HangFan v3 developmnt (go live this summer)

So, if there was a place to spout crap about how great this website is...here's the things that will hopefully make it so, in the near-future.

Helpers, energy-injections, ideas, wants, desires etc. all very welcome, just mail me with those to torbz@hangfan.co.uk

Currently, hangfan receives around 5,500 unique visitors every month and it has steadily increased over time.
The majority of these users are not hang owners (obviously!) but flock to hear the jukebox and use the eHang. There's great interest in hearing these sounds.
The forum has 225 (real!) members, is spam free (hurray!) and the flash-based, virtual eHang version 3 is in development, which is a good bit of fun at the least.
Google.com search results (excluding wikipedia and youtube results) brings Hangfan in at position 2 (for search term 'hang drum') and position 3 (for the term 'hang').
Visitor Countries (interestingly) in order of magnitude: the UK, US, Spain and Russia (!!)
We obviously attract a discerning IT crowd with 43% of users viewing in Firefox and only 32% in Internet Explorer (something not echoed through the other 100+ sites I manage).

There are a number of new features that I am developing to fit in around the whole web 2.0 idea and community-driven content management (outside of the forum).
These include:

Individual Artist Profile Pages
Set-up initially by myself, these will include short biographies, links to external sites, albums and track listings, preview downloads/playing of tracks, pay-per-download for tracks and full PRS/MCPS compliance so that artists can receive royalties based on people listening to their tracks (as long as the artist is registered to the PRS or similar organisation in their country).

Each profiled artist will receive an invitation to administer every aspect of their profile themselves, allowing them to have an additional representation on the web with the potential to further their own interests as a Hang artist, both through exposure and sales of their works.

Membership system
The membership system, whilst allowing profile editing and control, will also allow people to have hosting space separate or integral to Hangfan, where there'd be a number of functions available to them to manage and present themselves and communicate in different fashions with other fellow members through a unique messaging system. 

A Hang-oriented Record Label
I've looked into most aspects surrounding setting up a small record label with the view to publishing hang works both online and physically for sale. The idea would be a simple path to market for hang players by producing compilation CD's which would be above board and provide exposure and income for artists who create hang music. This would tie in with the artist profiles.
The label could look at representing new artists too and help to publish and distribute works.

This part, in particular, requires some help from others in the Hang community who would like to see this happen. This help could be in the form of experienced advice, financial support (and hence partial ownership of the label) or energy on the admin or ideas front. If you're that person, email me: torbz@hangfan.co.uk

As it stands, I need to raise a few hundred pounds to kick start this project, which will come soon one way or another, but it would be a good opportunity for hang-enthusiasts to get involved at this point for a share in the project - I would be happy to see at least 3 or 4 hang players involved and sharing it.

Hang meetings and performances
Really a sideline from mission central, but the opportunity would exist to get a pretty good catalogue of artists together who could perform and be promoted through the Hangfan 'engine'. I would try to promote artists to festivals and other venues and try to get something big and fun going on for collaborative hang performances. Really just a brain bug at this point so development and input needed.

There are more smaller things that will find place here soon, but I wanted to get the bulky stuff down and out to you fine folk.

Now that I've presented the ideas, they are also no longer mine but I'm close to finalising most aspects of the above ideas, so we'll have a good head start and we have the interested crowd of visitors to present to.