EqD Music

[KingTrollestia]

I wish the list itself would include more genres. I'd love to see Ambient, Avant Garde, Trap, and Chillout up there

[DongleKumquat]

I guess ill jump in and give my two cents. I believe there were two reasons for getting rid of motd:

1. We had to judge a FLOOD of stuff almost every day. It was getting near impossible to do, and I imagine Seth was getting tired of it. Now, I know that it won't stop the torrent of music being sent to the EqD inbox, but at least now it'll be much easier to discern between a track to be rejected and a track to be spotlit.

2. We figured that EqD should really only be a place for the best of the best. Since we were posting upwards of 20 songs per day, pony music in general was just becoming a joke. We also had hoped that this would inspire people to bring it to the next level and become even more well-versed in composition. Getting onto motd was just too easy.

*crouches on floor and covers head*

[Forza SoundFire]

Why I do/don't like MotD & EqDM and ways to improve~

MotD works well as means of discovering new material from reasonably unknown artists, as the bar is low. This works in its favour. However, it's by no means of reliable way of hearing what you might consider 'good' (subject to your taste and that of the judges).
MotD is an unreliable tool of discovery, but succeeds in finding people new artists they might like.

EqD Music I think has failed in this regard due to the system that they have made (or adopted). EqDM is basically a ranking system, meaning if you never make it as far as "best of today", you'll fall off the face of the Earth unless you've got an active following looking for you.
Given, there is a search tool and new submissions page, but these are *absolutely useless* tools for discovering.
This system keeps the top on top, and the unknown in the gutter.

How this system can be improved, is by building a system of suggested songs. This can be built by creating a web of likes and dislikes between songs based on the individual user +/- vote.
The experience of the user then becomes a tailored experience of songs that they might also like.
You can also build systems whereby a song with few +/- votes is given priority to collect enough information to suggest (or not suggest) it to an audience.
This is *real* feedback for musicians (sometimes it'll hurt, sorry), and creates an experience for a user that they can hear a diverse range of things they'll probably like.


Hope that brings to light some of the issues I see with EqDM, which I think is a step in the wrong direction from MotD.

[itroitnyah]

Funnyjunk is set up really well, in that the users can thumb up content that they like, and thumb down that which they don't like. There's also a Top in the Past 24 Hours section where the top posts of the day are and you can browse through them. There is also a New Submissions section where the newest posts are shown and you can start browsing through posts starting there. And then if you go onto a channel such as ponytime or walking-deadtime or something, there's another section for Top in the Past 7 Days where you can look at the top posts from the past seven days. Very well set up, and very convenient to use, especially since really bad posts won't somehow end up on the front page (unless it's "no posts on sunday" day again).

EqDM is very linear to how FunnyJunk is set up, and I think that EqDM would really soar into popularity if it used Funnyjunk as a template of how to be set up. It doesn't have to look the same, but it should have some of the same functionalities, such as "Top of the past 24 hours" and "top of the past 7 days" and then 'channels' for different genres if you just want to listen to a certain genre, and then there can be a search function and a "new submissions" function, etc. Of course, you won't need to create an account for EqDM, you just need to hit submit and put a link to the song on youtube/soundcloud, and once a song is submitted, the system will no longer allow the same URL to be submitted, with is how to get rid of reposts. This would eliminate much complaining, as quality control would be a universal thing, so then people wouldn't complain about how "prelisteners/seth is discriminating" or whatever. People would no longer complain about reposts as a song would only have 2 chances to get posted, once from youtube, and once from soundcloud. The only real thing that I could see people complaining about is that "people didn't vote my song well" or "I made this song, and I wanted to submit it/didn't want to submit it but somebody submitted it for me".

Of course, these changes haven't taken place just yet, I don't think. I haven't been on EqDM for such a long time and I can't check right now as the school system blocks the website, so I can't really tell whether I look like an idiot or not, but you get the idea.

[Freewave]

I guess ill jump in and give my two cents. I believe there were two reasons for getting rid of motd:

1. We had to judge a FLOOD of stuff almost every day. It was getting near impossible to do, and I imagine Seth was getting tired of it. Now, I know that it won't stop the torrent of music being sent to the EqD inbox, but at least now it'll be much easier to discern between a track to be rejected and a track to be spotlit.

Will it? The flood will not stop as that's how many people are making music. Are listeners planning on still listening to submitted tracks because they describe getting rid of motd as lessening the workload and you would still need to screen all the same tracks for the spotlights. It's still the same job right?

2. We figured that EqD should really only be a place for the best of the best. Since we were posting upwards of 20 songs per day, pony music in general was just becoming a joke. We also had hoped that this would inspire people to bring it to the next level and become even more well-versed in composition. Getting onto motd was just too easy.

*crouches on floor and covers head*

Again there's a lot of great music that makes it onto motd that isn't spotlit. Until I see more tracks on the spotlight (there's only 50 a month now) and a tightening of motd standards from "barely passable" to good (what's it's supposed to be) then i don't understand this argument. Listeners just need to tighten up what they put on the site and unless i'm mistaken getting rid motd doesn't stop that. It only would cause more butthurt if 90-95% of music is outright rejected....I've talked at length on the benefits of motd, so just review what i've said on that earlier in this thread.

EQDMusic is not a suitable replacement yet. It continues to get better but its far off on functioning like motd is designed to. The only advantage i see is allowing better known musicians to thrive on popularity yet again while others disappear immediately. It also creates an environment where other musicians could downvote others so their tracks would stand a chance and that's not good.

[ph00tbag]

How this system can be improved, is by building a system of suggested songs. This can be built by creating a web of likes and dislikes between songs based on the individual user +/- vote.
The experience of the user then becomes a tailored experience of songs that they might also like.
You can also build systems whereby a song with few +/- votes is given priority to collect enough information to suggest (or not suggest) it to an audience.
This is *real* feedback for musicians (sometimes it'll hurt, sorry), and creates an experience for a user that they can hear a diverse range of things they'll probably like.

I really like this suggestion. With tweaking, I think it could make for a really solid system.