EqD music changes

[Sonarch]

Another thing to note; this whole thing is pretty experimental and subject to change. If nobody clicks on the big music posts, they'll realize it's not working. If people are clicking on or viewing them, then it's obviously not a bad system because it's getting attention to the musicians. I think with time we will see whether or not the system works.

[DjMidli]

That's not being a popularity whore (unless that is ALL you are doign it for) that's part of trying to be successful at being a non label musician.

I didn't make my point clear in my original statement. I did mean my OP exactly as you said "Unless that's all you are doing it for". Of course artists are going to promote their work and get out the message, and there's obviously nothing wrong with that.

On your point #2

Please keep in mind that the Rainbow Factory fanfic is not the same as the piece of music under the same name and it was made based on that song (the popular song came first then came the grimdark fanfic).

My understanding was that the Rainbow factory song was inspired by the rainbow factory fic, this was a point that i've seen reiterated in some fic based IRCs so I guess some people have it wrong and in turn so did I.

On your final point as well, I understand it all. I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents to the argument that new and current artists should continue making their awesome tunes and to not be discouraged if they don't get on equestria daily . Essentially the same thing you said "Still you have to make this fun despite all this drama or its a waste of time for you.".


P.S. Given the length of your rebutall, I Sincerely hope I haven't aggro'd you in any way with my original posting, if I have, my apologies, and I shall send you a 2-4 of Canadian moosehead beer as apology gift .

[CommandSpry]

Pfft
enough reasoning

EQD IS SUCK ONLI POPULAR SONG FEATURE I SPIT IN THE MOUTH OF EQD GO TO HOME!

[Freewave]

P.S. Given the length of your rebutall, I Sincerely hope I haven't aggro'd you in any way with my original posting, if I have, my apologies, and I shall send you a 2-4 of Canadian moosehead beer as apology gift .

Ha ha no not aggro'd at all just felt like putting some text walls and thoughts out there. Much easier to talk about it as a community then to be silent and frustrated i say. However I'd be glad to share a few beers anytime

[Evine]

If you think getting on EqD is a one way trip to success then your quite frankly fooling yourself.

And CommandSpry, it isn't gonna "work" because people don't care about shitty music. And with the new system in place, in time the spotlight music might actually get 10.000-20.000 views from EqD rather than the 2.000-3.000 they get now. I remember back in summer 2011, just about every PMV on EqD got around 5.000 views, now they get around 2.000, the producer to audience ratio has been skewed. And both are much bigger now than they were in the past.

To example: As of this posting 25 subscribers, the music is great and there's a PMV going with it. And it was in a spotlight music on EqD. Subscribers still: 25


If you want some more mentally satisfying work, go join some group project, and make music for that. Then you'll actually get critique on your work. Or even fan music for a fanfic, a piece of art just something other than the show itself.

[K3WRO]

Pfft
enough reasoning

EQD IS SUCK ONLI POPULAR SONG FEATURE I SPIT IN THE MOUTH OF EQD GO TO HOME!

cmmdspry plz

[LoreRD]

If you think getting on EqD is a one way trip to success then your quite frankly fooling yourself.

And CommandSpry, it isn't gonna "work" because people don't care about shitty music. And with the new system in place, in time the spotlight music might actually get 10.000-20.000 views from EqD rather than the 2.000-3.000 they get now. I remember back in summer 2011, just about every PMV on EqD got around 5.000 views, now they get around 2.000, the producer to audience ratio has been skewed. And both are much bigger now than they were in the past.

To example: As of this posting 25 subscribers, the music is great and there's a PMV going with it. And it was in a spotlight music on EqD. Subscribers still: 25


If you want some more mentally satisfying work, go join some group project, and make music for that. Then you'll actually get critique on your work. Or even fan music for a fanfic, a piece of art just something other than the show itself.

Must've been really unlucky
I got a piano improv posted in Music of the Day, and got 8 subs from it.

[Freewave]

It's already been discussed that the video thumbnail often decides how many people actually click on it and that views don't necessarily = a lot of subscriptions. One EQD feature will not make you a star.

Remember the path to success:
* a lot of people ACTUALLY click on the video and listen,
* a lot of people like it enough to favorite it,
* a lot of people then skip past the EQD embed and view the users page
* Based on what they see there (and other songs available) they then subscribe to that artist because they are SO impressed.
* others then see that song favorited by a friend or that channel subscribed in their feeed and then follow steps 1-4 and the cycle continues for awhile.

If lots of people follow steps 1-5 you may see a big impact, the only way to get a subscription is for a person to go through steps 1-4. If not you'll just have to keep trying and hope for small growth. People may give you more chances when they begin to recognize your name. Again brony audiences are getting harder and harder to be impressed and to stand out from each other. High supply and low demand tbh. Basic economics. At least try to get on EQD and let capitalism take over rather than trying to sell your music on a street corner. Are their flaws in the system? Of course.

