We’re often asked “why doesn’t WildVoice Studio run on Windows Vista”?The truth is that Microsoft made extensive changes between XP and Vista for how some sound processing is handled by Windows. Unfortunately, some of the coolest features of WildVoice Studio (recording your voice while playing a background track, playing multiple sound effects into a single recording, etc.) do not work on Vista. We designed WildVoice Studio specifically for these features, so WildVoice Studio requires much more work than a simple patch to be Vista compatible.
We started building this site and the software in the summer of 2005 and got it working pretty well by the end of 2006. We were never a big company. We never had venture capital or "other peoples' money" to spend. We were three guys who quit our day jobs with a dream of building an easy to use podcast creation and publishing system that would run as an online community. Needless to say, we're still not a big company. We've spent more of our own money building the software, building the site, and keeping this site running than I'd like to admit. So far, we still provide the software and site for free, and honestly, our advertising revenue has been insignificant.
It has been a thrill for me to see people post shows to the site, especially shows created with WildVoice Studio. But the truth is that the site never developed a large enough audience to sustain a business or even to sustain a vibrant on-line community. (There’s been lots of lessons learned which I’ll someday write up and post someday.)
After a glorious year and a half of building a dream, real life caught up with us. This was real life in the form of mortgage payments and orthodontist’s bills. So, about two years ago we had to all find real jobs again (real meaning a job with a salary). We had every intention of spending our nights and weekends updating the site and software and keeping WildVoice growing, but the realities of new careers, and personal and family challenges over the past two years, has made it almost impossible to do the type of engineering improvements and support work that WildVoice Studio and the site require.
So, here we are. It is 2009 and we aren’t ready for Vista, and we aren’t ready for IE 8, and I suspect we won’t be ready for the next version of Firefox. Should we roll up our sleeves and do an update for Vista and a site update? Realistically, a large market never developed for the type of casual podcaster that we envisioned would use our tools and site. I think the youtube video phenomenon captured the imaginations of our would-be podcasters and left us and our audio-centric peers with a small niche audience. So, by any logical decision process, there would be no return on our investment of doing the Vista updates. It would just be long nights and weekends away from our families after long days and weeks of working and commuting to our day jobs.
Do we still want to do the updates? Yes, we talk about it, and think about it and feel that we have unfinished business to complete. Have we committed ourselves to do the work? No, we haven’t committed ourselves to do the work.
So, I’d like to thank you our loyal users who continued to post shows on WildVoice.com and use our tools. Thank you for your persistence working around our bugs and site quirks. And, thank you for keeping that old XP machine running so you could still run WildVoice Studio.
Posts
Michael: This is a sad day, indeed. Not just for my show but I imagine many others as well. I have actually received emails this morning...even before I read your notice...from fans of NETDRAG, asking me what will become of the show?. WildVoice Studio is WONDERFUL software, is a dream to work with, and makes very professional audio productions. I don't think any of us had any idea you guys were struggling as a company. I, for one, would be willing to pay a nominal monthly subscription fee to keep WildVoice.com alive. If you got $5 or $10 a month from every WildVoice podcaster out there, in addition to your advertising revenues, would that help at all? I am VERY sorry to see you guys go away. I would like to continue my show, NETDRAG, but am wondering how it would ever be the same without WildVoice as my partner.
ReplyDeleteKen Lewis
NETDRAG, Crime Fiction Podcast
Man, I am very sad about it!
ReplyDeleteAfter many years with this nice piece of sotware installed on my desktop, I went here and for me it´s really sad to read what I´ve just read because it remember how my life is. I had to give up some of my dreams in order to meet the real life, i.e = Money. Unfortunatelly, this thing called money is necessary, and idealism, working with love not always works.
In my life, I´ve spent almost all my money creating free communities for people. I´m happy that I have contributed somehow for the good part of the world and life, as I think you have done too.
So, besides all this sadness, there´s a good point, that you all have done a nice work, and I hope some day people could recognize your work, who knows a bigger company. Your software is the best thing I know to build podcasts.
I´m experimenting it just now in order to put notes to a Blogger blog.
If you could combine this software with a facility to post to directly to a blogger as softwares as BLOGJET, it would be amazing! Imagine taking a microphone, talking some words, pressing a single buttom and voilá, it´s on your blog with a flash player already there.
I´m trying to combine things here in order to do that. I don´t know how, though.
I´d like to thank you all for the nice support on the golden days of wildvoice.
Thank you so much!
Dihelson Mendonça