MLP Remix Archive

[Jayce]

http://divinelegy.com/mlp/

Good day Everypony!

I'm Jayce and I represent a large portion of the Dance Dance Revolution / In the Groove / Stepmania Dancing Game Community, as a result of this whole My Little Pony craze we have found that a lot of remixes (made by yourself and others), are getting picked up and made into step charts for these games.

In my attempt to tie the community together I run one of the largest step chart archives on the web ( http://divinelegy.com/simfiles/ ), members upload their own step charts to any song they wish and I have found that MLP is starting to become an increasingly common thing.

So what does this have to do with MLP Remixes?
Nothing really, just a brief history lesson so that I can pitch this a little better.

My goal is to host the largest online archive of pony music that allows you to freely search for and download music via a giant list containing just about every artist that has (or still does), produced music. As it stands there are well over 500 folders hosted and managing such an archive single handed is proving to be difficult.

What I have done is formed a new archive dedicated entirely for archiving remixes generated by you guys, if you are interested, I can offer you ftp access to your own personal webspace with unlimited disk space at something like http://divinelegy.com/mlp/yourname/

This is by no means a rival site to something like EQBeats which is already very involved in this site, but is to serve as a bridge between communities, this archive fills in the gaps by hosting files of users that may no longer be in the game or may not be signed up to EQBeats. Users will not only have the ability to upload their own content that instantly shows up in the archive but will also be able to link to and customise their personal folders, you could set up your own web page showing your content in any format you wish via the same address mentioned above, it all comes down to what you're capable of.

Interested?

If you're an upcoming artist or just want to manage the content I already have hosted, send an email with your desired username to [email protected] or PM me here, likewise if you want to access your files that are already hosted send that instead (along with adequate proof that you're the rightful owner of the content if you're sending an email). You will gain a permanent space to manage all of your content any way you wish.


If a new song has come out and the Artist hasn't uploaded it here then it might be a little while before it gets found and added, shoot an email to [email protected] along with a link to the mp3 and it will be added to the queue!


I can only ask that you share this with anyone you know that may be interested, I did a large youtube sweep today for most of the artists on the site but there's a high chance that some of them may not have noticed it for whatever reason.


Finally, if you notice anything going haywire, send an email to [email protected] with the subject heading BUG, be sure to include as much information as you can about your browser and what you were doing when it happened.

Thanks for taking the time to read!
I only launched the site about a week ago so there are still a lot of things that I need to get done, by all means if you have any suggestions that you think will help improve the site please let me know.

[soup2504]

It's a good idea, but I am noticing some paid music in there, and you're handing downloads out to these.

I'm pretty sure the creators wouldn't be too happy about that.

[Freewave]

Yeah I noticed that Silva Hound's catalog (minus the most recent ep) were all up and were 128bit mp3 so likely ripped from bandcamp rather even bought at full quality (unless those WERE ok'd). While I'm all for completeness and there is the already the brony torrent thread on pony chan that somewhat does the same thing MINUS the pay tracks. It is used for a directory to help people find the original artists and it APPEARS you got started WAY before you started asking people. I did receive this same pm on youtube this week and people are just becoming aware of the site (saw on tumblr), but it doesn't seem to add up. This kind of site bypasses the authors and also never allows artists to even see people downloading their material, giving them feedback, or likely give their permission to do so which I'm not sure everyone would necessarily be thrilled about (although it's convenient for downloaders). Plus it's hardly a site made and maintained for and by bronies and I have no idea how this is supposed to tie in to stepmania if you are just allowing people to download mp3's.

[Jayce]

It's a good idea, but I am noticing some paid music in there, and you're handing downloads out to these.

I'm pretty sure the creators wouldn't be too happy about that.

Thanks, regarding the paid music I'll have to admit I was completely unaware of it, like Pon-3 said there is a pony torrent out there packed full of songs and from that standpoint I had no means of determining this, so I can only apologise and ask which artists it applies to so that I can remove their content, especially while the site is still in its baby stages.

Yeah I noticed that Silva Hound's catalog (minus the most recent ep) were all up and were 128bit mp3 so likely ripped from bandcamp rather even bought at full quality (unless those WERE ok'd). While I'm all for completeness and there is the already the brony torrent thread on pony chan that somewhat does the same thing MINUS the pay tracks. It is used for a directory to help people find the original artists and it APPEARS you got started WAY before you started asking people. I did receive this same pm on youtube this week and people are just becoming aware of the site (saw on tumblr), but it doesn't seem to add up. This kind of site bypasses the authors and also never allows artists to even see people downloading their material, giving them feedback, or likely give their permission to do so which I'm not sure everyone would necessarily be thrilled about (although it's convenient for downloaders). Plus it's hardly a site made and maintained for and by bronies and I have no idea how this is supposed to tie in to stepmania if you are just allowing people to download mp3's.

