IMPORTANT: The Future of Brony Music

[Senator Myth]

various things

...But it's silly to think that those 'biases' would apply less in any other method than the one-post-per-musician thing. If I think Senator Myth sucks and isn't worth my time NO MATTER WHAT GRARGH then I'm not more likely to listen to his music if it gets its own feature post or if it gets thrown in with three random songs.

Seriously, I think I've zeroed in on the part that's confusing me. Explain that ^

It would be best if we figured out how the prereader system works and worked from there. I say that when we suggest this idea to Seth, we use whatever system the prereaders do, just to make it easier to integrate.

I think the pre-listener way is best. Embedding music into the browser without showing who wrote it (unless they had their name in the video) seems pretty good. And if the listener likes the song, they can navigate to your youtube and look at the other stuff you've done.

Adapting the prereader system exactly from Equestria Daily would be a terrible idea, V. Music and writing are not the same art forms. It doesn't take nearly as long to listen to a song as it does to read a piece of fanfiction, and the very idea of prereaders was created because it was impossible for one man to vet every piece of fanfiction that came in. So it wouldn't make sense just to copypaste the fanfic method and expect it to apply well to music.

And Jeffthestrider, I'm also quite against having it be like a secret, anonymous process. Let's face it, guys: the majority of the people who post to Equestria Daily can be found here on MLR. Our musicians are not QUITE so prolific that we need to set up a complex system of delivering tracks to various prelisteners and having a scoring method... preserving anonymity... AAGH. It seems like far more trouble than its worth.

Although if we did go that method, I'd want prelisteners to be paired with genres they enjoy.

But I don't like that idea. I'd rather have a system wherein we, the music community, decides daily what tracks we, the music community, best deserve being featured on Equestria Daily.

As a community, not as a bureaucracy. Does that kind of make sense? That's why I'm sort of pushing the open-forum idea.

[Versilaryan]

People can do that yes. There might be cries of "Oh, he did <insert shitty piece here>!" But if you lump them all together into one post, they WILL see that other piece there, or they WILL recognize the other songs they hated. If you have them in separate posts, they might recognize your name, and they might not. Chances are, unless you REALLY made an impression on them, they won't. I don't even know the usernames of the grand majority of those who wrote my favorite fanfictions; I've read so many of them. And even if they do, there's a larger chance they'll at least start listening to your piece before they notice the name.

---

Please explain how it wouldn't apply to music. I understand that they are two different art forms, one requiring a larger time commitment to enjoy than the other. But that doesn't necessarily mean the same system of approval won't work for both. The song is sent from the EQD submissions to the prelisteners. The prelisteners listen and say whether or not they think the song should be up on EQD. If it's voted favorably, then it gets added to the update queue.

I like the idea of the prelisteners staying anonymous. Nothing's stopping prelisteners from saying, "Oh, I'm a prelistener for EQD", but what is being stopped is "Prelistener so-and-so voted negatively on that song!" It shouldn't be an elitist clique -- I'm on the fence about having select people be prelisteners (there's upsides and downsides to both for and against) -- but there should be some form of anonymity on who votes what about which song. Spares the drama.

[PinkieGuy]

I like the idea of having a mix of music turning up in posts as opposed to an individual artist, if only because I love listening to a variety of music so getting mixes of new musical all at once is like Magical Christmas Wonderland(tm) for me.

I agree that we need some form of accessing music for people though, database or otherwise. I know that CR has one but, it's fiddly and annoying.

[Stars In Autumn]

various things

...But it's silly to think that those 'biases' would apply less in any other method than the one-post-per-musician thing. If I think Senator Myth sucks and isn't worth my time NO MATTER WHAT GRARGH then I'm not more likely to listen to his music if it gets its own feature post or if it gets thrown in with three random songs.

Seriously, I think I've zeroed in on the part that's confusing me. Explain that ^

It would be best if we figured out how the prereader system works and worked from there. I say that when we suggest this idea to Seth, we use whatever system the prereaders do, just to make it easier to integrate.

I think the pre-listener way is best. Embedding music into the browser without showing who wrote it (unless they had their name in the video) seems pretty good. And if the listener likes the song, they can navigate to your youtube and look at the other stuff you've done.

