Pony.fm gone?

[Pulse Wave 44]

I've discovered just the other day that pony.fm isn't online.

Is it down for maintenance, or is it gone for good without an announcement? If the latter, why?

That'd mean that the last dedicated pony music website is gone.

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,809]

That's odd. I don't know what's going on but on my end, I'm getting a "No Connection". So it could be that the server may be down...or I don't know. 

 

[NeuroTypical 64]

Oof.  It was up a few weeks ago.

It might be the last of it's kind, but it's not the last pony radio station.

http://ponyvillelive.com/ still has 11 active channels (hopefully Russian Pony Radio can come back - it was fine until Ukraine etc started).

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

Pony.fm is back online! It is very much not gone and there are no plans to shut it down.

There were a couple of extended outages in the last few weeks involving the domain:

1. The first one, in February, was because, the domain ended up not getting renewed on time thanks to a perfect storm of inconvenient coincidences (that weren't and still aren't applicable to any of Poniverse's other domains, in case you're wondering) and it ended up in the so-called "redemption period" where getting it back is an expensive, manual process. I worked closely with the registrar to recover the domain from this state and got the domain back but it took about a week.
2. The second outage, that prompted you to start this thread, @Pulse Wave, was due to the domain somehow expiring retroactively and reverting back into the redemption period state. It's unclear what caused that to happen but the registrar was cooperative in recovering the domain - again. Reactivating the domain was much faster this time but still took a few days.

I hope this sheds some light on what happened. #1 was on me, #2 was on the registrar. Neither outage had anything to do with Pony.fm's viability as a service, as you can see.

 

With all that said, if the day Pony.fm has to close up shop ever comes - and I hope it never does but who knows what world we'll be living in 10, 20, 100, or more years from now - there won't be any ambiguity about it - it will be clearly announced. And, to whatever extent is feasible, that hypothetical future decision to shut it down will be communicated with advance notice and some form of succession plan for maintaining the library we've collectively spent so many hours building.

I recognize the importance of Pony.fm as our last remaining fan-run music hosting service and consider its role as a long-lived historical archive pretty important, too. I wish we had the staff or budget to actively develop new features and such but the site doesn't face any existential dangers.

[Starset Twinkle 431]

The site seems to be not working again fyi

[Jedishy 3,542]

On 2/19/2023 at 1:22 PM, Starset Twinkle said:

The site seems to be not working again fyi

I spoke with the Admins on this. Its down TBD but they are working on it being fixed. Its just a matter of time and pony power. Once it's getting ready to come back up our socials will be announcing it for sure. 

[Starset Twinkle 431]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:15 AM, Jedishy said:

I spoke with the Admins on this. Its down TBD but they are working on it being fixed. Its just a matter of time a pony power. Once its getting ready to come back up our socials will be announcing it for sure. 

Thanks for the information! I will be excited to see it return

 

Edit: It is working again, thanks to the people who worked hard to get it up again! <3

Edited February 25, 2023 by Starset Twinkle

[Jedishy 3,542]

On 2/24/2023 at 8:41 AM, Starset Twinkle said:

Edit: It is working again, thanks to the people who worked hard to get it up again! <3

LOL I was just about to tag you to let you know. 

[Princess Celestia 600]

I really hope pony.fm will continue, It's so full of amazing songs, so whatever happens, please, please take care of it for the future to come.

[Princess Celestia 600]

This gold mine of song treasures relly must be well protected for the future.

There are so many early songs that make my eyes wet even today. Aww!

I hope we could have a mirror site and/or a really safe way to secure data, for the future to come.

[TheHappyPony 0]

On 2023-03-31 at 1:16 PM, CelestiAlicorn said:

This gold mine of song treasures relly must be well protected for the future.

There are so many early songs that make my eyes wet even today. Aww!

I hope we could have a mirror site and/or a really safe way to secure data, for the future to come.

You're right on that, we need to keep this as a treasure, for that is what it is after all!

This site has all kinds of contributions to the pony community, from the newest songs to the oldest ones! 🤠💖