Hi David... It looks like you're going to lose a LOT of hits on the website now because of wanting people to subscribe... I hope your site doesn't download spyware/adware to our PC's as well! It really was a lot better before, but I'll have to probably look at using your competitor's website now for venues. I guess you needed the money. Good Luck! Regards, Brad.

REPLY from David
Whilst I read what you wrote, I think to myself 'there's someone who placed no value on the W2S info because it was free.' Why do I say that? Because your comments are not reasonable in any other context:

1. The Forums remain free, and are so much better than before with a last-read marker, edit-screen, exclusive nicknames, and no need to enter your details every time. And yes, still free.

2. The listings remain free, and are now searchable by Suburb and Postcode - if you like the look of a venue, just click on the Comments button then open Whitepages (quick text version) from the link and look up the details yourself. And, if you don't like to spend less than one US dollar a week on supporting W2S, you can actually spend more than that in phone calls by calling the venues yourself (dumb, I know, but some people can't do their figures). And there's even more info on the listings now, each one with Voting (even available to non-subscribers) on whether the hosts' info is accurate, and every single gig has its own Comments Forum where even non-Subscribers can read feedback from actual singers. And even all these extras are free.

3. And now there are all the other things you can do on the site, and all you need to do is Sign In (otherwise you'd have to enter your email address every single time you did something); yes, and these new things are all also free. And even to Sign Up, all you need to supply is your email address (that you used to have to supply to post on the forums) and a password you choose yourself - and the site will even log you in automatically on each visit so you only ever have to do that the first time - so you actually have less work to do, not more.

So where's the justification for any gripe? You're getting more, and it's still free. But then I noticed that you're not in the old database, so it seems you never contributed a forum post, never sent any info about a venue, and were never interested enough to receive free News Emails. And that may also explain why you think there is some competitor to W2S - if it were that easy to build such a listing of karaoke venues, many would have done it (a few have tried - all have found it far more difficult than they had imagined).

Before I started the site nearly three years ago, I looked at what else was around - and realised that it's easy to build a one-off list; but the trick is building something that remains current - and that's like the difference between painting a picture of a man standing on the moon, and actually putting one there.

So you have Signed In and had a look at the website, and although you're getting more - and still for free, you also want for free the benefits that others are willingly paying a subscription? Hehe... do you now realise why I dubbed the non-subscribers as SWDs?

W2S is a website for singers who are serious about their karaoke. And, with the annual subscription price at around what many spend at a single night's karaoke, they don't even have to be that serious either.
Submitted by on 15-09-2005

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