Adapting the prereader system exactly from Equestria Daily would be a terrible idea, V. Music and writing are not the same art forms. It doesn't take nearly as long to listen to a song as it does to read a piece of fanfiction, and the very idea of prereaders was created because it was impossible for one man to vet every piece of fanfiction that came in. So it wouldn't make sense just to copypaste the fanfic method and expect it to apply well to music.

And Jeffthestrider, I'm also quite against having it be like a secret, anonymous process. Let's face it, guys: the majority of the people who post to Equestria Daily can be found here on MLR. Our musicians are not QUITE so prolific that we need to set up a complex system of delivering tracks to various prelisteners and having a scoring method... preserving anonymity... AAGH. It seems like far more trouble than its worth.

Although if we did go that method, I'd want prelisteners to be paired with genres they enjoy.

But I don't like that idea. I'd rather have a system wherein we, the music community, decides daily what tracks we, the music community, best deserve being featured on Equestria Daily.

As a community, not as a bureaucracy. Does that kind of make sense? That's why I'm sort of pushing the open-forum idea.

I guess that's not what I meant. I honestly don't have much of a problem how it is done now. The only issue I think is that sometimes the posts of EqD are "Here's some music!" and then the embedded links. Either that or "Man, I still don't like dubstep, but here's some..." I think it'd be better if someone spent a bit more time explaining the three songs, or listing the description or each in the post.

I didn't mean an anonymous process either. All I meant was the first thing you see about the song isn't the artist, but rather the genre and maybe a description of the song. Users who like the song will naturally go to the user's channel and see their other stuff.

[RobotPony]

I think that both the pre-listeners and the single post for a musician are a good idea. Although they both have their problems we have to iron out. I think it's a good idea for it to be rated by people on here, and perhaps having a dedicated subforum for EqD submission would help.

Yeah, it's true that you might improve or you might radically change styles, and that might mean some people who might like your new music won't listen to you. Oh well. I really don't like the current system on EqD and rarely use it to check out songs. Most of the brony songs I have listened to have been suggested to by friends, and listened to on here - or a youtube channel of someone I liked after one of the first two happened.

It's just feels too cluttered and inconsistent on EqD. I can get posts where I like all three songs and posts where I like none of them. That will happen anyway, but with single musician posts, I can at least have easy access to the musician's other songs. So, if I like them, then I can go listen to their other work easily. I think this would lead to people listening to a lot more of your songs, just because of the easy access.

And yes - I probably won't listen to the artists I am not big on all the time, but I sometime do check out some fresh stuff from them. Particularly if it's getting good fanfare, it's easy to tell when a song is liked by comments, favorite and such. Will there be pigeonholing? Yes. But, there will always be that. You can't escape it and it isn't the end of the world.

That said, I do understand why some of you have a concern about this. It does hurt to be dismissed out-of-hand. But, I simply think the best way is to sort it by artist than a jumble of three random songs.

[Interrobang Pie]

tl;dr

Change nothing.

[Senator Myth]

tl;dr

Change nothing.

That's the basic vibe I'm getting out of this whole discussion. It certainly seemed that there was a lot of support for such a move in the Skype chat before I set up this thread, but I guess people mostly backed down from the idea since then.

Oh well, no big deal. It's certainly not such a huge matter that I'm going to keep pushing it in people's faces. Just something I thought we wanted to discuss.

[Makkon]

Well, I'll take it off of sticky I suppose. Everyone can feel free to keep commenting, maybe we can find a better system after all.

But still I don't think it's too much to ask the MLR community to step it up and post more feedback for people. Look for threads without posts, and be friendly to newcomers. A lot of them are posting their work for the very first time.

[Makkon]

[double post]

Lets all plan on having a skype meeting with some of the cast from Celestia Radio later today if you're all mostly available. We'll be discussing a new distribution model for our music.

Please message me on skype when you get the chance.

[Versilaryan]

At this point, I don't think a full rehaul is necessary. But I would like to see music get some more attention. Like Jeffthestrider said, it'd be nice if we could get a little more love than "Here, have some music!" Maybe two songs per post, and three if they're really short? Encouraging album art or at least finding pictures that work well with the song, so it's not just a random picture chosen by Seth? Letting the musicians add a little blurb about their music, kinda like the descriptions in the fic posts?

