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What is the New Gurbani Media Center? Here at SikhNet we went back to the drawing board to completely re-envision accessing and interacting with our extensive Gurbani Audio library. We started by brainstorming all the features that we would want in an online Gurbani Media Center and have begun development on what we feel will be something of monumental value to the Sikh community. This is not just another basic Gurbani website. It is a truly unique and revolutionary system unlike anything available elsewhere, AND it's an open system. You can be part of creating and enlarging it! Gurbani is the foundation for all Sikhs and this new Gurbani Media Center website opens up Gurbani in a way that has never been done before. By merging Gurbani text and translations with the audio content you can do many things you have never been able to do before. This is something that we have talked about for over 8 years and is finally at a stage where we are actually looking to create this! This is NOT a software program that you
install on your computer or just a simple web audio player. This is a
full social audio media website for Gurbani. (Similar in some ways to www.Last.fm website) |
We need YOUR help to make
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- Contribute to the Library! Upload your Own Music - New open system design will allow you to upload multiple Gurbani audio files in a very dynamic way. Add all the info for your audio: where, when, who and even pictures, along with a fast way to link the Gurbani text data with the shabd. Then the SikhNet team will review it and publish it for you. This opens up the system so you and your friends can contribute Gurbani to the "master" online database. Also because Gurbani Audio is being created all over the world all the time, we want to allow anyone to be able to contribute to the library creating a dynamic pool of new music.
- Playlists - Create lots of custom playlists with specific tracks of your choice and order them any way you like. Then share them with other people on your personal profile.
Gurbani data pulled in from SikhiToTheMax (STTM) Database
- Every audio file will automatically pull in all the Gurbani details
from STTM: Raag, SGGS Ang, Author (Guru/Saint/Bhagat/etc), Original
Gurmukhi Gurbani Text, English Translation, Spanish Translation,
Punjabi Translation (along with other future translations.) This data
can then be used to browse through shabads and organize/display content
in any way you choose. So you could view all shabads in a certain raag,
by a certain Guru, etc. Gurbani audio has never before been available
in a form that you could browse and access based on all its qualities
and attributes. In the future this will open up many new possibilities,
such as advanced learning materials.- Personal Radio Station - Most of us don't have a lot of time and we just want to select something to listen to while we work. But the challenge is how to have music that you really like. Now you can browse through the library and add Gurbani from a top level (rather then as individual files) by tags, musician names, genres, Gurbani Author, etc and then all the music that is under all those fields will be randomized into a customized personal radio playlist. Right now we have radio stations on SikhNet (General/Western/Classical/Simran - www.sikhnet.com/radio ) but that is limited to what SikhNet chooses to play. Now you can create your own radio stations and even share them if you like.
- Search - There is no standard spelling for Gurmukhi words and even Ragi names using English characters, so shabads are spelled many ways which makes it hard to search for what you want to find. To help with this there will be two ways to search: Basic search which has a type-ahead feature. So as you type each character a list of possible results will display as a dynamic drop down list. So if you type "harj" it might show "Bhai Harjinder Singh, Harjot Singh, Harjeet Singh, etc. The Second search method will allow you to refine your search results. So if you browse/search for "Simran" you could refine the results to specific musicians, genres, Gurus, etc. so that you can "drill down". This is particularly useful when you have search results of thousands of audio files.
- Gurbani Text Integration - A big part of the Gurbani Media Center 2.0 is the custom flash audio player which will have a slide out "Lyrics" window to display the actual Gurbani text as the music plays. You can display: Original Gurmukhi Gurbani Text, English Translation, Spanish Translation and Transliteration (so that you can recite the Gurbani if you don't know how to read Gurmukhi). You can even customize and save your preferences so that any time you are listening to a shabad you will see your preferred Gurbani text options just the way you want it.
- Profile Pages - For each Musician, Album, Author (Guru, Bhagat, etc) and Website User there will be a profile page. The most common will be musician profiles which will have pictures of the musician, their music, bios, links to related websites/pages, a list of similar/related musicians and tags for this musician. This will be great for musicians who are not as well known so that they have their own mini "home page" that can help promote their music and things that they do. User profiles will show your and other users' listening tastes. What musicians they like, what music they like and other users who have similar musical tastes. You can also view shared playlists that they you and others have created, see what's popular and most highly rated and more. This allows for a lot of exploration and interaction. It makes it a unique Gurbani Social Network where you can interact with other people with similar musical tastes.
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All Gurbani Tagged - Browse and explore Gurbani in many different ways. Files will be tagged with all different kinds of descriptors to enable you to easily browse and search the music. For example music could be tagged, Meditative, Raag, AKJ, Classical, Energetic, Morning, Evening, Simran, Katha, Female Vocals, and many more...
- RSS Feeds - For all content types (tags/genres/artists/etc) there will be a unique rss feed which will enable you to automatically be notified of, and/or download the latest music that is posted. So if I am interested in, say, "Classical Raag" or "Bhai Hari Singh" I might add the rss feed for that tag to iTunes or any other podcast/mp3 player software I'm using and it will automagically download and copy to my player existing and new tracks that are added.
- Pull Gurbani Audio into other applications and websites - Easily copy some html code that will display either a link or an actual flash audio player on any website. What's cool about this is that it will enable you to dynamically display Gurbani based on any of the fields such as: Siri Guru Granth Sahib Page, Raag, Author, Musician, ShabadID.
Example 1 - Daily Hukamnama - Every day you could read the hukam and next to it or at the bottom you could listen to lots of different musical versions of it.
Example 2 - SikhiToTheMax - Any website that displays Gurbani text could dynamically display all the Gurbani audio along with it. As we add new Gurbani it will show up automatically.
Example 3 - Educational - Any website that has information about specific banis, information about our Gurus can have dynamicly updated audio content related to it.
- The above list is just some of the features that are planned....
In the past Gurbani audio hasn't been organized in any way that is easy to mix, search, browse and save. By having all this data for the Gurbani and by making it open and accessible we hope to open a whole new door on Gurbani for everyone.
In the near future we plan to have mobile applications to listen to your personalized Gurbani Radio Station and Playlists on-the-go on your cell phone along with integration with other yet to be developed applications.
This will be a Master Gurbani Audio "Database" that will be able to be referenced by external websites and allow lots of collaboration. SikhNet Gurbani Media Center 2.0 promises to be BIG within the Sikh community worldwide.
The new Gurbani Media Center 2.0 is slated for unveiling later this summer with your financial support!.
