If you know who I am, you may also know my stance on Equestria Daily and their music featuring system.

 

If you don't, here's my site. If you don't feel like sifting through all the content I have on there, I'll give you the rundown: I'm a pretty damn good musician and music producer, better than much of what you'll find in the brony music community, especially in comparison to the "pop artists" of the fandom. Not tooting my own horn here, just speaking honestly and objectively.

 

So you're probably wondering, "Why are you making a blog for featuring brony music when EqD does that already?"

 

The short answer is that EqD and other similar, well-known sites fail to deliver quality consistently, and fail to provide feedback on submissions and transparency on their decisions at all. If you're interested in the long answer, keep reading.

 

Before getting into this, let me make one thing perfectly clear, because I know it's bound to come up. I'm not "butthurt about my music not being on EqD". I have no reason to be. Out of the 6 full-length tracks of brony music I have made so far, three were spotlighted, two were featured in Music of the Day posts, leaving

rejection (though the rejected track, when compared to what EqD was spotlighting at the time, pretty much solidified the point I'm about to make here). This isn't about "not being able to get on EqD", because I've been there, I've done that, and it's nothing special.

 

A large problem with the brony music community is that so much of it hinges on EqD (though recently, Everfree Network seems to be following suit). EqD is where most bronies go to get their music. What music is posted to EqD is decided entirely by a group of pre-listeners. As a result, the goal of most up-and-coming brony musicians is to get featured on EqD, the biggest site in the fandom for brony music, much like the goal of most up-and-coming video game music arrangers is to get posted on OverClocked ReMix, the biggest site for video game music remixes.

 

But where OC ReMix has a judges panel consisting of some of the most experienced, knowledgeable, and unbiased musicians, EqD lacks this entirely. Based on information that I have recieved from EqD's staff, EqD's decisions are rooted almost entirely in subjectivity. As a result, objectively speaking, tracks are spotlighted that don't deserve to be, tracks are put into Music of the Day posts that deserve to be spotlighted, and tracks that deserve to be featured are rejected outright. In short, being posted to OverClocked ReMix means you're unquestionably good at music, and being featured on EqD means absolutely nothing. This often gives bad musicians that win EqD's little "hat draw" a false sense of accomplishment and talent, while being a spit in the face to musicians who are actually good at music whenever a good track is rejected or put into the leftovers.

 

The problem doesn't stop there. Another major issue is that EqD's pre-listening process is done in private, with absolutely no access to critique from the pre-listeners, and is done on-the-spot with little time for analytics and objectivity. Because of this, the reasons for acceptance or rejection of any track, and the reasons for choosing whether to spotlight or MotD a track, are completely absent to the musician. In essence, not only is EqD's staff stifling recognition of the truly talented and creative within the brony music community, but they also hinder artist growth by not making critique public. They also damage their own reputation in this way, because it's impossible to know exactly why they are so bad at what they do; we have no way of knowing just what degrees of inexperience and bias are a factor in their terrible decisions, or who is responsible for that inexperience and bias.

 

Though many in the community know full well of EqD's shortcomings and see it for the purely subjective blog it is, far too many musicians (especially newer ones) still believe that EqD's system is legitimately objective and creates a standard, despite there never being one in the first place other than "It sounds good to Sethisto's subjective musical tastes, and he's cool with the musician that made it for whatever reason". Too many brony musicians make it a goal to get on a site that they believe has a quantifiable standard, and end up setting themselves up for either undue merit or disappointment.

 

So yeah, that's the long answer. Now on to how I'm going to help with that problem.

 

One of the often talked-about planned features of Pony.fm is the creation of a "Featured Artists" or "Featured Tracks" aspect of the site that will showcase exceptionally well-done brony music within the community. I have suggested the idea of using many of the concepts that have rendered OC ReMix so good at doing what they do in Pony.fm's music featuring system. Some of these concepts include:

• A judges panel of competent, experienced, and unbiased musicians and music critics
  
• A forum-based judging process so judges aren't rushed
  
• And a judging process that makes the decisions and the critique responsible for those decisions available not just to artists themselves, but to everyone.
  

Unfortunately, this system won't be available for quite some time, if ever (Things could change). So to get a leg up, I'm starting this blog with the intention that it will eventually be the "go-to" for MLP Forums members and maybe a larger portion of the brony community to find the best of the best that the brony music community has to offer, and for talented musicians that would otherwise be shafted by EqD and EFR to be given a chance to shine.

 

But here's the kicker: What music I feature on the blog will be entirely submitted by the artists themselves. Much as OverClocked ReMix gets its submissions from the artists, and gives feedback to those artists, so will I. Details on how to submit music will be posted in the another entry soon.

 

Why MLP Forums? Mainly because of MLP Forums' connection with Pony.fm, but also because MLP Forums makes it easy to bring your own input to a blog post. I may copy these entries to a Tumblr blog or something if I ever feel the need, but MLP Forums and Pony.fm are intended to be the foundation of a grand hub for the brony community, and rather than avoid that, I want to contribute to it.

 

The short of it is, if you're a brony music fan who's looking for great music, or a musician who's looking to get noticed in a fandom where the top sites actively work to suppress your talent in favor of popular mediocrity or specific aesthetics, keep an eye on this blog. If you're an aspiring musician looking to measure your music to a standard and get feedback from another experienced musician in order to better your own music, this blog is for you as well.

 

Get ready to raise your hooves.

 

~Dustin "DusK" Branscum