Apart from getting a pre-selection of the very finest tunes, buying through these shops helps us bring the free magazine to you with our commission from Amazon. The Fly CD Shop is for UK customers and the CD Store goes to the US version. There are links to both on the right hand side of each page in Fly.

Last year, we launched a global groove based YouTube-like video service Fly Video. With its mix of hip hop, traditional music and jazz from around the world it has clocked up 35,000 views so far and established itself as the place to show and see videos of artists ranging from 2Face Idibia and Vieux Farka Touré to Miles Davis. See links on right hand side of pages.

Our photo gallery Flykr, which now has lots of pictures of this year’s Festival in the Desert, has clocked up 60,000 views. Using Flickr’s fabulous technology, you can comment and save any of the pictures that take your fancy.

Fly itself has now topped 100,000 visitors a month making it the most popular and influential place for people with adventurous musical tastes to visit. As well as dozens of features and new reviews going up every week, there are extensive listings, loads of great competitions and the latest news.

We have always encouraged feedback, pretty much every page on Fly has a comments facility and we are considering whether we should create a specialist message board or forum as well. What do you think?

Finally, this year, Fly will be offering professional services to our industry ranging from podcast creation to email marketing and website services. Well, in fact we have been doing this for some time but we are going to make it more high-profile this year.