Hi MD friends! It's been several months since we last updated you - here's what's going on in MD world. And because it's been so long, there's a lot to update you about.

  • MD30 aftermath
  • YouTube and podcast features
  • Web MiniDisc Pro development
  • 2000 equipment pages
  • Disc database and backups
  • Wiki software updates
  • Secret Santa and disc swaps
  • Funding and future

With great joy I can announce that our 30th Anniversary event for MD's 30th birthday was a massive success. So many people connected to share their love of these little discs, build this community, and make new friends along the way.

Recap

We didn't want MD to turn 30 without a party. We arranged for almost 30 album releases, 15 giveaways, a themed disc swap, and a commemorative custom disc to mark the occasion and to prove that MiniDisc still lives on in this community.

Thanks to lead partner Needlejuice Records, as well as labels Coraspect, Fish Prints, Husk Recordings, Kanga Corp., Oxtail Recordings, Pacific Plaza, and Underwater Computing for coming forward and supporting the format. Artists such as Analogue Electronic Whatever, Kawsaki, and Zak Vortex also deserve our thanks for their passion for the format. Some of these releases needed 2nd prints to meet demand.

15 giveaways were held across three days, sending blank discs, albums, and artwork to lucky social media followers across Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram. These giveaways brought new members to the community and spread awareness that the format is still thriving among us enthusiasts. Special thanks to Krispo for her incredible three custom artwork pieces for winners; Revengeday for his album giveaways; and most of all, our own shortstuf for arranging the giveaways and social media for the event.

35 people signed up to take part in our themed disc swap, in which everyone was randomly matched to send someone a disc with a mix of music released before November 1992. “What would be your first MD mix disc” created many playlists you can see on the wiki here.

Thousands of people took part in the celebration in one way or another, and we're so thankful to be part of a community that is so welcoming, friendly, supportive, and connected. Resources like the wiki, subreddit, and Discord server are only as great as they are because of your collective great attitude and enthusiasm.

MD30 disc

In a category all of its own - the MD30 blank disc from the Wiki, Needlejuice Records, and their partners BandCDs has been a massive hit.

I don't have exact numbers, but hundreds of these commemorative discs (designed by community member Spice) have been printed, making this one of the most-produced custom MiniDiscs of the post-commercial period. We're so glad that you like them!

Discussions are ongoing for different color variants and a 31st anniversary disc. Stay tuned…

At the same time, several YouTubers and podcasters have spoken to us about the community, the projects we support, and the format in general.

Techmoan was the first of these, and features the Wiki and Web MiniDisc Pro in his “NetMD into 2022…and beyond” video. Some of the issues he encountered have since better understood or corrected.

This Does Not Compute released a MiniDisc Buyers Guide video, which is a brilliant overview of what to look for in the MD market and the limitations of each generation of machine. We have a similar Buyer's Guide that can be used as a companion.

Two of the wiki admins were featured in the Sights, Sounds, and Conversations show, discussing the site and community. See our Reddit post here.

Finally, we're being featured in at least one other show that we won't announce until closer to release, but is a big one that we're really excited to share with you!

The MiniDisc development community is still hard at work fixing bugs and adding new features to projects such as Web MiniDisc Pro. I'll let project lead asivery announce major updates, but since the 1.3 update in November there have been numerous fixes and a lot of work on new features that will make SonicStage redundant for even more devices…

As of time of writing, there are 2024 unique equipment pages on the wiki. We list so many different pieces of equipment that our Detailed Equipment Listing takes several seconds to load. We can't thank this community enough for adding content to the wiki for everyone to benefit from. If you have something to add, please check our Contributing Guide, join the Discord server, or contact us (although we're often slower via email)

I can't believe that we've reached the 2000 equipment page benchmark. It's an incredible achievement that I never thought was possible. The next best resource is minidisc.org with a bit over 800 pages. In total, the wiki has over 3000 pages of equipment, guides, discs, album releases, community events, personal inventories, and FAQs.

Sadly the MiniDiscDB site for listing blank discs has gone offline and we haven't been able to archive it due to technical decisions made by the site admin.

Because of that, we've reactivated our Disc Database and we're very thankful to the contributors adding discs and building the knowledge base.

You can be sure that the MiniDisc Wiki will always be an open and reliable community resource - we're already making backup files available so that the site can be recreated in the rare chance we go offline. We'll share more on that soon. But if you have any webhosting experience, adapting our backups should be simple - just install Dokuwiki on your own server, then overwrite the files with those from the backup. The resource we've built will never die!

Although the MD format is an older technology, the wiki and its software stack is not. We've just updated the whole site to the latest version of OpenBSD (7.3), PHP 8.2, and Dokuwiki 2023-04-04 “Jack Jackrum” along with some tweaks to improve performance and stability.

Some of the fixes and updates needed for PHP8 support were made by our own development mastermind asivery and have been merged upstream to the Dokuwiki project for this latest release. It may not have come out so soon and with such compatibility without his help.

These updates keep the site secure and performing well on modern computers. Please join me in thanking asivery for not just Web MiniDisc Pro or being so helpful in the MD community, but also contributing to the wiki software upstream so that everyone can benefit from it.

Despite our best efforts, we ran into some issues with our (huge!) 2022 Secret Santa swap. Quite a few people never followed up, and a few gave excuses once we contacted them after the deadline. We don’t have the resources to be messaging dozens of people and explaining why some people sent out discs but never received any themselves.

Because of this, we're going to keep future disc swaps Discord-only. If you're an active and consistent member of the community there, we'd love to have you be part of future events as part of the #disc-swappers channel. It's a shame but we can't have some people spend an hour or more time and wage on shipping while others make promises they can't keep.

On a happier note, asivery has developed a new web app for signing up to disc swaps that will make matching much easier. We hope to use this soon for a summer swap once some other housekeeping is taken care of.

Thanks to our very generous contributors on Patreon and Ko-fi, the site is nearly financially self-sufficient. This doesn't just cover the wiki itself, but also services used by developers to make and test new features. As we've said before, we never want ads on the site, but we do want to look into more ways of keeping the site funded and providing resources for anyone interested in MD.

Thanks so much for your time and dedication to this hobby and community. Until next time!…

  • about/updates/2023-04-10.txt
  • Last modified: 12 months ago
  • by specialk