[NotACleverPony]

Let's have a music blog, call it Celestia Radio Blog or MLR Blog, or something else entirely so as to not appear overly affiliated with this board or CR.

In this dedicated blog, we'll have our own archive section with all the individual artist tags. Because we focus strictly on the music scene, everyone will get all the attention for each song submitted, ie. 1 blog entry per song.

Then.

Get an independent group of prelisteners to determine the "best of the day" and submit those to Equestria Daily, which Seth would then display as a single post during the evening exactly like his nightly roundups.

<3 Those are my two colorful cents on the issue <3

[Makkon]

Oh NC, you're so colorful :]

Fantastic idea, actually. I'm in favor for this one.

[Interrobang Pie]

The problem is bringing people to it when EqD already has a decent enough audience.

[NotACleverPony]

The problem is bringing people to it when EqD already has a decent enough audience.

I think it would be improper to demand more attention. Music is just a subsection of the brony culture, like fanfiction, fanart, news, games, videos etc.

Those who are interested in more brony music would follow the link to our blog inevitably. After all, how did you all end up in this forum? Occasional adverts in EqD and Remix War Result entries, possibly word of mouth. Here is my point, EqD filters their fanfiction entries. Those who want more can go to fanfiction.net etc. We can be a good depository for brony music, and furthermore, it's our blog! We dont have to be just a showcase We can have news and discussion entries relevant to our needs and whatnot.

What we can provide for a musician in the blog would be 1) a dedicated blog entry for the track, which means individualized comments (hopefully). 2) that we will post the entry faster than EQD, because the latter has other things to post about - while we focus strictly on music. 3) a dedicated artist archive section via tags. 4) remember, every submitted entry will be posted. The only selection aspect comes into play /after/ the entry is posted. Which means if you do really well in the blog, you might get selected to be on the EqD entry.

We have no right to go to EqD and demand the spotlight for every single song. There's too many of us, and a lot of what is presented in there lately is in dire need of a quality check.

We should call this blog... Equestria Beat! or Equestria Pulse or something.

And if none of you really feels like starting this, I'll do it. I think it's really worth it.

[Makkon]

The more you talk about it, the better it's starting to sound.

Remember guys, we also have an invaluable partnership with Celestia Radio. They have mentioned numerous times that they are willing and able to help us out in this matter.
Again, we'll be having a skype discussion about a possible distribution model later today. Please message me on skype if you're interested in joining in!

[Senator Myth]

NotaClever's plan seems like the best plan. It's a pretty fair balance between all of the ideas presented in this thread.

...Yeah, don't really have anything else to say about it. I say let's do it!

[RobotPony]

It's certainly an improvement and would give a place for people to go for brony music. I support it.

[Makkon]

Well, as sort of the representative from Celestia Radio, I'd like to thank all of you guys who have taken the time to upload your latest and greatest music to us. I know that our listeners always love hearing the newest stuff, and we've had a great experience thus far since I've been DJing with you guys giving us first exclusive picks of your best WIPs.

DJAlexS and PinkieCake to name just a few who have realized the advertising potential and immediate feedback that we can provide for you guys. And not to mention, we get even more listeners when you promote us by letting us play your music! It's definitely a reciprocating benefit for all of us. If you think it would be beneficial to put up some kind of 'how to upload' guide or something in reference to how new music is given to us at CR, please let me know, I would love to help.

And as always, you can just send me your latest stuff on Skype and I'll play it live anytime I'm on air at CRadio (which is everyday).

Now, in reference to a mode of advertisement via EDaily, it is getting difficult for Sethisto to keep up with all the demands. I wonder if it would be simpler for them to have like a download link or something on their site (as a tab in the top menu) where people could access an archive of music? Possibly with a featured song of the day or something.

DJShammy

Lets make this happen too. XD

[[voodoopony]]

While all these ideas seem great to me, the only bug I see is while there's plenty of music, not a whole lot of bronies are into it in general. This forum is almost all producers showing each other their stuff. Even with EqD marketing us, we still don't have a very large following [or, not big enough]. I have a feeling it's going to be the same way with the blog.

But that's just me being cynical. Good luck! :D

[Pinkie Cake]

Lots of good ideas here. I try to put my suggestion/idea in words here.

