Music Europe Alive
The media platform MEA Musik Europe Alive (the music forum was accessible under GO: MUSIK via CompuServe ) went online in January 1995 as the first German-language and interactive music forum and independent online music magazine on the Internet .
On June 1, 1996, the first live broadcast (live video) of a pop concert in Europe followed by a live interview (Fantastische Vier, Theaterhaus Stuttgart-Wangen) by Media Online Network MON via CompuServe was a European premiere in video streaming using Stream Works Client.
history
The first German-language music forum “MEA Musik Europe Alive” (the title was deliberately chosen to be multilingual) was presented at the end of 1994 as a concept for an interactive online music magazine and a broad one at the beginning of 1995 by the operator MON Media Online Network (operator and editor-in-chief (ViSdP): Ralph Kubick) Internet audience presented. The music forum was run independently, but tied to the technology and the platform of the provider (GO: Music via CompuServe). In the first year, however, a certain degree of exclusivity was guaranteed for the German-speaking area. Internet users could register as forum members and thus publish or access music contributions themselves. Furthermore, visitors and members were able to exchange ideas about the different musical styles in the respective forums and internet chats and to write messages or multimedia contributions. With this offer, the MEA music forum was already one of the pioneers in the emerging Web 2.0 movement in 1995 . The independent music forum had over 30,000 members and existed from 1995 to the beginning of 1999. One of the highlights of the music forum was the broadcast of the first European live concert on the Internet in 1996. The simultaneous access of 5000 users was a sensation at that time.
content
The platform offered visitors to the music forum the opportunity to download music news, hits, charts, tour dates, sound clips and users' own music compositions, music content and music contributions, or to upload their own contributions from the various media files. The offer ranged from MIDI, WAVE, WMA and later mp3 files with a playback length of 30 seconds for licensed music. Users could listen to music tracks and play the current music charts. Composers also put their own works in full length in the forum. Regular composers' competitions for MIDI and WAVE files were particularly popular. The current picture and photo contributions by artists and musicians that were made available by photo agencies and record labels also enjoyed great popularity.
editorial staff
The forum was journalistically prepared and maintained by so-called WizOps and Sysops (forum employees with system administration rights). The infrastructure, the so-called CIM manager and the Cosmo tool, a software system on CompuServe, were used. In the meantime, up to 30 forum employees and journalists were active in the music forum MEA, who were also appointed by the jury at composers' competitions.
The effort for running the forum was considerable, converting and uploading the image and music files initially required a considerable amount of time with an average of 14.4kb / s. In addition, the rights had to be individually requested from the music industry and approved for each music title and image title provided. Dealing with copyright law also required extensive measures and negotiations, as case law was constantly changing. Media Online Network negotiated a. a. with GEMA at this time about a uniform publication guidelines on CompuServe . Thanks to good editorial work, the music forum was able to avoid many disputes in the digital and multimedia area. For the editors, the flaming in the uploaded articles was a real challenge. Contributions and opinions could spark in a very short time and had to be moderated constantly.
The end of the music forum
With the end of CompuServe and the end of the music forum, a group of former Musikforum employees (SysOps) joined forces with Andrea Veyhle, Andreas Fischer and Markus Veyhle and started the online music magazine Vampster on May 2, 1999 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Musikmarkt (magazine), June 17, 1996, p. 30
- ↑ Edinburgh Napier University Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Popcorn Magazine, Issue No. 8, August 1996, p. 30
