EqD Music

[Ptepix]

No. Because non of the issues I have pointed out have been fixed. He only mentioned site coding issues. Not concept issues.

I still have problems with how it is working so far.

IF it was a stress test they could have idk maybe done a sign up beta? Or some sort of less open beta. If they didn't want flak they definitely should have not made it an open beta.
The concept still is all there...so again, no you cannot laugh in my face

It really bugs me when people expect problems to be fixed instantaneously, as you seem to think they should. Unfortunately, programmers cannot just snap their fingers and fix problems with the site. Oh, you meant concept issues? Issues that they can only fix by coding? Well then. Anyways, they're doing as much as they can to fix concept errors and make the site good and definitely worth while.

Also, they can't do a "private" beta, because that would not work efficiently, because they won't get much feedback as quickly as an open beta, and therefore they cannot fix issues and the whole site is delayed and whatever.

Also I love how everyone is praising motd into heaven while people were just as skeptical when it was introduce.

Yes, this. So true.

I worded that wrong XD...I wasn't expecting them to be fixed already ofc...seeing as I code websites as well, I know these things take longer.

My point of that comment was to say if that it is stupid that he is getting mad about feedback...when the site is mostly broken still....thats like asking for critique on a song that isn't finished and getting all pissed that they critiqued your song saying it needed to be finished.

Yeah idk about the private beta either...but if they were just gonna complain about feedback then why not? It would get just about as much done XD

[LoreRD]

I never thought that making a new site was a BAD idea, in fact, I'm somewhat exited to see how it develops. My main concern (echoing what Freewave said) was the fact that I don't see how removing MotD is a good idea. It might work if you have it connected to EQDM (which is what I've understood is what you're doing) by having a list of the "top 10 of the day on EQDM" featured on EqD, but you'll need to have a pretty strong community on EQDM for that to work.

Also, to anyone still complaining about updates:

EQD Music will be brought down for major updates and maintenance March 21st around midnight. It should only be down for an hour or two.

Be patient.
The team working on the site knows that there's stuff that needs to be fixed.

[ghelded_kultz]

Now that someone linked to the site is on the thread, can you tell us if an improved genre/tagging system will be implemented?

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Well, if it can get traffic that isn't just other musicians , I'd say you could get some decent exposure through this.

[ghelded_kultz]

I see one major problem with this in regards at an attempt the replace MotD. That is the fact that in Music of the Day the songs are grouped together and archieved, here they are just going to get pushed away as new songs are added, so they won't even get a chance, and even if they do get in the top list of the day they will disappear once the next day comes. Despite it's flaws Music of the Day is a lot better than this for expose of "lesser" musicians.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[CommandSpry]

MoTD was replaced to fix the flooding problem on Equestria Daily, having 15 songs a day being absurd. The music on Equestria Daily was always meant to be a spotlight, in other words you had to put tons of effort to get there. The issue of well known people skipping judging is another thing we're addressing but it's unrelated to why MoTD is gone.
For example, sometimes we don't get an opportunity to prelisten certain songs Seth feels are good enough and it creates problems; but most of the time we judge popular people's music just the same; we've put SimGretina into MoTD a million times, we are undecided on people like Silva Hound even, so we don't just see the name and pass it on with 5 seconds in.
I've been on MoTD a million times and I don't like it, it does give you a small audience but it's really really easy to get on. Basically we just filter out the non listenable stuff and put everything else on EqD, which creates 20 songs on EqD a day and people aren't going to check 20 songs out, they're gonna look at a MoTD post and click two or three or five songs, usually the ones on the top, and click out, nobody has an hour to listen to pony music daily (almost nobody, I'm sure there are some people).
I always wanted to revert EqD to being just about very good music, which is why MoTD will be gone, and we've heard some half assed things on there..the music on Equestria Daily will be nicely filtered, the EqDmusic website was started as something to promote new and fresh music, but since then Seth and Hypermark have decided that no, it should be a giant archive of pony music, which automatically means only very popular music gets into the tops, and I don't want to have anything to do with it anymore if this is the goal. I invisioned it to be only for the newest of tunes, one week old or so, but it looks like it's just gonna be every single brony song ever, including features such as "Vinylstep " and "PinkieStep :3".
And we have talked about prelistening every song ever despite any author which will be very good, but you have to understand that even if they are very popular, a lot of them do produce music that is worthy of going to Equestria Daily. Skipping queues and single posting is another issue but it's completely unrelated to this topic. MoTD just doesn't belong to EqD, it's not a music portal and it should feature the noteworthy stuff, not almost every song in order for musicians not to get upset over. I don't have anything to do with the art drawfriend and all that other jazz, I looked at drawfriends at a time and posts are very good, but then they introduced some other drawing thing which was very bad drawings and it seemed to me it was just introduced so that artists wouldn't get upset over not being accepted onto EqD. I think that's bullshit and that if an artist doesn't meet a requirement, he shouldn't decide that it's a conspiracy against them immediately. Look up the IKEA effect if you haven't a better clue.
If you want to talk about it or complain about it I'd love it, so just add me on skype (commandspry) and I'd love to have a chat : ) Seth already told me to address complaints so I'll just do that, but I don't frequent MLR and I love an IM conversation, feels natural.

