Eurovision is approaching!

The worlds biggest music competition is now less than 2 months away! - Eurovision Song Contest!

This is personally my favourite time of the year as it's the perfect opportunity to discover new music, get in touch with your European friends and compare your countries entries. For example this year I'm hiding from anyone as Bonnie Tyler is representing the United Kingdom this year. - I joke! Kind of.

The British entry Bonnie Tyler - Believe in Me is great just not a winner which is a shame. In my honest opinion this years contest is quite close. The music is very hipster folksy this year which personally isn't to my taste and you can tell this by the kind of music I have Kevin (The Auto DJ) play when a DJ isn't streaming.
But this will not stop me from watching and loving Eurovision as I do every year!

For those out the loop, Eurovision is an annual song contest that has been going on since 1956! And any qualifying countries are invited to submit a song sung by an artist or band who is a birth citizen of that country and are chosen mostly by the countries hosting their own televised song contest where the public vote for their representative who then get sent to the country of last years winner to perform in the semi-final which is televised world wide to any television network who has permission from EBU, and yes American networks have permission they just choose not to. Get on the band wagon, Australians have and love it!

Semi-Final one is hosted on a Tuesday in May, Semi-Final Two is on the following Thursday and Saturday is the live finale! The system is simple voting is half and half, half the votes are from the public telephone system and half the vote is a professional panel. The votes are then accumulated from the individual countries and given to each contestant. Winner with most points will sing again and their country will host it next year!

It is so much fun for all members of the family unless you are British as we have an annual tradition of complaining about never winning, sad right? Personally I vote around 10 times a year for different countries and I love the music over everything else, the performances, the stages, the lighting... It maybe the Eurovision Song Contest but it is just amazing!

This year at Flare I have added a few of the entries for this years Eurovision Song Contest in to the auto DJ playlist and on May 18th there will be a special Eurovision event where you can watch the live broadcast on TV's inside the Second Life venue but also listen to it live through the stream! It is going to be AMAZING! And I cannot wait to share the magic of Eurovision with you guys at Flare!

Happy Dancing!
- Luke

DJ of The Month!

As of today I'm excited to announce that the DJ of the Month (DJOTM) contest will commence on March 25th!

What will happen is if you navigate to Community/DJ of The Month you will be hit with a vote page where you can choose who you think deserves to be this months DJOTM. So to DJ's be sure to get booking timeslots to be in with a better chance of reaching more of the audience and to everyone else make sure you tune in to as many shows as humanly possible to make it easier for you to decide.

I've done all I can to ensure that the DJOTM contest is as fair as possible and here is how the winner is decided.
You vote via the form and each vote counts as 10 points. Unless you fill out the bonus fields then your vote is worth 20 points. That's the public vote out of the way.
Next is the activity count. Every hour a DJ works is an extra 5 points. We then take off any deductions from there total score for missed sets without reason  (-10 points) or vote pushing (-30 points) and we total it up.
The winner is announced on a celebration day hosted by Lukeh Ghost. The celebration day is shortly after the 25th of each month and the date will be announced immediately after the winner is calculated.
The winner will then be announced on the celebration day and rewarded with:

+ A Badge on the Staff Page
+ DJoTM Title in the Second Life group.
+ Framed Picture in the Second Life venue
+ The Club Flare main website background will feature them for the month.
+ Plaque in Second Life
+ L$1000 prize*
+ £10/$15 (or similar currency) Gift Card to a place of choice.*

*They may also choose to merge the last 2 for a L$6000 prize.

Any votes made AFTER the 25th at 06:00pm will count towards next months results.

I hope this to be a fun way to congratulate and thank the DJs who work hard to make Club Flare amazing!

- Luke

Amazing Night for Club Flare!

Firstly I'd like to say thank you to everyone who turned up and to all the DJ's who made the opening party better than I could have imagined!

It was a lot of fun to see everyone and was amazed at how much the guests whored out the sploder, it's now floating round slowly above the money booth scared and emptied. YOU MONSTERS!

Anyway the night was great overall! I had a lot of fun when I was able to hand the stream over to DJ Doc Club Flare's dedicated in house DJ who has been hosting the preview parties it was awesome to him DJ the first public event.