[itroitnyah]

It's already been discussed that the video thumbnail often decides how many people actually click on it and that views don't necessarily = a lot of subscriptions. One EQD feature will not make you a star.

Remember the path to success:
* a lot of people ACTUALLY click on the video and listen,
* a lot of people then favorite it,
* a lot of people then skip past the EQD embed and view the users page
* Based on what they see there (and other songs available) they then subscribe to that artist because they are SO impressed.
* others then see that song favorited by a friend or that channel subscribed in their feed and then follow steps 1-4 and the cycle continues for awhile.

If lots of people follow steps 1-5 you may see a big impact, the only way to get a subscription is for a person to go through steps 1-4. If not you'll just have to keep trying and hope for small growth. People may give you more chances when they begin to recognize your name. Again brony audiences are getting harder and harder to be impressed and to stand out from each other. High supply and low demand tbh. Basic economics. At least try to get on EQD and let capitalism take over rather than trying to sell your music on a street corner. Are their flaws in the system? Of course.

Freewave has the right idea here. It's not about the views that the video or song gets, it's about the quality. Remember, EqD posts 10 songs a night, because that's their plan, and not all the songs are going to be amazing quality like the bigger producers. Some days, EqD might get 35 submissions, and 20 of them will be really good quality, and very well composed and put together, but then the next day they'll get 28 submissions and 20 of them will be only mediocre or worse. Now EqD has to pick 10 from the 25 that didn't make the spot light and feature them. But this day would also put them in a jam. Because visitors would complain about how bad the songs are, and how brony music is all going downhill or whatnot. But if they choose to feature less songs to get rid of this problem, people will complain that the lower artists aren't getting enough attention, and the artists that didn't get featured, upon seeing this lowering of the featured songs in the nightly 10 post, would feel insulted that EqD would subtly hint that their work isn't worthy of Equestria Daily. It's all dependent on how much work is submitted that day and the quality of the work submitted.

Which also means that if you happen to get an email announcing your achievement of getting onto EqD, and then week later you've only gone up about 5-10 or so subscribers, that probably means that it was one of those days.

But a lot of it also has to do with what's "marketable", so to speak. Equestria Daily does a good job of featuring an even spread over the many many genres of music that are submitted. If you make EqD, and your piece is one of the best on there, almost worthy of the spotlight features, and still doesn't get a whole ton of subscribers, it's probably because the genre you made isn't exactly the most popular. Just look at the most popular brony producers of all time. Tombstone, Alex S, Glaze, Omnipony, DJ HMH, Aviators, Silvahound, Archie V... All of those people have one thing in common between the music they make, even if the genres aren't exactly the same. They make music that falls under subcategories of electronic music. Dubstep, house, DnB. It's because those are the genres that are popular and mainstream right now.

However, don't let that demotivate you from making your favorite genre of music, just because it may not be as popular as those electric genres. There are all these other bronys and pegasisters out there who share your interest in your favorite genre. Make it so that they can enjoy pony (insert genre) too.

[Applejinx]

But a lot of it also has to do with what's "marketable", so to speak. Equestria Daily does a good job of featuring an even spread over the many many genres of music that are submitted. If you make EqD, and your piece is one of the best on there, almost worthy of the spotlight features, and still doesn't get a whole ton of subscribers, it's probably because the genre you made isn't exactly the most popular. Just look at the most popular brony producers of all time. Tombstone, Alex S, Glaze, Omnipony, DJ HMH, Aviators, Silvahound, Archie V... All of those people have one thing in common between the music they make, even if the genres aren't exactly the same. They make music that falls under subcategories of electronic music. Dubstep, house, DnB. It's because those are the genres that are popular and mainstream right now.

Indeed. I put an awful lot into the actual music part of my most recent song, but I thought it hadn't made it to EqD because it got stuffed into the bottom of a nightly music post. I didn't actually notice an effect because it was an order of magnitude less than a recent spotlight post.

And they misspelled my name and made up a silly sounding genre- I guess they're not fooling about wanting something to that effect with the post. I had this idea that they knew me from having given me a recent spotlight and thought the genre and stuff was so obvious that I should just throw them a link. Maybe if I had included my name in the email they wouldn't have spelled it wrong.

It is just heartbreaking sometimes, honestly. At some point I'll get up the courage (and inspiration) to do another full-on original pony song with vocals and full production- it was kinda hard grueling work and wrecked my voice and put me behind on other projects, because I thought that for once I had a frickin' hit on my hands. I still think that, but you get one chance and I'm clearly not as special as I wished I would be.