[MYCUTIEMARKISAGUN]

Also I love how everyone is praising motd into heaven while people where just as skeptical when it was introduce.

Pfft, maybe these other straw ponies did but.....

http://www.mylittleremix.com/viewtopic. ... 7&start=75

I was suggesting something like Music of the Day in 2011. Same arguments made against it then are made against MotD now and I still say they're essentially rubbish because it does not take the human brain long to decide whether song title/genre/artist is interesting and whether or not said song is enjoyable once Play is clicked. Only posting "the best of the best of the best" on EQD is nice in theory, (like COMMUNISM lel) but in practice we've seen what that culls the herd down to.

[CommandSpry]

it does not take the human brain long to decide whether song title/genre/artist is interesting and whether or not said song is enjoyable once Play is clicked.

It takes at least 20 seconds in order to determine if you like the song or not, and that's a very generous estimate. With 20 songs a day, that's over 6 minutes of just determining if you like something or not, without even hearing much of any of it, especially if it's vocal since the vocals don't start until like 20 seconds in.

[Freewave]

CommandSpry i hope you or anyone from EQD can addres issues on MLR, i mean the point of having a community forum here is so that we can talk about these issues in public. I don't see why we should just get flyovers and not some Q&A. MLR is still supposed to be the home of brony musicians even if most people have jumped ship. I know you didn't like the idea of MOTD from the start and other EQD listeners i have talked to have said its role was to "quit some of the whining". That not a lot of internal support for it

A lot of people here and elsewhere feel a lot stronger good feelings about it because it actually gives us some consistent chance of getting out music on there for people to choose to click on it or not. It's about getting the music that's made on the shelves and letting people decide what genres they like and what they want to click on, and then being able to skip if it doesn't sound good. MOTD was highlighting 10-20 tracks a day because that's how many good tracks i thought you were getting a day. At least that was it's goal.

If you guys need to get rid of instant rejects, go through and pick out good pony tracks and still have 20 tracks, then whittle it down to the best 10, you guys have that option. By all means keep it more trim if you think you are allowing junk music. But music is something that comes in variety of flavors and if you cut out the selection you're not allowing choice for the listener and you're not helping out smaller musicians that are still putting together a good track that they spent a lot of time on. If it's not a good track in the first place i hope it's not being passed on to MOTD. If you are allowing too many "filler tracks" then make it a little more difficult to make MOTD, but i don't see why you want to only highlight the top tracks via spotlights only. Again if you're only allowing the best of the best and those people have the fanbases and the features spots already your not giving anything back to the majority of musicians making music today. You'll have 20 people a day getting rejected who will look at EQD as failign them when they saw them as a previous supporter of their music.

I already outlined what MOTD does for the music community; musicians and the listeners on page 3. But the most important thing is what we're being given as a replacement right now is off-site, buggy, gives an incredibly brief window of being seen, and allows older established tracks to overshadow new ones through popular vote. It's not even close to an adequite replacement. If there are still going to be listeners then keep MOTD going (EQD features batches of pictures daily, why not good music that is made too) and keep slightly higher standards if your overall posts are too big.

How is it hurting people by giving too much music a chance to be heard (and discarded quickly if it's not what the listener wanted). Music has a skip button. Not even showing it basically pulls the plug on people even making music if it isn't going to stand a chance to be heard.

it does not take the human brain long to decide whether song title/genre/artist is interesting and whether or not said song is enjoyable once Play is clicked.

It takes at least 20 seconds in order to determine if you like the song or not, and that's a very generous estimate. With 20 songs a day, that's over 6 minutes of just determining if you like something or not, without even hearing much of any of it, especially if it's vocal since the vocals don't start until like 20 seconds in.