I believe I actually got this music through mlpmusicarchive so if there's paid music in my site it's likely in their torrent too, however I personally dislike the torrent approach, it's a large file to just download especially if you're only after specific things, if that's the case you have to weed through folders, stop certain files from downloading, etc. It's all just a tedious operation that I am attempting to streamline by providing an archive of just about everything. As you can imagine being relatively new leaves me vulnerable to a lot of criticism so I'm happy to take it on board, just understand that my hosting of these files is no different to these torrents being circulated (at least as far as permissions go), I have attempted to message just about every artist in my archive to basically see if they want access to their folder, or at the very least if they don't like what they see they have the option to request the removal of their content too.

I won't debate any of what you've said because I agree with you across almost all fronts, but most of what you described about my site can be said about the torrent as well. At the end of the day I have contacted as many people as I possible and have received mostly positive feedback (with the exception of some people being confused about how other people even know they exist). I'll admit, my website isn't 100% MLP dedicated, in fact it only makes up a small part of my overall website, our rhythm game community has a steadily growing MLP influence and so having an archive within the same website they visit makes their ability to find and work with music they like that bit easier, it was a project that I could have just kept within my own community but decided to publicise for the sake of helping others that may be in similar situations.

As stated above I am happy to remove any and all paid content because I don't want the archive to become one of those websites, and as time goes on things will likely improve for the better to the point where I may be able to introduce download tallies, the ability to comment and so forth. Thanks for taking the time to bring all of this forth though, I'll see how things go as time goes on.

[Freewave]

Appreciate the reply and agree if these are the same files aquired from the brony music torrent (which may or may not be authorized) itself then it's really not that much different. That has been in existence for ages and ehtically been a grey area. As you said it is more difficult then just going on your site and downloading what few files you want vs a much larger batch. Ultimately if you remove what people take offense at being there then you are at least being sensitive to people's concerns although getting permission would have been the better course of action.

Meh I said my piece. I'll let stronger opinions prevail. You're at least responding back promptly and courteously which makes all the difference.

[zorg]

I'm just gonna say a few of my opinions

first, bandcamp's a site where you can listen to tracks in low quality before you buy the high quality tracks, right?
now, this means that anyone can have access to those low quality tracks, preview them, and if they like the stuff and want to support the artist(s), they will pay for them too, and as a bonus, they will get whatever other stuff too, if there were extras in there (which is available only to the "payers" depending on the minimum price setting).
basically, if these tracks are circulated on sites or on webradio or in torrents, i personally think that it's not a big deal. same thing as if someone programmed an application that would behave like a "bandcamp music player", after playing the tracks, it would load the next site, play select stuff, and whatnot. (no it doesn't exist yet). A positive side of all this is that the tracks are circulated, and others will hear your stuff; pretty sure that that's a good thing. again, if they like them, some will decide to support you.

On the other hand, if someone is really adamant that this is bad for "business" or something, then at least the following would be good:
Make '[Album] Album name' folders, and put a tracklist txt file in there, and a bandcamp link, like how it was /is in my folder. (I added the [Album] "tag" because i plan to organize my stuff a bit, and not all of them are albums)

discussion appreciated.

[Jayce]

That's a good idea, as far as things go I can easily integrate all of their bandcamp, soundcloud and youtube information into the archive too (ie display it above their song list when their folder is expanded), considering everything has been very heavily documented already extrapolating the data is as easy as can be.

I think the best way to do this would be to make a custominfo.txt file, formatted like:
Bandcamp: <url>
Soundcloud: <url>
YouTube: <url>

I could make that the standard configuration for users without accounts, for users with accounts I can make it possible to show their album art and pretty much anything else they'd want above the song list (if they have subfolders named after albums, for example), that at the very least will make it a better user experience and point people to external pages to show their support.

Like the name implies this page is just an archive, it lacks that social aspect that sites like soundcloud, bandcamp and eqbeats offer, however doing what an archive does best I will do what I can to ensure that each and every artist has all of their other pages listed and linked to.

Another feature I hope to implement soon is a "Download All" button that will zip up the entire folder of an artist to save the hassle of manually clicking and downloading each file within each folder, but that's another thing entirely.

As a side note to DJ Pon-3, thanks for linking to the archive from your site, I can tell you're still fairly on-the-fence about a lot of it but I'm more than happy to talk everything out, weigh it all up and have a better result than I started with, so any other suggestions for improvement or criticisms you may have I'm open to hearing them.