Bright and sunny Monday, dear Slippers!
Past week was again joyfully busy here at Slipmat. Last week our DJs played 81 live events for fast growing audience of now nearly 900 registered monthly listeners. Thank You all DJs and all listeners for being awesome! 
I’m also very happy to announce that we’ve now sold 19 earlybird subscriptions to our new Pro encoders which covers about 45% of our direct running costs. As a thank you for all early supporters, we’ve decided to extend the earlybird subscription time from 30 to 45 days. So by purchasing your subscription early, you’re effectively saving 50% in your initial subscription. Again, big Thank You to all DJs and listeners who have been supporting Slipmat by subscribing.
Frankie Pro and the new Trial Encoder
As we’re launcing the new Frankie Pro encoders, we’ll also tweak some details with the Trial encoders. First, we’ll bump the trial period from 14 to 21 days. This gives new DJs more time to get to know our platform and if you happen to miss one or two weekends, you still get a chance to test everything out.
Secondly, we’re giving out new free Frankie Pro keys to all Slipmat DJs that allow anyone to play when there are no other pro events running on Slipmat. As we’re still growing, there is plenty of idle time on the site and it’s a win-win-win to let those DJs play for free who can’t afford the subscription. Over 80% of all our traffic is between the evening times in Europe and the US, something like: 2020-04-06T17:00:00Z → 2020-04-07T02:00:00Z the time between is not totally silent but much quieter than the peak hours.
If you happen to belong to the privileged part of the society by having a job and being able to buy a couple of beers every month, we expect you to be able to pay for your pro subscription as well. But if you’re not that lucky, we hope these free keys enable you to play more on Slipmat. Free keys will be available for all Slipmat DJs from the Streaming Keys page after the pro encoders are pushed live.
Development Notes
The corona-situation has been driven all Slipmat development for past few weeks. We’re still trying to cope with the huge influx of new DJs wanting an invite and will keep making the process faster and simples for everyone. At the moment everything is in the hands of the community. Every single invite is sent – or being kept from being sent – by Slipmat DJs.
If you want to help, the process is easy: join the #invite channel in our community chat and respond as new DJs paste links to check their invitation status page. If everything looks good, just push a button on the page and make sure the new DJ knows their basics. That’s it. If you need any help with this, just ask! 
Huge thanks to everyone who have been helping with the invites, with a special mention to @oxy who has amazing track record so far
Our top priorities for other development are:
- getting Frankie Pro encoders online (today!)
- finalizing the subscription-related functionality (today and tomorrow)
- better marketing tools for DJs (better video-addons like avatar list and chat screen, archived event page, tracklists as text, commenting / rating, using request system before the event)
- better community features (to make it more fun to visit Slipmat homepage as a listener / community member)
- keep making the invitation process faster and getting more DJs in
Tips for DJs
Starting and ending your events
Remember that Slipmat events work like your gigs in the physical world; they should have a proper warmup and cooldown (or next artist). Start your event in warmup mode preferably 30 minutes before you start your set. This gives your listeners plenty of time to get there in time and get into the mood in the chat.
Also, avoid ending by kicking everyone out in the street the very second you end playing. If this would happen to you as a listener in a physical venue, you’d be pissed. Instead either leave the event on for few minutes (you don’t need to keep the video running or prepare a “Event has ended - Thank You!”-screen) so people can take their time finding another event or site to go to. Or, you can also use the redirect feature and select another live event where everyone gets redirected when you end the event. You’ll find the redirect from your admin tools near the end event button. After you have selected a redirect, you can end your event safely knowing that all your listeners will be redirected to another Slipmat event, no one is kicked out from the chat.
Keep your DJ-profile filled and up to date
Do periodically go and check that your DJ-profile has all relevant fields filled and up to date. We’re constantly changing and updating things and if you don’t fill your profile accordingly, you’re missing out.
Be especially careful with all links and social profiles; check that the links actually work! You can fire up a private event without video just to see that everything looks good on live pages as well.
Backstage is for all kinds of conversations!
It might seem that Backstage only has tech support and general announcements but especially the #hut is intended for all kinds of conversations, everything at all that keeps you away from those big giant sites that steal your data and spy on you. Make a healthy change in your life and find other corners on the Web to interact as well!
The most active Backstage community member in April will be awarded with a 30-day Superstar subscription! So, let’s make some fire here on Backstage as well 