So giving the listener 6 minutes of time to listen to EVERY track is meaning that its too much music and therefore MOTD should be abandoned? I don't get this. You're arguing my point and coming to a completely different conclusion. Why are you guys wanting to kill MOTD if it works as designed?

[ghelded_kultz]

it does not take the human brain long to decide whether song title/genre/artist is interesting and whether or not said song is enjoyable once Play is clicked.

It takes at least 20 seconds in order to determine if you like the song or not, and that's a very generous estimate. With 20 songs a day, that's over 6 minutes of just determining if you like something or not, without even hearing much of any of it, especially if it's vocal since the vocals don't start until like 20 seconds in.

The thing is that, if the music was labeled well, which is usually wasn't, then people would only listen to the songs that seem interesting which would significantly decrease the time. If all the songs were correctly labeled then people would limit the songs they are listening to a handful, the ones that look interesting to them. Different people would listen to a different amount of songs, but the fact remains that there are people listening to them. The thing that has been screwing people the over the most on Motd is that they don't submit a genre so no one takes the time to listen to their music, the labeled songs get significantly more views and they can been seen getting more attention in the comments.

Also, the biggest fallacy of time usage when listening to music is that time is directly consumed, it isn't, chances are that if someone is listening to music of the day they will do it while doing something else so the amount of time it takes to listen to the music is less than the amount of time diverted to listening to music. By just listening to song in the background you should be able to find which songs are "good" and deserve more attention later. The time that will be consumed will be in executive function of switching songs, which shouldn't be that much longer than other tasks. It will probably be longer than scrolling down on drawfriend because the person would probably switch tabs and more importantly executive focus, but it is not as much as one would think it would be. With the songs being labeled as they are now on Music of the Day they do not consume anymore time then I would have to load up another song when doing whatever task, infact it usually takes me less time. Music of the day is pretty much the primary thing that exposes me to new music on EQD, the fact is most of the spotlighted songs I either have no interest in, or I already know about because I'm already following who made it.

If it wasn't for Music of the Day I wouldn't now be following Crazyoatmeal6, whose style is pretty much unique within the fandom, and there are several other artists like that. The most unique (in a good way) artists/songs often get shoved aside to Music of the Day because of EQDism (like commercialism) if they even make it all (I'm not saying our music is unique in a good way, it's certainly unique, but it's "objectively" crap).

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[CommandSpry]

If you want to complain about labeling, complain to the people submitting. We don't have all day to properly tag all songs with their genres when there's 20 of them, people submitting are told time and time again to properly label genre.

"If you want to talk about it or complain about it I'd love it, so just add me on skype (commandspry) and I'd love to have a chat : ) Seth already told me to address complaints so I'll just do that, but I don't frequent MLR and I love an IM conversation, feels natural."

I don't think I'll read this board often so move your criticisms there thanks have funne

[CommandSpry]

"MOTD was highlighting 10-20 tracks a day because that's how many good tracks i thought you were getting a day. At least that was it's goal."