Be sure to check out the website come down to Club Flare in Second Life as we are now officially open!

Opening 20th Feburary!

Club Flare finally has an opening date!

Yes it's been a while and I think I've annoyed everyone with the whole postponing and then not actually saying when until but I've had reasons I swear!

Anyway I can finally announce that the opening party will commence on February 20th at 2pm (SLT/PST.)

The Club has been open to the public for a while with our in house DJs playing a host of preview parties to keep it all alive and more importantly help me fine tune the 24/7 auto DJ (a.k.a Kevin) making sure people can turn him off efficiently... So to speak, whenever they are ready to take over the stream and start DJing.

But now after more than enough months of taking rain checks on the opening we are only a couple weeks away from an epic opening event with a line up of Club Flare DJs & Hosts from around the globe!

Along side great music and fun company will be many opportunities to win L$ through sploders, money grabbers and of course just good old competitions.

So be sure to come down to Club Flare in Wednesday 20th February at 2pm SLT we look forward to seeing you!

Not Long Now...

Since Becca (Gabrielle Cobalt) and I (Lukeh Ghost) started rebuilding Club Flare back in November we've taken our time with the reopening because a lot of the original staff had fled so it seemed a better task to find new DJ's and hosts to join us who would be more dedicated to the music than the L$ I mean let's be real they make the better DJ's anyway!

Anyway over the past 7 weeks a lot has happened, the website was changed to be more functional allowing DJ's to freely book their time slots and trade etc without the hassle of going through management.
We opened up the brand new building to the public and so far the reception has been fantastic we hear nothing but great comments and we can't are beyond grateful.
The Club Flare stream is now a 24 hour 7 days a week deal. So if a DJ isn't playing and you find yourself in Club Flare you can still hear awesome music, commercial free! Not only this we've fixed the 1 minute every hour method of DJ's logging in, now DJ's can log in whenever as they have the power to disable the auto DJ for them to log in which may not seem like much but having to reset your player every hour was a pain so we've now abolished this method!

And finally a big improvement is the staff, we so far have a handful of amazing hosts who certainly know how to keep the crowd excited! Not only this I'm very proud of the DJ's we have at Flare so far. DJ Radditz, DJ Doc Baby have so far been playing out the preview parties at Club Flare and have helped me fix any bugs in the stream. Returning DJ's Lastchance & Parx stuck around at Club Flare whilst we was going through the rebuild and they were awesome before I've no doubt they will be awesome again! Also a welcome to DJ Snow a.k.a Metal Queen who will change up the mix at Flare for those of you who like your music to be more intense!

I cannot wait to announce a date for the opening of Club Flare but just know that it's the next thing I do! I have Real Life and finances to balance and put aside for this all so it will be very soon hopefully before the month is out if not just after.

Big thank you to the hosts, DJs and fans who are spreading the word Flare and thank you everyone who has stuck around - We're almost there, we're almost ready to open Club Flare!

- Lukeh Ghost

Club Flare 24/7!

See we do have chairs! Awesome chairs!

That's right, as of today the Club Flare stream will be online 24/7 thanks to advances in technology which has been around for longer than I have been alive but only just decided to take advantage of.

This is an amazing step for any Second Life club as now you can enjoy the music Club Flare offers that is selected to match the environment of Club Flare's Second Life venue. Of course this doesn't change what we are about which is various music, from various DJs from around the globe so at every hour the stream will go offline for one minute from X:00 to X:01 to give the Club Flare DJ's a chance to log in and take over!

This isn't the best of solutions but it's practical until I can create a system which allows the software to read the schedule and shut the stream off accordingly.

Not only this but now we are 24/7 I have submitted Club Flare to be on the mobile app 'TuneIn' so fingers crossed! In the meantime you can still listen on the website and in Second Life by visiting Club Flare as we will always be online there.

We are close to reopening so a big thanks to everyone who has stuck around and to the new DJ's and Hosts who are getting the word out. We passed 100 members in the Second Life group so don't stop! Let's keep generating interest by passing the stream URL on to your friends, showing them the Second Life venue (we have chairs now!) and now you can listen to the stream 24/7 at Club Flare!