Server Problems

[steve]

Hi Folks,

It is with great regret we have had to temporarily withdraw the free full track downloads.

Unprecedented use of the Blood and Fire site meant that our servers, that were never designed to deal with such a high volume of traffic, could not cope and many of you received the error message saying capacity had been exceeded.

For those of you who are interested, the actual figures were around 300Mb an hour which equates to roughly 220Gb of data transfer a month! our current limit is 10Gb a month!!

We are currently working hard to find a solution to this issue and hopefully will have the tracks available for download again soon.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and patience.

Kind regards
Steve

[BMC]

Thanks for the explanation, Steve. Shows how popular B&F is (or how popular free downloads are? ).

[Curly Locks]

Going to have to significantly compress those files Steve, or stop the service, perhaps find someone who has a lot of spare space and bandwidth available. 10Gig was never going to be enough!

[giab]

jesus, 10 gig a month ?

[JV]

Let those free & full downloads go - short LQ samples are enough IMO.

[skunkride]

Forget the downloads just buy the CDs !!

[steve]

thank you...

just so you know... a-q confirmed 2.3Gb data transfer an hour on Tuesday evening!!!

Thats serious bandwidth usage... pretty scary!!!

...of course skunkride is right,, just buy the cds,, they are *all* superb

I should confess,, when I first started working for Blood and Fire hmm,,, maybe 4 years ago,, I knew nothing about reggae, dub and dancehall but over those 4 years I have slowly become a fan,,, discovering some of the most wonderful music Ive ever heard... Ive always loved music,, my collection is eclectic to say the least... but thought reggae stopped with Bob Marley... how wrong was I???

Blood and Fire changed my life!!!

I am forever indebted!!

on top of that,,, what a fabulous group of people you all are... you are the people that make the Blood and Fire site what it is,, without you were nothing!!!

thats one from the heart
Peace and love,,
Steve

[giab]

with an attitude you like that Steve, you'll go far
Respects

[Dubac]

Steve,

I'm sure this is a temporary thing with everyone trying to download everything in the first couple of days. But I also realise you can't afford to wait for the clamour to die down.

So why not just have 2 or 3 tracks available to download at any one time, and swap them around every month or so? Wouldn't that -

- instantly reduce traffic to around 10% of the previous levels;
- encourage occasional visitors to come back to the site more often to see what's on offer (rather than grab it all at once and then disappear);
- work better as a marketing tool by focusing people's attention on the small number of products that you are publicising (eg with the available downloads accompanied by a synopsis of the full CD); and
- give the regulars an ongoing poll opportunity "What we want for next month's downloads!"

Then if things improve over the coming months, you could start adding the back library of tracks so that the new ones add to rather than replace what was there before.

(ps if much of that doesn't make sense, it might be because I didn't get a chance to look at the downloads part of the site before it was suspended.)

Dubac

[steve]

Hi Dubac,

Top ideas mate,, been talking to Bob about them and we agree,, this could be a good way forward!!!

Nice one!
Steve

[tim p]

I'd be happy to help out with hosting one or two tracks for a month or so on my web space.

Let me know if your interested Steve and we can sort out the details. I've posted this as opposed to sending a PM as others may be able to do the same and spread the load a little bit.



Tim

[Anonymous]

I have some web space and I'm very happy to help but I'm not all that web-savvy so I don't know if its enough space for the job.

Send an email if interested though and we'll take it from there.

Respect

Baldy

[Mateo]

Hey there,

It's the first time i come here. I have 2 or 3 Cd from ur excellent label and i was hoping downloading some free mp3. It looks like it's not possible at all.
But there is a solution for u. A free solution called P2P !
U know it and maybe u're angry with that technic solution because maybe u loose money. But u can earn some too.
For example Linux distribution (3 files of 700 Mo each) are often release by P2P, so there is no cost of bandwith.
eMule or Bittorrent are free, with a GPL licence that let u use it for ur business for free.
P2P is a great tool for distribution, Think about it !

PS: sorry for my english but i'm french

[steve]

Hi Mateo

Thanks for the suggestion, it is something we are considering.

Now we have moved servers we hope to resume downloads soon.

The main reason we offer the free mp3s is so people get a chance to hear some of the tracks and hopefully think theyre great and want to buy the albums. The problem with p2p is one of making the listener aware there is a whole album available!

Hope this makes sense
Steve

[Mateo]

I understand, no problem.
Keep on going with Blood n' Fire !
Just a question, sorry for asking, are u the label boss (Steve Barrow) or "simply" webmaster ?
Thanks