We don't get that many good tracks. There are interesting tracks perhaps, but we don't judge on being interesting primarily. Our biggest concerns are the most objective things; within a genre - how does the song compare to similar songs of the type, and how well it has been mixed and/or mastered. Those are things people can universally agree on. Interesting and non interesting is as subjective as you can get, just like pony or non pony. We've agreed to treat almost all music as pony if it's implied in the name because we can't tell if it really was pony inspired if just a name was slapped on it. Prelisteners are very varied in their music tastes and will avoid voting on genres they either don't like as much or don't listen to as much. Like anywhere, you're gonna get unfair rejects but we're there to make sure it happens as slightly as possible. MoTD from the start wasn't supported by prelisteners and wasn't implemented by prelisteners. It was a feature added by Sethisto and it was used to address complaints. The problem of EqD flooding started way before that when there used to be 4 posts a day with 5 songs each; MoTD didn't add more songs, they were just recategorized into MoTD and Spotlight. We want to cut down on the amount of songs and feature only the very good songs. I know a lot of musicians will be saddened that they don't have the blanket of MoTD anymore that they used to get views without wanting to improve on the stuff they're currently working with. EqD does recognize effort and like I've said, just contact me on skype to inquire about any of your submissions instead of directly going to tumblr or MLR and starting a hate thread.
What's most important is that people recognize that "interesting" doesn't mean much in terms of production. We acknowledge that loads of songs we reject are interesting, but EqD isn't meant for every single interesting song out there. Rather, we'd like to encourage these artists who produce very interesting stuff to get better in other fields so that they may be featured. The less songs get featured, the more a feature means to the artist, and we want to bring back the days when getting on EqD meant something. Believe you me, the determiner of whether you get into EqD or not is your quality at first. We don't have direct control over songs Seth autoposts, and we're trying to change that, that's a separate issue. What we don't want is these guys who do really interesting stuff continuing to mix poorly and use the same old things to churn out new songs with the idea that quantity of songs posted on MoTD is better than improving quality to get into spotlight. I've heard loads of very nice songs that are just short of spotlighting from people, and when we MoTD, people just stay on the same production quality. In the long run, cancelling MoTD will greatly improve the quality of the music, both on and off EqD. EqD rejections do mean less audience but now EqD approval will mean an even bigger audience, and well deserved. Once again, I'm sure there will be problems with certain songs and I'm more than happy to discuss any entries with you guys on my skype (commandspry - Seth should really write my skype on the submit page of EqD).
The EqDmusic I've envisioned is nothing like the EqDmusic now, and I frankly do not care much for it if it's going to be a huge archive of music. As far as glitching goes, Hyper is indeed working very hard to address programming issues so give him a bit of a break, it's a BETA. That doesn't mean bugs should be ignored, but rather be given time to be properly managed. Prelisteners have only little to do with the site, it's mainly Sethisto's and Hypermark's deal, who are ignoring our advice and doing their own thing. Don't blame it on us.
And I think you have my skype so I'd rather talk there than write walls of text here, cya

[itroitnyah]

Ok, CommanderSpry is writing words of wisdom here, guys. ^^^ That is exactly why I know that EqDM will be a great idea!

[Freewave]

Sorry Spy, i gotta respond on mlr as that what the forum is here for and this is where i can respond to you today, i hope you continue to check in for replies.

"MOTD was highlighting 10-20 tracks a day because that's how many good tracks i thought you were getting a day. At least that was it's goal."

We don't get that many good tracks. There are interesting tracks perhaps, but we don't judge on being interesting primarily. Our biggest concerns are the most objective things; within a genre - how does the song compare to similar songs of the type, and how well it has been mixed and/or mastered. Those are things people can universally agree on. Interesting and non interesting is as subjective as you can get, just like pony or non pony. We've agreed to treat almost all music as pony if it's implied in the name because we can't tell if it really was pony inspired if just a name was slapped on it. Prelisteners are very varied in their music tastes and will avoid voting on genres they either don't like as much or don't listen to as much. Like anywhere, you're gonna get unfair rejects but we're there to make sure it happens as slightly as possible.

MOTD we were told was for good tracks that weren't great. I know people differ on what makes a good track but listeners/musicians should be able to make a solid judgement on whether a song is good (enough) and pony-influenced and not use MOTD as a dumping ground if that was what you all were doing.

Last major EQD thread (Nov 2012) we had was with Seth asking about Pony vs Not Really Pony. We were hoping that listeners were looking into the descriptions, listening to the track, and being the judges of that (and throwing out the slapped on ones). A lot of people wanted to see that as important criteria and not just ignored. Didn't happen?

MoTD from the start wasn't supported by prelisteners and wasn't implemented by prelisteners. It was a feature added by Sethisto and it was used to address complaints. The problem of EqD flooding started way before that when there used to be 4 posts a day with 5 songs each; MoTD didn't add more songs, they were just recategorized into MoTD and Spotlight.

We want to cut down on the amount of songs and feature only the very good songs. I know a lot of musicians will be saddened that they don't have the blanket of MoTD anymore that they used to get views without wanting to improve on the stuff they're currently working with. EqD does recognize effort and like I've said, just contact me on skype to inquire about any of your submissions instead of directly going to tumblr or MLR and starting a hate thread

EQD hate threads really aren't rampant on MLR as people expect them to be. If anything MOTD has really pacified that anger that EQD was regularly getting from musicians (and sometimes quite unfairly). If you really start making it much harder to get on it really seems that will bubble up again. I know Seth is thinking that his new alt website might fix it but at the same created MOTD to placate us w/o quality standards (and is now threatening to axe it??). It just seems like the left hand the right hand don't know what each other are doing....

So really this is about cutting back the overall volume of what you feature? The spolighted tracks have fallen back from about 100 a month down to about 50 with MOTD taking the brunt. So we're going to see these daily features grow if you take MOTD out? It just seems like you're creating another forseeable backlash (which Seth opted to implement MOTD to stop) and going to reject tracks that are pony and good because you want to have higher standards.

