More Artist Sites

Last month I promised that we would get back to more general Country Music sites and away from the internet audio topic for a while. This month we'll revisit the George Strait site to see how this site has been reshaped. We'll also visit the official Roger Miler tribute site.

I have always been a fan of the George Strait site, as evidenced by it remaining one of my top-five sites in this topic. The site has recently been upgraded, taking advantage of new web technologies. First, to enjoy the new site, you should download the Flash plugin from Macromedia. Once installed, you'll be able to view the flashy intro (no pun intended) to this site including animation and audio. If you don't have or want the plug-in, a non-flash version of the site exists. This might be a better choice in the long run, as going back to the home-page based menu for navigation between sections, replays the flash intro. This gets annoying after a while.

There is now information on the 1999 Strait Fest, including the concert dates, the stars that will be performing, and ticket information for some of the early dates in the schedule. Back on the GS site, there is the usual bio information, including reviews and a discography section. The "Music Room" link resulted in a not-found error as did the "Fan Club" link. Fan Club membership was available in the general store, but no information on the membership benefits was available here. The "Photo Gallery" was listed as "coming soon." Somewhat better luck was had in the "Video" section, where even though the preview links were not found, the Vivo-based clips were available if you had the Vivo Player plug-in. Nine different video clips could be viewed.

You can look at the other features of the GS site. The only caution is that the "Strait Talk" section, containing the Fan Club newsletter, is only available to fan club members with an id and password. The General Store still provides for online purchases. Despite the few shortcomings, this is still a top-rated site. True GS fans will probably be Fan Club members and have access to the newsletter. [I originally went looking for better information on George's upcoming album release than was available at the time on the MCA-Nashville site. The album, titled "Always Never The Same," is scheduled for release on March 2nd.

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