Running a similar blog to EqD isn't a bad idea, but the problem is that nopony will know about it. But my idea is this:

We have our own blog.

We all can post in it our music and we can write a description or just random text ourselves

Once in a while (2-4 times per week) our moderator gathers all the recent song and compiles them in a single post that is featured in EqD. Something similar to Drawfriend Stuff

There would be a button from EqD to our music blog ofc if somepony would want to hear a songs earlyer or post a comment on specific track/artist if they want to, find links to all of our gathering places and our youtubes, soundclouds, bandcamps...


We would take a piece of EqD to ourselves and rule it as kings

P.S. I just read NACPs post again, well my idea is similar. And I still think that his idea is the best

[Snappy Scoop]

Loving the ideas in this thread, and I especially support NotAClever's plan the most, although the blog would probably need some kind of advertising on EqD itself, either in the music posts or as a link on the page somewhere so that all the bronies who frequent EqD (as in every brony ever) knows where all their music updates have disappeared too.

Other than that I think that is the best idea so far for sure.

[Icky]

Is it cOLD in here, or is it just me?

[bartekko]

Is it cOLD in here, or is it just me?

Good way to bump a topic.
In theory, we have prelisteners, but that's the only thing that changed in eqd's way of handling music.
Also, prelisteners are not handled the way they should be: Their feedback is not sent back to the author, and in many cases (such as mine) not a single word is sent back in case of not making it to eqd, making it feel like giving someone the finger and punching in the face

[Freewave]

Hmm this is a well needed bump as any of the times I've submitted to EqD I too have not received ANY reply back. Part of their TOA is that any music submission will recieve a response and I've seen that's simply not the case from personal experience which is very frustrating. Some people have had success sending a submission of other people's vids but even then that just seems more like a random success then a rule of thumb.

It's a shame as obviously the top tier of artists have loads of subscribers, can put out a great track, and it will be on there the next day and they would have thousands of views with or w/o EqD. It seems EqD isn't against putting a new artist's music on there when its good but they do avoid repeating giving further exposure to artists who then try to get on there again at a later point. I appreciated the one time I made it on EdD for a 5 week old track (w/o the remix credit mind you) but I've never but shown another glance since then or gotten an email response on further submissions. As people have said its frustrating to the point of being insulting by not getting a response or having it being such a closed hidden process of how they operate. Even a general rejection letter would be an improvement over no response. Is there anyone from EqD on MLR who can even speak or address these concerns here?

Honestly maybe the best bet might be to look for alternatives to expose our music to other bronies. Places like http://www.equestrianbeat.com/ may have closed for business but were a good idea and I think there may be other good alternatives out there. While they don't have the readership of EqD they may be more better suited to just music and can gain some readership. If there's any alternatives on who to submit to then let's discuss that in here rather than just complain about EqD which may be a lost cause. Maybe even organize around an existing blog or site or start up a new blog if nothing else really fits that need.

Other then that I recommend the slow growth process of gaining fans simply by networking with other artists on soundcloud, youtube, toastbeard, mlr, tumblr, etc and then trying to comment on other's work and being there for for your fellow brony artists; just being present and listening as much as you are producing. But if anyone has any brilliant ideas on making it easier to get their music to brony non-musicians rather than to just each other I'm all ears on what can be done...

[SeventhElement]

Last paragraph.

^this

I realize I'm kinda new here and I'm not exactly a shimmering pillar of the community, but I think DJ Pon-3 is right. As nice as it would be to have a conduit for all the wonderful musicians here to spread outwards in to fame or familiarity rather, it's a hard thing to do just by ourselves(referring to MLR as a whole). To get partnered with a site like EqD would be nice, but I'm not sure if that's exactly pragmatic or not either(It's a big site, packed with a lot of stuff). If we ran anything like a blog site, that would put a work load on a certain panel of individuals that would be working constantly to update with new content(not that there's not a ton of content to update with), but it would take a serious amount of time and effort. Getting followers like EqD might be kinda difficult because the readers of that look for much, much more than just music. This might feel like a blog for audiophiles. Unless someone has a solution otherwise.

I realize my paragraph is sort of a jumble of whimsical nonsense, but does anything I say make any sense at all?