It all comes back to how many tracks that includes, are they good or just well made fluff, are they pony themed (or slapped on), etc. The thing that the EQD listeners i thought were doing already when they allowed stuff on motd. If you wanna go to a system that's more critical that's fine but EQD was supposed to be doing this all in the first place according to Seth and what was communicated out to us.

"
What's most important is that people recognize that "interesting" doesn't mean much in terms of production. We acknowledge that loads of songs we reject are interesting, but EqD isn't meant for every single interesting song out there. Rather, we'd like to encourage these artists who produce very interesting stuff to get better in other fields so that they may be featured. The less songs get featured, the more a feature means to the artist, and we want to bring back the days when getting on EqD meant something. Believe you me, the determiner of whether you get into EqD or not is your quality at first. We don't have direct control over songs Seth autoposts, and we're trying to change that, that's a separate issue. What we don't want is these guys who do really interesting stuff continuing to mix poorly and use the same old things to churn out new songs with the idea that quantity of songs posted on MoTD is better than improving quality to get into spotlight. I've heard loads of very nice songs that are just short of spotlighting from people, and when we MoTD, people just stay on the same production quality. In the long run, cancelling MoTD will greatly improve the quality of the music, both on and off EqD. EqD rejections do mean less audience but now EqD approval will mean an even bigger audience, and well deserved.

The idea of rejection letters has been brought up time before on this forum and its never occurred. If you want to reject more people at least give them the opportunity to find out why. I have never seen a single one and while rejection may happen from time to time it's the lack of they WHY that is the most frustrating. If you want to keep standards higher and tell artists who could otherwise make it to try a little harder on EQ on their next submission. Make that dialogue happen.

The EqDmusic I've envisioned is nothing like the EqDmusic now, and I frankly do not care much for it if it's going to be a huge archive of music. As far as glitching goes, Hyper is indeed working very hard to address programming issues so give him a bit of a break, it's a BETA. That doesn't mean bugs should be ignored, but rather be given time to be properly managed. Prelisteners have only little to do with the site, it's mainly Sethisto's and Hypermark's deal, who are ignoring our advice and doing their own thing. Don't blame it on us.

Agreed. Hope they work that site out. Took a better look last night and was not impressed (except for the submission function).

Thanks Spry for talking about this on here and elsewhere. It's only fair to have these be open conversations with the community.

[CommandSpry]

I'll respond to these same queries with the stuff I've posted to people on skype:

"The idea of rejection letters has been brought up time before on this forum and its never occurred. If you want to reject more people at least give them the opportunity to find out why. I have never seen a single one and while rejection may happen from time to time it's the lack of they WHY that is the most frustrating. If you want to keep standards higher and tell artists who could otherwise make it to try a little harder on EQ on their next submission. Make that dialogue happen. "

[19:58:29] CommandSpry: Detailed rejection letters was once implemented, but even then when the amount of music was miniscule compared to today's, it was abandoned because it required too much effort on the part of the guy writing the letter, instead of that I've given out my skype address so people can inquire about their submission and I'll be more than glad to discuss their songs with them, so that people who really WANT the feedback get it, and people who don't care don't get spam in their inbox that already took more time to write than it could, I have had people inquire about their songs in the past and I've had very nice, civil conversations with them about their submissions, instead of people going on tumblr to write "eqd sucks lollllolol"

______

"MOTD we were told was for good tracks that weren't great. I know people differ on what makes a good track but listeners/musicians should be able to make a solid judgement on whether a song is good (enough) and pony-influenced and not use MOTD as a dumping ground if that was what you all were doing. "

the music posts on EqD were never meant to be "good enough we'll dump it", and that's why we all disagree that MoTD is a good idea. And yes, we usually just dump music to MoTD in order to not offend people, which is major bullshit.

