Reid Rosefelt 3,430 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) There's a guy who's in the process of building a website that will scrape some of the deal information off of the main music websites and assemble the deals in one place. It's sortable: by company, category, subcategory and discount. You can also click the words "grid list" at the top and see a different way of displaying the data. This is not the kind of thing that could ever put a dent in what Larry does. To start with, he's not looking to track everything. And secondly, the computer bot scraping the web doesn't know what it's scraping, so there may be ridiculous results unless it is moderated. But if it works, it will be a useful supplement to Larry, and a big competition for people who only list the main stuff. The cool thing about it --assuming it will work--is that it will track the history of music software deals. After a few years, it could be very useful https://musicsoftwaredeals.com/ Don't get hung up on whether it works perfectly or not. It seems like he just started putting it together recently and it currently is a work-in-progress to show how it may work. Although some of it already does work. He started a post in VI:Control to get suggestions from people about what they would like in a site like this. https://vi-control.net/community/threads/im-building-an-automated-platform-that-lists-all-music-software-deals-in-one-place-with-price-history.119796/ What do you think? If you have suggestions about it, now is the time to go to VI:Control and chime in. Edited January 25, 2022 by Reid Rosefelt 5 5 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sander Verstraten 824 Posted January 25, 2022 a history of deals, that's really nice! So we know if something is really a deal or not. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jude77 545 Posted January 25, 2022 I took a look, and it seems to have a lot of possibility. I'd love to see it take off. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mibby 2,660 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) Great idea! He needs to get a feed into Larry's computer... Edited January 25, 2022 by mibby 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Batwaffel 94 Posted January 25, 2022 I have a similar site going up soon in a different format. Will update when it's closer to completion. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TheSteven 2,900 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) Might be nice as long it's not a swamp of ads and click throughs. There have been numerous sites that have previously tried this and I've always come back here because of the lovely company and minimal BS (ads, click throughs, spam, etc.) Edited January 25, 2022 by TheSteven 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bapu 6,102 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) I'm here because Edited January 25, 2022 by Bapu 3 1 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Music Software Deals 187 Posted January 25, 2022 Thanks for posting about the site! Its obviously very early in the progress stage right now but I hope to make a lot of progress over the next 4-6 weeks 2 2 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Reid Rosefelt 3,430 Posted January 25, 2022 34 minutes ago, TheSteven said: There have been numerous sites that have previously tried this ... Really? Scraping the internet with bots? I'm not aware of any of them. I'm curious about this history. Everything I've seen so far has been collected by human hands, like Larry, @Batwaffel, Don Bodin, rekkerd, etc. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TheSteven 2,900 Posted January 25, 2022 17 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said: Really? Scraping the internet with bots? I'm not aware of any of them. I'm curious about this history. Everything I've seen so far has been collected by human hands, like Larry, @Batwaffel, Don Bodin, rekkerd, etc. TBH I don't know if any of them were scrapped with bots, in most cased definitely not. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Music Software Deals 187 Posted January 25, 2022 I think this might be first time someone has attempted to fully automate this. Obviously its not super easy - creating the scrapers isn't too hard, but the tough part is managing the structure of the information we receive to ensure its uniform from all sources so that it can be correctly displayed. That's the part we're working on right now to ensure that as we add a new source, we have the right rules in place to restructure the title, apply the right manufacturer (some people use "Harrison" whereas others use "Harrison Consoles" for example) etc. All of this is totally do-able, it just takes some time in the beginning to get setup properly 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Music Software Deals 187 Posted January 25, 2022 1 hour ago, Batwaffel said: I have a similar site going up soon in a different format. Will update when it's closer to completion. Cool looking forward to seeing it! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
InstrEd 4,298 Posted January 25, 2022 I don't have enough time to keep up with Larry's deal posts and now bots too 🙄 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simon 2,768 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 16 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said: There's a guy who's in the process of building a website why not just pay Larry for all the amazing work he does ? if it ain't broke etc. Edited January 26, 2022 by simon 1 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Plugin Deals 12 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) - Edited January 25, 2022 by plugindeals Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Plugin Deals 12 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 2 hours ago, Music Software Deals said: I think this might be first time someone has attempted to fully automate this. Obviously its not super easy - creating the scrapers isn't too hard, but the tough part is managing the structure of the information we receive to ensure its uniform from all sources so that it can be correctly displayed. That's the part we're working on right now to ensure that as we add a new source, we have the right rules in place to restructure the title, apply the right manufacturer (some people use "Harrison" whereas others use "Harrison Consoles" for example) etc. All of this is totally do-able, it just takes some time in the beginning to get setup properly Edited January 25, 2022 by plugindeals Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zo 3,286 Posted January 25, 2022 NO larry , no go ... 3 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mibby 2,660 Posted January 25, 2022 1 hour ago, InstrEd said: I don't have enough time to keep up with Larry's deal posts and now bots too 🙄 Wait a minute... Larry is HUMAN??? 😦 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Doug Rintoul 1,602 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) . Edited January 28, 2022 by Doug Rintoul 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
