Oudistan - 3-6-2018 at 09:41 AM
Hello all,
I have been a long time lurker around these forums and used to be a member a long time ago but was more active on Arabic forums such as Zeryab Forum,
Sama3y, and others.
As some of you already know, all Arabic music forums have disappeared for different reasons.
Zeryab and Sama3y have been hit with a lawsuit by the daughter of a well known artist over copyright issues and all of their files have been
seized/deleted.
MikeOuds.com is the only forum that continued to serve the community for years and years and connected people from around the world as discussions are
in English. It has made its mark and I hope it continues to do so for years to come.
It is very saddening to see that there are absolutely no dedicated forums in Arabic. As a result, Arab musicians have resorted to facebook groups but
the issue is, these groups do not help in archiving discussions and/or files, and are not really effective as posts get buried, etc.
Forums are a great way to archive information and they make it easy for everyone to search and find information in one place.
Therefore, I created a forum in Arabic and I plan on keeping it alive as long as members continue to use it.
I decided to give it a name which reflects my future plans for it, which is to become more than just discussion forums:
ARAB MUSICIANS NETWORK 
The URL is: http://www.ArabMusicians.net
I invite all of you to sign up and participate.
A few friends and I have started sample threads to get it going but it can only thrive with your valuable contributions.
Also, please let me know if you have any suggestions to improve the forums or if you encounter any technical issues.
I welcome you all to these forums, please spread the word. 
Thank you,
Oudistan
http://www.ArabMusicians.Net
JassimbinMater - 3-8-2018 at 03:00 AM
Great idea Oudistan. For a long time I never even thought about searching for an oud forum in English. It was a pleasant surprise when I stumbled upon
Mike's forum and found it to be much more useful than any of the Arabic forums. It would be great to have a comparable arabic one. I didn't realize
that Sama3y was down, sad new- although I remember having many problems with registering with them.
suz_i_dil - 3-8-2018 at 01:17 PM
There is something fascinating in seeing this great artist heiress making close those cultural exchange place one by one.
Give me the nay and shut up
great initiative oudistan. Just an ad, you forget zaman al wasl forum which is great,but not general forum as the ones you named
best of luck
Badra - 3-8-2018 at 01:49 PM
Awesome! Funny, because the problem goes both ways. I don't read Arabic, but I've decided I need to learn. Outside of this website, everything else
I read regarding my music interests is in Arabic on Facebook and Sama3y. Facebook has a good translating mechanism built in. On Facebook, I am the
only one posting in English, it's a bit awkward, but it works. For Sama3y and your website, I use Google Translate but that is very time intensive...
took me a couple hours to register on Sama3y, lol. Anybody have tips on translating tools?