and spotlight music and MoTD music are all a part of the same problem - overflooding of EqD with music
[19:44:43] CommandSpry: EqD accepted far more music than it should before MoTD was made, and at one point there was a decision to cut down on the amount of music, it was artists who sent all kinds of messages to Seth about this, that felt entitled to their EqD views that made Seth open a Music of the Day section, to stop getting complaints
[19:45:07] CommandSpry: MoTD does deffer people from improving on their quality, the same way EqD featuring does in any case if the standards are low
[19:45:35] CommandSpry: take into account guys (I won't namecall on MLR) who are perfectly satisfied rehashing the same song 20 times to get 100k views by features rather than spending time to produce one good song
[19:46:22] CommandSpry: they don't want to improve because it's not needed, and improving takes a lot of time and effort; if you release 10 songs in quick succession and feature them all on EqD, you would've profitted more than making a song for a long time and having a single feature beacuse of the nature of EqD today
[19:47:13] CommandSpry: a larger audience doesn't mean more stress on quality; audience aprooving of current quality will just halt the progress of getting better
[19:48:32] CommandSpry: I'm sure there are artists who hate being featured on MoTD and work hard for the spotlight post but those are the artists who would already work hard in order to get featured on the old EqD in the first place; guys who strive to improve their music for real, so MoTD is not neccesary at all there; the small audience it will provide is not rewarding at all considering how big of an impact EqD had before it became overflowed with mostly mediocre songs
[19:49:28] CommandSpry: MoTD, on the other hand, provided artists who are in it for the community and recognition only (and there are guys like this, those are the guys that are the most audible in complaining when we decide to raise standards) a platform to get an audience for putting as little effort as neccessary
[19:50:43] CommandSpry: the spotlight posts don't get nearly as much views as the people featured there deserve; apart from people Seth automatically gets there, which is another issue that we're resolving, it's not easy at all to get to spotlight, these songs are very good indeed; they don't deserve a fraction of views they would normally get by their quality because Seth decided not to hurt everyone's feelings and feature 20 songs per day
[19:52:19] CommandSpry: and I'm sure some people prefer MoTD over Spotlight, but it's the overcrowding issue we are resolving here; either spotlight or MoTD have to go; I don't think many people would argue to just keep motd and remove spotlight posts, which in all objective fairness feature music of greater quality; occasionally it of course happens that a very good song will get into MoTD, perhaps because of the lack of prelisteners that day and people not very interested in that genre having to judge them, but that's another issue and we are adding more members to the prelistening team as we speak to resolve genre inequality
[19:53:56] CommandSpry: what we look for the most is mixing/mastering which sets apart the spotlight/motd by a long shot; it's the one thing we are able to judge objectively with almost no difference regarding the genre you're listening to, so a good mix will definetely set your song apart, which is a VERY important part of improving as a producer; most MoTD songs are just sloppily mixed and hardlimited, albiet interesting, I've always loved something innovative but just that won't get you anywhere; I'd love to see these people from MoTD that release very interesting stuff improve their production to the quality that we can consider to be EqD worthy

And I'm all for musicians expressing their distaste with EqD, but contact myself on skype, since rejection letters are too much of a hassle, and get your own feedback easily, I'm very glad to answer inquiries by all sorts of people (Seth really should post my skype on the eqd submit form or something)

[Freewave]

Thanks Spry i guess you'll be the go to person to talk to on rejects which is better then nothing. I guess i had no idea that so many musicians were spamming your inbox to this extent that you describe or taking advantage of the situation. Hopefully you can turn down that spicket with some new processes but i just really hope these standards don't hurt the people who submit tracks they've been working hard on for a month only to get them rejected now.

sigh... i need a beer

[JSynth]

That's a lot to take in.
It's nice to get some perspective on the whole "issue."

Thanks for sharing Spry, and I will be adding you on skype for future questions.

[ghelded_kultz]

I find it rather ironic that EQD has such a high focus on production quality. Brony Music is ultimately a form of Outsider Music, which is known for being loved despite it's low quality.

In terms of production quality that is complete and utter crap. However, this song is still a classic in alternative and indie circles. Alternative god Kurt Cobain could frequently be seen wearing shirts promoting Daniel Johnston. That's because the song has something about it that makes it stand out from the masses.

Now, I'm going to say it here, EQD has a huge bias towards Electronic Music. Because of the manner in which it is produced the focus of Electronic Music is usually to have the best production quality as possible. Meanwhile Rock has a focus on "authenticity". The more Pop-oriented forms of Rock have a large focus on production quality, if you go to one end away from the Pop end you will find a side that focuses on musicianship, but it if you go to the Punk end production quality and musicianship are thrown completely out the window. This is where the concept of EQDization comes in. Basically with the current standards the selection is limited a lot when their is an audience for other such things.
/rant

Oh, and because of my timezone Skype is very impractical for me.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[CommandSpry]

I can say that that's stupid because I can say that with the numbers of songs we get, we pass metal/rock songs more in relation to the number of electronic we pass/reject. We love to see great songs like that but the fact that they're unique doesn't excuse them from being well produced. The majority of metal from the brony community is loudened to -1 RMS and terribly hardlimited with a huge release time, and most of the time the vocals are laughable. If you want us to disregard this, then we'd have a huge bias towards Acoustic music, wouldn't we? We treat music equally.
And most of the time, we pass on pop/jazzy songs that have cool vocals even through the production isn't anywhere near good.
And no, by saying brony music is poorly produced you're insulting all good brony musicians; if you really have that opinion of brony music, then rest assured that EqD does not.

