The Music Business News card on the Dashboard shows the latest headlines from music-business sites and blogs for independent artists. Each headline shows the site's name and when it was published; click it to read the full article in your web browser. The card shows headlines only: no pictures, no article text, and nothing from your team. They are the sites' own headlines. The newest one from each site comes first, so a busy news site can't crowd out the others; the rest follow, newest first. It's there whether or not you have a campaign selected.
Where the news comes from
Eight sources are on to start, picked for independent artists: Hypebot, Ari's Take, DIY Musician (CD Baby), Bandzoogle Blog, Music Business Worldwide, Digital Music News, Music Ally and Music 3.0 (Bobby Owsinski). Click Sources on the card to switch any of them off or pick others from 28 sources in four groups: Tips for independent artists, Music business news, Music news (the big magazines like Billboard, Rolling Stone and Variety, off unless you switch them on) and Gear & recording. Changes are saved right away. "Use the recommended sources" goes back to the eight.
Adding your own feeds
Click Sources on the card
The "Your own feeds" part is at the bottom of the list.
Paste the site's feed address
An RSS or Atom feed address works best (it often ends in /feed/ or .xml). You can also paste just the site's address, like example.com, and MusicLaunch looks for the feed the site offers.
Click Add
MusicLaunch reads the feed first and adds it only if it really is a news feed, under the feed's own name. If the site is already one of the 28 (or you type one of their names, like Hypebot), it's simply switched on. You can add up to 20 feeds of your own; the trash can removes one.
When it updates
When MusicLaunch opens, the card shows the headlines it already has right away, even offline. About 10 seconds after opening (unless they were read in the last 15 minutes), and then every 3 hours while MusicLaunch is running, it reads the sources again; it also catches up as soon as your Mac is back online or wakes from sleep. The refresh button (the circling arrows) on the card checks now, and turns while the sources are being read. In Sources, each source you have on says when it last worked. If one site is down, the others still load, and its earlier headlines stay until it's back. "1 source didn't load" under the card opens that list. If no source can be reached at all, the card says "Can't reach the internet right now" and tries again every couple of minutes.
Privacy
Your Mac reads these feeds directly from each news site; they don't go through a MusicLaunch server. So, as with any visit to a website, each site sees your Mac's internet address (IP address) when its feed is read, and can tell the visit comes from MusicLaunch. Nothing of yours is sent. MusicLaunch keeps only the headlines, in a small file on this Mac, and doesn't record which ones you read or click. Your choice of sources is saved in MusicLaunch's settings on this Mac.
Turning the news off
To stop the news entirely, untick every source in Sources and remove any feeds of your own. The card then shrinks to one line, "News is off", and MusicLaunch doesn't contact any news site. "Choose sources" on that line turns it back on.
