January 16, 2017 - 11:15 pm EST (GMT/UTC -5)

A nd now - probably later, the increasingly annual "State Of The Site" blog post, a sort of rundown of how the year went and the sorts of things that will (hopefully) be accomplished this year.

I'm commanded by one of my specialists to stay the hell in bed. Which I'm doing right now. I'm following the letter of the order if not the spirit. I'm sure I get far too much rest - since I don't do much else....

START AGAIN...

I'm most concerned about the remaining membership. Several years ago, we had 3700+ active members. Now we have 165 - down from 187 at Xmas. Last year, we were in the 260s at Xmas. I don't like where this has been going.

We have a Facebook page with over 2000 followers. The site itself is as new and different as I could convince Wayne to make it. We have more shows than we've had in quite some time. It's all free to hear. Is YouTube that much more convenient for locating dementia?

I know I can't string together many Mad Music Shows as I've been in rather poor health for...a couple of decades. Half a century ago, I was the picture of fitness. That doesn't help now though, does it? The question then becomes..."What do Wayne and I have to change about the site so we get membership again?"

Actually, I'd settle for just getting our regular participants back. They were all there until a couple of years ago, it seems. Now they're gone. I remember saying in one of these blogs that all we had left was our 'core membership'. And now we're losing that.

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In other news, 4 years of oligarchic fascism begins on Friday. The good news is that whenever we have a horrid/ignorant/evil leader that wasn't elected by the people (that happens more and more frequently now, it seems...), we get lots of great new political dementia about it all. The bad news is that this country becomes a joke to the rest of the world because they think we actually chose that misogynistic orange narcissist when he actually lost by millions of votes. Not to mention all the suffering that everyone in the U.S. who's not in the 1% will have to endure.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be going on about that sort of thing. After this month, it won't be long before we have a Stasi-like secret police force capturing free speech proponents like this old fart and sending us to the gulag - uh, I mean Gitmo. ...At least it's warm there.

Bearing all that in mind, I'm going to try very hard not to die or get killed/silenced and will record MMH-212 - "That's Fucked Up!" as soon as I feel up to it. I hope it's before Friday so I can tie it in to the utter horror awaiting all of us then. Because that's the thing that's really fucked up.

Did I mention the rule that it's ok to use bad language in your blog, but not the forums? I just like to remind what remains of our membership that from time to time.

I'm thinking that show 213 should be an all-request show. It's time to have another go at the backlog of requests I can't play because they don't fit this or that week's/month's theme. Yes, on that show, you'll get to hear things you actually voted for unlike what's happening elsewhere.

Your banners still work. They just can't move anymore. I could even use a few more for the shows to put above the playlists. I had all kinds of ideas for them, but as I'm always going on about, my Photoshop skills suck, so I couldn't make them.

With the site upgrade in place, one tends to forget the difficulties there were before it.

I hope he keeps at is as well. Where would all the free dementia come from if he didn't? It's not like I could buy it, hear it on the radio (HA!) or go to a Con or something. Barry still insists his shows be bought, though I know he needs to compile a comfortable retirement fund. I sure as hell could use one.

Hmm... We stopped having contests because of all the ballot stuffing and cheating in general. After the thing with 'James at War', it was just sensible to stop. I think we no longer have enough members to support a contest now, anyway.

Wayne will be MIA for a while due to the sort of issues I had to deal with a couple of decades ago, so I totally get it. He made quite an effort to make the big site update (that's what I forgot to include in the post) smartphone friendly. Maybe there's nothing more to be done on that front.

Only a few bugs remain, so there's less to be complained about. What's left to fix is the stuff that only I notice, and I don't think the site is all that difficult to navigate now, is it?

When Tom Rockwell created The FuMP 10 years ago, it suddenly became the place for artists to get their new stuff out there rather than here. We were always a static archive of said stuff. We still are; all of it's here.

I still think YouTube did more damage than any other single factor - that & having to stop allowing free downloads of copyrighted music, but perhaps it's the combination of all these things that caused it. I'm just glad Wayne's sticking with it. I'd have nothing interesting/productive to do otherwise.

I'm just guessing here, but I think we lost most people when Wayne stopped doing Mad Music Shows with requests and countdowns. No more song contests because he was too busy. I don't blame him for having work and family commitments but he kind of just disappeared. It took over a year for him to fix the flash banner problem I was having. A weekly show needs to be made weekly, and that is a lot of work, so when you get ill and can't put it out, you tend to lose listeners. (Again NOT YOUR FAULT) I have tried to help out where I can but I can only do so much. I was hoping Wayne would be more active again now that he is back. I think we lost more members when DJ Particle shut down her countdown show.  I have no idea how to get these members back. We certainly don't have the money to buy them back. I don't know if the FuMP has helped or hurt us because people can go there and download free songs. 

#1 reason people left this site:  No more free show downloads.

#2 The lawyers and the RIAA haven't helped either.

p.s. When the cable company and everyone else keeps raising their prices every year, I may not be able to afford internet service much longer. Maybe I can just stop buying groceries. Yeh that'll work!