I guess I have to try even harder- when I can, which ain't happening right now. I'm beat.

[Sonarch]

I've noticed that too, how most of the popular brony musicians are the ones doing the popular electronic genres. I mean, there's always exceptions to that, but it's definitely a trend. Which really sucks for those guys who love doing other genres, whose music will be more likely to get less attention. But I think if you're enjoying what you're doing, the popularity shouldn't be too much of an issue. I have no idea what kinds of music I want to do since I have no favorite genre and I enjoy pretty much everything, so I'm just going to play around with different kinds of music and see what I like and what i'm good at.

And to Applejinx, i'm really sorry to hear that you put so much effort into a song and it didn't go well on EqD. If it was posted, i'll get to hearing it eventually (if I can ever catch up with the music posts on EqD). I think one factor might be timing. When you finish your song and when it gets posted probably have a huge effect on how many people listen to it and its resulting popularity. I mean, if a song gets posted during a day when a lot of people are occupied with something, like on the day of the Superbowl or on Christmas or something like that, or even just being posted at a time when not many people are online, perhaps not as many people will see it or have time to listen to it, and subsequently fewer people are sharing it with others, and that might lead to it getting little notice. I could be wrong, but I feel like uncontrollable things like that could influence the success of a certain track. So the point is, I guess, that sometimes you can get unlucky with a certain song, but that doesn't mean that everything you do sucks. Or something. I tend to get a little lost typing out my thoughts in these posts.

[Rainbowdutch]

I just read through the whole thread now and you guys pretty much answered most of your questions yourself.
however, is there anything still not clear about the new system? cause if there isn't you could ask me anytime.

[Rainbowdutch]

I do wanna throw in though that the "music of the day" post was created because we prelisteners thought that the bar for music was too high. equestria daily has about 2-3 music spotlight posts per day and we have to vote so that those spots get filled with the best music. we prelisteners were of the opinion that we were rejecting stuff that shouldn't be rejected because of this. we thought that some stuff did deserve at least some attention. however the 2-3 spotlight posts containing ~3 songs a day was a perfect balance. not too much so people got bored and still enough for songs to get noticed.

now with the "music of the day" posts are for the songs that we think still deserve attention, and more importantly the musicians who deserve some motivation to continue creating music. of course the spotlight posts will still contain the best music that we get, but see the "music of the day" post as the honorable second place.

[Sonarch]

we prelisteners

I'm assuming you're a prelistener, then? cool.

Yeah, we've kinda already answered our questions and now I think it's mostly discussion about the music of the day posts and our opinions on it. But you're saying the bar was too high in the first place, and that we shouldn't feel insulted at being featured in the Music of the Day posts because the songs in them are worthy of recognition, right?

[Rainbowdutch]

we prelisteners

I'm assuming you're a prelistener, then? cool.

Yeah, we've kinda already answered our questions and now I think it's mostly discussion about the music of the day posts and our opinions on it. But you're saying the bar was too high in the first place, and that we shouldn't feel insulted at being featured in the Music of the Day posts because the songs in them are worthy of recognition, right?

yes I am a prelistener and yes you are completely right. The bar was very high but couldn't be lowered if we kept the ~3 songs per spotlight system because people will loose interest (looking at the amount of people who actually press the "read more" button). So right now we are kinda experimenting with this format and seeing how this will effect the amount of views on the spotlight and music of the day posts.

[Magnitude Zero]

@Rainbowdutch: Thank you, that actually clears things up quite a bit. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out now

[Applejinx]

Just keep doing the best you can. That's all anypony can ask <3

[Stu Beef]

Honestly, I don't think we can look at what they are doing and blame them for it. I feel as though something like this was bound to happen anyway. If you look at the kind of content that was produced say a year/year and a half ago in the community and the kind of attention it has gotten you'll see a higher viewer:content ratio. I remember when "brony" was such an amazing novelty, and the fact that ANYONE would take the time to produce something with any value at all was mind blowing. Now we've sort of settled into a groove where TONS of people are putting out stuff CONSTANTLY and this niche is just not big enough to contain it all; we're over-saturated!

I'm all for giving people a chance to be heard, but I think there will always be a separation from people who can do this kind of thing on a professional level and people that are maybe not there yet. Unless we can send out a world-wide notice saying, "Hey dudes, chill out with all the stuff for a little bit ok? The market is kind of not in your favor right now and we all need a break.", there's gonna be those who've established themselves as figures worthy of spotlight, and those who might deserve it, but still have to work their way to it.

[ph00tbag]

Incidentally, I tend to find more music I like in the Music of the Day posts than I do in the spotlight posts.