The Stanza Report

  Upbeat music. Long shot of SNN building lit up at night. Camera flies into building via editorial magic and continues zooming until it settles on a news desk where an attractive male anchor sits in a suit with a treble clef pattern and a Stanza-orange tie. A Stanza cup of coffee is within arm’s reach.

   Good evening, and welcome back to the Stanza News Network. I’m your host, Kaden Toews, and this is The Stanza Report. Our top story tonight: Beta testers have signed up in droves and are reporting favorably on the function of the app while also providing valuable feedback. Our reporter Jaden Daves has the full story.

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   Thank you, Kaden. Yes, the beta testers have turned up in force and are putting the Stanza app to good use. We have heard favorable reports from these users, who have donated their hard-earned money to make this project happen and are understandably enthused to get their hands on the product. The admin panel indicates that there are currently over three hundred users of Stanza, but of course this includes some duplicate test accounts created by the founders. Testers have been doing well with reporting little bugs in the app or inaccuracies in song data, and it has been very helpful. Our coders have been doing the tweaking here and there where needed. Luckily there have been no reports of major difficulties or app outages, so the system seems to be doing its job. We are one step closer to fully releasing the app, although we cannot report a date at this time. We can report that we won’t be releasing the app within the next two weeks, because our lead coder just arrived in Brazil to help with the cleanup there. We will need his expertise on call when we launch the app. In the meantime, however, we encourage beta testers to continue to report bugs or anything else to us as it will help us put out the best app possible at full release. That’s all from this corner.

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   Thank you for that report, Jaden. It seems to me that the song search feature has gone over very well with testers, as we predicted it would. Unfortunately, due to the vastness of the song search data, most of the songs in it are still unavailable on Stanza. There is a lot of work to be done to get where we want to be. We will continue to keep you updated as the story unfolds.

   In other news, the team has completed the app’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. We go now to our law compliance reporter, Braden Caves, for the details.

   Spinning Stanza logo briefly fills the screen, then recedes. Shot of different desk in the studio, piled with law books and important-looking papers, but not messy. The occupant wears Groucho Marx glasses and is slightly out of breath.

   Thank you, Kaden. Yes, for our protection and in order for us to launch Stanza through the App Store and Google Play, we had to write up both a Terms of Service and a Privacy Policy. No one on the team had done anything like this before, but with research and effort Taylor Dirks got it done. There was talk of having a legal expert look them over and make doubly sure that everything was right, but we have received no reports confirming that action. Both writeups are currently posted on a page of the Stanza website. If a user clicks on the Terms and Privacy Policy button in the app settings, they will be directed to that page. This provides a neat one-stop shop for all of our legal writeups and will be easy to update if we need to in the future. Viewers are encouraged to contact us if they have questions. Back to you, Kaden.

    Spinning Stanza logo briefly fills the screen, then recedes. Shot of anchor’s desk with anchor sliding into place, Groucho Marx glasses just visible peaking out from suit jacket. He is slightly more out of breath.

   Indeed, the entire legal aspect of this app has been quite a journey, but we will always do what it takes to be legitimate. In our final report for tonight, Karen Torres covers various small bits of news in a segment we call News Nuggets. Karen?

  Spinning Stanza logo briefly fills the screen, then recedes. Shot of digital wall with a list of news items displayed. Karen looks exactly like the anchor but has long, disheveled blond hair. Surely it isn’t the anchor wearing a hastily donned wig? That would be preposterous.

   As you can see behind me, our top stories aren’t the only things happening. We are continuing to get permission from authors to get their songs on Stanza, but it is a long process. The team has also been in talks about account sharing and whether we will allow any, along with the possibility of a family plan. Another issue is screenshots. Last week the team voted to block them altogether, in part because of needing to be an app that the big copyright companies can trust with their songs. Finally, I’m happy to report that the Android app is catching up very quickly. Our coder is working hard and releasing new and better app versions frequently. That’s all from me. Back to you, Kaden.

   Spinning Stanza logo briefly fills the screen, then recedes. Shot of anchor at his desk, hair now somewhat ruffled. 

   Thank you for those insights, Karen. It’s good to know what’s going on behind the scenes. 

   Well, folks, that’s all for tonight. Thank you for joining us. Tune back in tomorrow when our top stories will be Uninspired Blog Writer Tries to Entertain Audience by Making Blog a News Program as well as Stanza Executives Horrified at What Blog Writer Has Done to Blog. We’ll see you then. From all of us here at Stanza, we hope you have a great night, and keep on singing.

   Camera zooms back out of building as upbeat music plays once more. The nightscape shot is now overlaid with a message:

Thank you for tuning into The Stanza Report.