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FAQs

  1. Can you feature my band?
  2. Yes, if I like your music. Send me an e-mail telling me about your group and include a MySpace link.
  3. Can I suggest a featured artist?
  4. Yes, please write in about any music that is worth listening to. Chances are other people will like it too. Just e-mail info@sadsteve.com with your suggestions.
  5. Is this legal? Will I get in trouble for downloading?
  6. Yes, the site is legal. Sad Steve works by presenting an index of mp3 files found all across the Internet. So, for example, if the website for John's California Surf Club hosts a Beach Boys song, that file is indexed and made available to the you, the user.

    No, you won't get in trouble for downloading. Sad Steve's traffic monitoring tools do not log users' IP addresses, physical addresses, e-mail adddress, or any of that garbage. In fact, there is no record anywhere in our system of what files are downloaded, how many times, or by who. So whether you download zero, ten, or a thousand files, nobody knows.
  7. How can I spread the word?
  8. The single best thing you can do to spread the word about Sad Steve is to personally tell people about it. In today's world of digital communication, word-of-mouth still trumps all.
  9. Who designed the Sad Steve logo?
  10. My friend. Enough said.
  11. What browser should I use? --updated 1/3/10

  12. Okay, here's my browser breakdown.

    Firefox

    Good browser. Secure, frequently updated, lots of great add-ons.

    Perhaps most importantly, Firefox is great with Flash content, like the kind that Sad Steve uses to play songs. I guess the only problem with Firefox is that it's a bit slow and uses a lot of memory. If it were faster/lighter, it would be perfect. (But on a newer system you can never notice the speed difference.)

    Safari

    Safari on Mac has some problems with Flash and DOM scripting. I have a MacBook Pro and Firefox is really fast and great on it. I see no reason to use Safari over Firefox on a Mac.

    Chrome

    Piece of shit.

    Pretty good.

    I used to think that Chrome was a piece of shit (see above), then started loving it (see above). Now I hate it because it's not so great with Flash content, plus it has some more technical bugs yet to be addressed.

    If Firefox runs fast on your computer, use it instead of Chrome. If you insist on Chrome, please understand that the Percolator will not jive well with it, and other Flash components out there on the web will likely suffer as well.

    Internet Explorer

    Insecure. Super slow. Makes annoying 'click' sounds. Needless to say this browser is a piece of crap. Never use it.

how does this site make money?

Currently, it doesn't. Sorry, Dad. The new artist profiles and pledge payment system make money for bands. I'm betting that if bands make money on my site, they'll point their users to Sad Steve. And if users like the site, the site grows. If/when Sad Steve gets huge, I'll consider putting ads up.

As far as operating costs (servers, search indexing, memory), users pay for those. It usually amounts to around $300 per month. While it does seem unfair that users are asked to pay for Sad Steve's operating costs AND pledge money to bands, I'm doing it this way for a few reasons. Firstly, a lot of people just use search. So if you use just use search, I ask that you just pay towards operating costs. If you're pledging money to bands, don't pay towards operating costs; just pay off your pledges every month. So really, nobody should be double-paying.

the story

Hi, I'm Joe Huttner and I'm the founder of Sad Steve. I attend just graduated (!) from Haverford College in Haverford, PA. First, just to clarify, there is no Steve. Still, a lot of fan mail is addressed to him. I guess he lives in spirit.

My inspiration for this site came in August '07 following a discussion with my friend Alex regarding the current (weakened) state of the music industry. The industry's major problem, in our minds at least, was its newfound allegiance with Apple Computer, Inc. Labels had relinquished control of the fastest growing distribution channel (the digital one) to Apple, a company devoted to technology, not music production.

This made no sense. Sure, Apple had the iPod, but without labels providing distribution rights to Apple, the iPod is just a little, metal, piece of shit with a scroll wheel and lousy battery life. My guess is that label executives were so frightened by the precipitous decline in record sales that they literally crapped themselves thinking they would be out of jobs in a year. But just as executives were reaching for the toilet paper, Apple arrived and promised to save everything. A return to the glory days! Deals were signed, Steve was happy, and the era of iTunes world domination began.

As I said, this discussion happened in August '07. I was in Argentina then, doing a semester abroad. Most of my days were spent meeting hot latina women, studying Spanish literature, and downing mojitos. Building a website was not a top priority. Still, when your friends in the music business tell you that producers are making marketing decisions based on an artist's iTunes ranking, you get pissed off.

So in January, 2008, I launched Sad Steve to prove that building a popular music distribution network need not be difficult. The popularity of this site is a testament to its simplicity. If I can do it, why can't the labels? There is no need for Apple, Amazon, or any third party to create a successful music distribution channel; just connect with fans directly.

In September, 2009, Sad Steve launched artist profiles. This new functionality is like MySpace lite - less clutter, but with higher quality streaming, online libraries for users, and a pledge payment system that sends 100% of post-PayPal income back to the bands. The challenge now is to get good bands to sign up for profiles and get users to actually pledge them money. So I'm working on those two things for now.

Thanks for listening. Peace.

contact

To contact Sad Steve, send an email to info@sadsteve.com

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