features are demands that we wanted personally ;)).

So what's going to happen? Well, we're going to leave AM shut off for the next few days; I work pretty much 12 hours a day (I teach SAT), so I want to really take a crack next weekend at restoring limited service (maybe just the images will come back).

For any comments on whether we would accept donations, I really dont' want to go there quite yet. I'm not quite comfortable accepting money for this service (which sucks right now). Furthermore, donating right now would not expedite the return of the service.

Please also refrain from posting hosting offers 8).

Thanks for your understanding, and I hope I can hear back from some of our more devoted fans on how to improve the service!