The day has come. Today we are announcing the launch of Stanza for Android! I’ve been trying to figure out what to write in this blog post, but honestly, what else is there to say? You’ve already read the most important news. Probably most people have already stopped reading to go look for Stanza on Google Play. Well, I guess that would actually be the best outcome of this post. Get on over there and get it for yourself!
I could fill the rest of this blog post with lots of wordy paragraphs about this amazing journey and the wonderful support and our thankfulness to everyone and all that, but that would make it sound as though we’re wrapping it up. Both Stanza apps are out the door, and now we can dust off our hands and relax, right? Well, not exactly. This is just the beginning. We have at last gotten truly off the starting blocks. With the launch of Stanza for Android, we have entered a new era, one full of negotiations, huge copyright contracts, massive uploads of songs, and lots and lots of data verification. Together with all of that, we will be continually improving Stanza: taking user feedback, building new features, testing, and deploying them. The end is nowhere in sight in that direction.
Another area we’ve been talking about is publishing new songs with Stanza. We want to figure out a review system that will reliably provide fair and unbiased quality control, and that is not easy. We don’t wish to be the gatekeepers of what gets published, nor do we even have that power. But we do want Stanza to be known for publishing good quality, doctrinally sound songs. It’s something we’re still workshopping amongst ourselves and with some older and wiser brethren. It will probably be a long time before we get it all figured out, but we want you to know that we are thinking about it.
This may sound a bit repetitive; but, once again, we’ve been working on uploading and approving a lot of songs (well, Kirby has. Thanks Kirby). There will always be work in that area, so it will probably be mentioned in every blog post. We currently have 2,248 songs uploaded and approved! We’re still in negotiations with PrairieView Press for a lot of their songs and data, and that will be quite a lot of work as well if that all goes through. Kent tells me that he has already received their song search data, which will need to be integrated into our system. Their data coupled with what we already have should make Stanza’s search function a very powerful feature, which has been our goal all along.
As has been mentioned, we are working on bringing Projector Mode to Stanza as soon as we can. We also want to give users the ability to share collections with each other. Stay tuned for updates on that front.
For the thousandth time, thank you so much for your support of Stanza. It seems incredible that we went from pretty much zero to having two great apps released in the space of a year and a half, along with thousands of approved songs. It wouldn’t have been possible without you guys. Thank you. We will continue to labor for the betterment of Stanza and for the improvement of everyone’s singing experience.
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