tuneage : everyone deserves good music

As you know, our giveaway rules asked you to make us a Muxtape of the perfect Summer mix, and many of you may have noticed that the Muxtapes you made are now empty. Muxtape had some problems over the weekend that they talked about on their tumblelog, but the crux of the problems was this: any Muxtape made in the last three weeks stands a good chance of having lost all its content. Unfortunately, that includes all the entries in our giveaway.

When most of you will have lost the contents of your Muxtape, we think it would be unfair to continue the contest under the same rule set. Regrettably, we’ve decided to revise the giveaway a little.

On the upside, we’re not going to ask you for anything that requires too much thought, like the Muxtapes did; we think that would be unfair since a lot of people have already been through that once. Instead, we want you to suggest a theme for our podcast¹.

We’ll pick our favourite theme, and that person will win our main prize, the iPod, and their pick of 2 other items from the prize list. After that, our next five favourite themes will also get to pick two things from the list.

So if you still want a chance to win something, use /submit to submit your theme ideas. We’ll allow another week after the original deadline (Monday) for this to run.

We recognize this is a huge inconvenience — for you as much as us — and we can’t apologise enough. We’ve learned our lesson, though. None of our future giveaways will rely on any third party service like Muxtape. (And we definitely have more planned, you’ll be glad to hear.)

Thanks for sticking around during this mess. With any luck, we won’t have to deal with a problem like this again. Here’s to plain-sailing in the future.

1: If you’re not familiar with our formula: every week, we choose a theme for the podcast based on whatever Tuneage post was the most reblogged that week. Last week it was a Robyn track, so we chose Swedish acts as the theme. Easy enough, right?

When we announced our giveaway, we said we had something in store for our 1,000th follower and the first 6. Well, we’re not ready announce what’s in store for the first 6 yet, but today we’re going to announce what we have for our 1,000th. Our 1,000th follower was rgrjnr.

So, rgrjnr, whoever you are, we’d like to invite you to pick a prize from the pool (but hands off the iPod, that’s for the contest winner) in the contest post, and write a guest post for us. (Or not, if that works better for you, it’s up to you.) Anyway, send us a message via /submit, and include the prize you want, and your mailing address. And, if you want, your guest post.

Remember that giveaway we’re currently holding? Well, we’ve got some new prizes to add to the pool.

We’ve just added a signed copy of Stoney’s album, The Scene and The Unseen, a signed copy of the latest single from the album, Jailbird, which includes two tracks that aren’t on the album, and a Stoney tour CD, that features 3 tracks by Stoney (one that’s not on the album), and three tracks each by Neil McSweeney & The Gents and The Furze. Oh, and some Stoney stickers. (We posted about Stoney here, if you want to hear what he sounds like.)

That makes more than 20 albums up for grabs. How’s that?

You’ve still got a week to submit your perfect summer mix Muxtape if you want a chance to win these and all the other prizes on offer!

The conditions of this giveaway have changed now, due to circumstances outside our control. Read this post to get updated.

Tuneage reached a milestone recently. As you’re probably aware, Tuneage is powered by Tumblr (which we love) and in the middle of last week, we reached 1,000 followers. To understate, we were exceptionally pleased to reach this milestone; neither of us — Bill and myself — expected to reach an audience this size when we first started Tuneage this past February, and certainly not this quickly.

To celebrate, we’re holding a small giveaway and giving away lots of stuff. Just because we’re nice like that, and because we’d be nowhere without you guys.

First of all, here’s what we have to give away.

• A 1GB PRODUCT (RED) iPod Shuffle
• The following, courtesy of Asthmatic Kitty
  • My Brightest Diamond’s album Bring Me The Workhorse (My Brightest Diamond on Tuneage)
  • Castanets’ album In The Vines
  • Castanets DVD Tendrils
  • Half-handed Cloud’s album Halos & Lassos
  • Sufjan Stevens’ album Illinoise
  • Shannon Stephens’ self-titled album
  • Encyclopedia Asthmatica DVD
  • Asthmatic Kitty T-shirt
• Courtesy of Two Shots of Rye, three digital copies of their album Hooks on Tape
• Courtesy of The OaKs, the choice of either their album, Songs For Waiting, or an OaKs t-shirt (The OaKs on Tuneage)
• Courtesy of Flobots, 5 signed copies of their album Fight With Tools (Flobots on Tuneage)
• Courtesy of Johnathan Coulton, a digital copy of his entire catalogue (Jonathan Coulton on Tuneage)
• Courtesy of Sony BMG, the following:
  • Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volumes 1-3
  • Johnny Cash’s The Collection
  • Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run 30th Anniversary
• Courtesy of Arcticology, a digital copy of his debut album, Looking for Satellites (Arcticology on Tuneage)
• Courtesy of Daytrotter, some t-shirts and stickers
• A signed copy of Stoney’s album, The Scene and The Unseen, a signed copy of his single, Jailbird, a tour CD, and some stickers
• Courtesy of Band Marino:
  • 3 copies of their debut album The Sea & The Beast
  • Band Marino stickers
• Courtesy of Merge Records:
  • Merge Records stickers
  • She & Him mini-buttons
  • Destroyer word magnets

We’d like to extend a huge thanks to everyone that has donated items for us to give away. We’re extremely grateful.

Now, what do you have to do to have a chance to win all this stuff? It couldn’t be easier. In fact, thousands of people have already done it: we want you to make a Muxtape. But we want a Muxtape with a theme: the perfect Summer mix. Interpret the theme however you like, and make a Muxtape out of it.

Easy enough, right? We’re allotting two weeks for you to come up with your perfect Summer mix, then we’ll begin the judging and hand out the prizes after that.

Some things to note:

• Only entries posted in the comments of this post will be considered
• You must provide a valid e-mail address with your entry, in the e-mail field, so we’re able to e-mail you
• If you’re unable to create a Muxtape, send us an e-mail and we’ll discuss alternate methods of entry.
• Winners will be asked for their mailing address, so please don’t enter if you’re not willing to share your address with us.
• Only US residents are eligible to win physical goods, but anyone can win the digital-only prizes
• No Tuneage contributors are eligible to win anything

But that’s not all! We also have something special planned for our first 7 followers as well as our 1000th follower, but we’ll talk about that in another post.