[Freewave]

Ghelded i think that's one of the things that's happened with brony music is that it went from something that was smaller, homemade, and a little more lax on production quality to something much larger, REALLY focused on production quality, with higher standards, and with people wanting to become professional musicians (with quite a few wanting to charge for tracks and be paid for guest spots at bronycons). Really it's survival of the fittest at this stage in the game if you care about "success" in the community and that in itself is hard to achieve or is rare. But a lot of the initial brony musicians were still really good musicians from the start.

I mean just look at MLR; it's music prodcution first and foremost and ponies just a second focus. I've always thought the track concept and how it fits into MLP being one of the most important aspects but if instumentals are allowed with little explanations and if EQD's focus is to allow things that LOOK pony and not dig deeper then that really become a smaller concern. I think Balloon Party was the biggest indicator of this, a compilation that was full of polished electronic music that barely told anyone about the show we liked but got off on production quality and bombast. That's just the way this fanbase works now. There's still Toast Beard if you wanna throw together a rough track in a week based on an mlp theme but that's gone from a who's who of the community to a much less recognized group of musicians to enthusiastic newbs.

While there's definitely an untapped niche for lo-fi alternative rock, experimental electronic, outisder music, and punk with more lo-fi appeal it might not be through EQD though, as its more about majority rules and what people want to hear or should. But definitely find your own style (with as good production values as you can muster, you want people to want to hear your music) and if you see a load of music that is worth hearing but doesn't follow the traditional path then make it your purpose to band together and find a way to get it out there. Make a comp event, collab, start a blog for those bands, befriend each other. Just don't expect that EQD is going to cater to absolutely everyone. It's always had quality standards.

[ghelded_kultz]

I can say that that's stupid because I can say that with the numbers of songs we get, we pass metal/rock songs more in relation to the number of electronic we pass/reject. We love to see great songs like that but the fact that they're unique doesn't excuse them from being well produced. The majority of metal from the brony community is loudened to -1 RMS and terribly hardlimited with a huge release time, and most of the time the vocals are laughable. If you want us to disregard this, then we'd have a huge bias towards Acoustic music, wouldn't we? We treat music equally.
And most of the time, we pass on pop/jazzy songs that have cool vocals even through the production isn't anywhere near good.
And no, by saying brony music is poorly produced you're insulting all good brony musicians; if you really have that opinion of brony music, then rest assured that EqD does not.

Okay, I stand corrected, though it would help if the standards were more well known. Anyway, my point was more referring to Punk and old-school Indie than I was to Rock and Metal. The point is there is a demand for those things, there are people in the community that don't care about production as much or even like a lo-fi sound, and with EQD dominating the brony scene it's hard for those to get recognized unless they are on EQD. I liked MoTD, a lot of the songs on it sounded less "EQDized", if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I agree with Freewave, at least now that I've seen his points and am thinking more rationally. We've had an idea about hosting a more bizarre collab album called "Spike Mask Replica" for awhile now, though we are waiting for us to finish our own album first, and I have my own idea for hosting a blog with a focus on uniqueness over strict quality that will probably be mostly troll posts in the end. The other Kult is more mature and has his own, more well thought out, view on this which may or may not share, heck the limit of my knowledge of mixing is that you should pan the different instruments to different sides and increase reverb to throw something backwards without diminishing it's volume, and to avoid making everything the same pitch. I should probably make my own account, we didn't really think this through when we made this account.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[ph00tbag]

There's not going to be a perfect way to do this. Although with EqD apparently no longer being the place to find new musicians that are really doing stuff that hasn't been done before (as a listener, I've found the stuff in the MotD to be far more creative, overall, than the spotlighted stuff, if less well-produced), perhaps something new is, indeed, needed that not only catalogues new music, but focuses on doing the digging to find the novel concepts that are out there, and in particular encouraging the artists making that music to explore what they're currently doing rather than casting off the new stuff they've come up with in order to fit into a mold that doesn't even really apply to the things they're doing.

