Downward Trajectory of Brony Music (New Blog Launch pg 3 on)

[ArisingFlame]

Maybe I need a bigger cake.

[Nine Volt]

You know what, Eery, I'd like to apologize for being a dick in my response to your post. I'm truly, honestly sorry. I love you, man (in a platonic way, of course). And I'm not just saying that.

Bros?

[ArisingFlame]

I knew I needed a bigger cake!

[ExoBassTix]

Look at what this thread has become.
It entered this stage fairly fast. People using other people's habits as defense for their own statements. People arguing about whether a term applies to someone's rambling or not. People fighting to get the satisfaction of having the last word.
Are you guys happy with what this thread has become? I used to see discussion about improving plans of the blog and how it's gonna do what it's intended to do. Here is arguing about why we are not, and othere things that are even further from it.

EDIT - four posts that happened while I was writing and re-writing this lol. Well, conflict between two dissolved, storm subsided?

[ClaviSound]

Hi ExoBassTix, I like your idea. Can we return to relevancy now?

Well, would you give alternatives to something that you really don't care much about? It's not itroitnyah's idea and he doesn't have anything invested into it, so why should he care? He's got no reason to.

He obviously does care enough to point out everything he doesn't like about it, and obviously has previous experience with things like the MiAmore Media and Equestrian Reverb groups he mentioned. He isn't ignorant. So what's stopping him from giving pointers?

The point is that you guys need to take initiative too. It's not itroitnyah's blog and it's not my blog, we shouldn't have to come up with ways to fix the problems we've pointed out.

I won't point you to that feedback post another time, but if you point out these problems, you must have some other thought running around in your head that tells you it could be done better another way, otherwise you wouldn't think it's a problem.

It's just words, sheesh. We're not asking for you to join the team, just to say what options you think we might have. It's really not that hard; heck, if you just said "EFN/EqD/Celestia Radio/DHN/namehere does it right," that would be better than nothing! And if you really, really just want to point out what's wrong and not feel like helping fix it, I'm sorry, but that's a terrible double standard that's never helped anything and you need to either be nicer saying it or not say it at all. There's a difference between pointing out mistakes and not offering advice because you don't want to hold someone's/something's hand, and pointing out mistakes and not offering advice because you're too lazy.

you guys need to take initiative too.

"Too" implies more than just one party. We're perfectly willing to fix flaws - it's a malleable structure still and we haven't finalized a lot of things (and we actually probably won't finalize until we're almost ready to release) - but these "flaws" haven't really been qualified, only quantified. itroitnyah's final criticisms before things got off-topic were in this post:

So far, #3, 4, 6 and 11 are the only items in your list that are different than what all or most the other promotional sites had, and 4 and 6 are only minor differences.

...

#8 just plain confuses me. While not all of the promotional blogs/sites had focus on musicians, I don't see why this will offer a huge advantage. Here, let me list a disadvantage. I'll have no idea what songs that the artist has made that are the big and incredible ones and which ones aren't all that good. And I don't want to go over to their channel and go song by song listening to try and find a good one, I'll lose my attention span pretty quickly.

(To answer itroitnyah's given disadvantage here, the artist list would likely include within the material posted the best songs the artist has made, in the same vein as the Brony Musician Directory features songs from the artists listed. Also, hopefully the artist him/herself already advertises his/her best work on his/her channel efficiently; if not, then that's the fault of the musician.)

So we have flaws. You've made that perfectly clear. But most of them are about the success of this blog, which can be on the whole answered with "okay, so the blog doesn't make it, so what? We'll just start again."

What we need to hear at this stage is what flaws are showing up in the structure we're laying down. Yes, other sites had some similar features we did. So? What links that to "blog's gonna fail"? What intrinsic quality of what we're doing is going to cause it to come crashing down? You've made correlations but haven't linked them to causes; as I explained previously Equestrian Reverb and MiAmore faced problems we won't have (well, circumstances outside our control can't be guaranteed not to happen, but I don't think we have need for a Project Purple Pony). So, what's the beef?

[Nine Volt]

Water under the bridge.

Gladly.

What we need to hear at this stage is what flaws are showing up in the structure we're laying down. Yes, other sites had some similar features we did. So? What links that to "blog's gonna fail"? What intrinsic quality of what we're doing is going to cause it to come crashing down? You've made correlations but haven't linked them to causes; as I explained previously Equestrian Reverb and MiAmore faced problems we won't have (well, circumstances outside our control can't be guaranteed not to happen, but I don't think we have need for a Project Purple Pony). So, what's the beef?

See, I don't think that this blog will fail, per se... I just more think that this will kind of flounder around, slowly burning until finally and quietly it goes out, like a campfire. What links similar features of other sites to "blog's gonna fail" isn't so much that they're similar, but the fact that they're similar and there's not really much to distinguish between, not much to make it stand out. To last, you've gotta fill a niche. Kyoga did it with his dark ambient, and he's made quite a name for himself in the brony fandom. Now take that and apply it to your blog. What will make people want to visit? What makes it stand out from the crowd? Why should we care about it?

I suppose the first step would be to examine the problems which caused MiAmore and Equestrian Reverb to fail and trying your hardest to ensure they don't happen. Once that's done, try... I don't know. I haven't slept in over 40 hours (I have an excuse: I just started watching Breaking Bad. Well, I don't know if I can say "just" when I started about 15 hours ago...).

[Freewave]

I'm going to do any further coordination of the blog launch on our skype and via google doc and just keep that internal at this point. I don't need to debate it's usefulness, whether it will be sustainable, or if it's different then other start-ups. I've had ample time to explain our goals and had loads of opinions from everyone. I will thank those that gave constructive criticism that helped shape this project to something more attainable.

Regarding itroitnyah, criticism has to be constructive and i warned him that he was overly cynical in his points and we don't have time to win over those who seem convinced it will fail. I gave him repeated warnings he needed to step back and he ignored them. He forced my hand, i gave him a 1 day ban, and i hope he cools off.

I will say this is the one way i can contribute at this point of mlr's failed reboot. Circuitfry and Derpy Grooves are gone and i do not think they are coming back. Circuitfry so far is not turning over any controls or administration of this site to Stars or myself even though he offered to and we've nicely asked for him to complete that action. MLR is a headless horse at this point.

If we want MLR to thrive as a community site for brony music I have to take steps to make that happen. This is the one i think will succeed. I cannot spend weeks debating the future of a site which needs to successfully launch first. When its pages and pages of arguing back and forth its a waste of everyone's time and this has become a trademark for how things go on mlr. I expect that people should know when to disengage and not force thread locks. But I'm locking it now.

I'll do another thread when (IF) this blog launches and i hope people will support that because i really think that WE can turn things around here and in the community. If it doesn't work and it does not have support then that will likely be the end of my involvement and MLR can continue to be the next person's problem. I'm really trying to help this site back on its feet (at the expense of putting out my own music) but I'm not seeing the support from a lot of you or that you understand the gravity of the situation. I really hope when this launches you can see it's usefulness, but that will be out of my hands like a lot of things are. Wish this luck please.