Just a thought.

[Freewave]

I agree with both of you that there should be avenues for people to present music that might not be as polished but IS more interesting and more diverse in genre. A lot of the stuff in the features, while pretty in a production sense, is boring an originality sense. I've heard plenty of Tombstone, Silva, Simgretina tracks which were recycling presets and ideas and of course most of these were featured. They each had clearly done better work in the past.

I mean if people want a brony version of Evanescence or Nickelback people have done so, but there's a reason i avoided those bands in RL and a brony equivalent is just as uninteresting, even if both of those bands have good production in the studio. Boring radio friendly music is just that and its often well produced, The problem with higher standards at EQD is the same problem i have with balloon party in that people are only looking at production; not originality, not theme, not pony concept. My thoughts were always that listeners were looking at whether a track was good in their eyes or not, doing something a little differently, and that IS something that's not build just entirely on production. Good is good, and it's not built on a recipe but sometimes diverting from it.

I guess my biggest point is that music shouldn't be made exclusively to impress the best musicians of the community. It's great when it happens of course (i recently was flaberghasted when i caught Sgap and Derpedity complimenting my Professor track in a skype group we were both in when i wasn't around) but it shouldn't be a sole concern. While impressing those who make amazing music is great it's more important to impress your peers (and they might not sit at the top of the brony hierarchy but at YOUR level) and everyday bronies who aren't musicians but who enjoy the music that YOU currently put out. When i listen to a track i can see the good with the bad and a few detractors don't "ruin" a track for me. Of course don't give up on improving just to spite anybody.

I'm not going to blame EQD listeners for holding high standards for the community as long as that bar isn't unreachable for a large majority and as long i feel their judgement is fair (and that happens on a track by track basis). 25% of the entries got onto Balloon Party 1 and about 29% got on the After Party (if I remember the stats right, i think i do). It's likely not going to be that much different for Rainbow & Routed or EQD if they up the standards. That's quite a bit of people left out, which may be necessary but still be unfortunate and leave out some good music. What i worry about is if people put all their efforts into something that made the 35-50% mark a couple times that they feel they should give up. Because a lot of the time there are people who enjoy that track, its just a smaller number that tune in to hear it because it won't be on the motd anymore and get to the people who CAN appreciate it. How do you change that?

By all means keep entering your tracks into EQD but if there are other avenues out there besides them that are more level headed start looking for them and supporting them. EQD or bust shouldn't be the moto but it generally is in this community. There were a lot of blogs that were highlighting brony music and lesser known gems and most of them died out because EQD went to MOTD, because there's too much brony music, because they had no staff on those sites, and because musicians and listeners didn't support them. If the standards are going up and people get frustrated again, support other sites that will cater more directly to you. EQD is one person's blog with a large staff of listeners and a massive audience but that doesn't mean that people can't build some good alternatives. Consider them.

[CommandSpry]

I'm sorry but EqD should feature the best of tunes, not the most interesting, if such a category ever existed; interesting is such a personal term and you use it as if it's set in stone; you find some artists that get in MoTD interesting; how do you know anyone else does? I listen to most of the music sent to EqD and I hear interesting things but most of the time MoTD is just the same bland, unimaginative music minus the extra effort to produce it well.

And you're talking as if the well produced music can't be interesting. All these guys who create interesting music should push towards gaining production quality as well; and production quality, compared to creativity, is very very hard to improve because it's not such a joyful, interesting process, it involves a lot of knob turning and careful listening and experience, which can be quite uninteresting. But it's what sets apart the great from the interesting. EqD's stance is to feature great music, so that an EqD feature is something worth improving for, and we're looking to improve audience reception with the much smaller amount of tunes (of greater quality) introduced. EqD is once again, not a music blog, and it would be interesting for a music blog to get big, but it all needs to start somewhere. You guys should gang up, make a site for interesting music, because EqD doesn't take prioritize if the track is interesting or not, but if the track is good or not. I've heard a lot of interesting stuff very poorly produced, and I cannot push them to spotlight just yet; that's why I offer myself as a source to find out about rejections, as production tips are something someone else can share with you, rather than imagination (:

Cheers

[Mesogears]

Spry, not to be rude, but I see you using the phrase "interesting music" a lot in this thread; what exactly do you mean by that? I really hope you're not saying that music that isn't mixed/mastered as well as spotlight-post stuff isn't good music (in that case I would have to disagree). I've heard songs that are well-produced, but just aren't very good songs, and vice-versa.