HMage

Don't forget that in some countries downloading a song from a place that author uploaded is legally considered ownership of that copy. You may end up that this site will never be used by those who want to limit free sanctioned distribution but allow listening up until some point in time (like Seeds Of Kindness for example -- I _had_ to wait a few months before I post a streamable version and I _had_ to keep disabled downloads for my track for a few more months). This starts a vicious cycle: * track done -- its for seeds of kindness but i can't upload a track here because I can't disable downloads? Maybe later. * next track done -- wanna upload to sites that reflect my full discography -- this site isn't one of them, so skipped. * next track done -- wanna upload only to one place so I can count all playbacks -- but because of last two tracks, my presence on this site is diminished so I choose the one with most of it -- right now it's youtube. * next track done -- wanna upload to 100500 hosting sites and announce in 100500 social media/forums -- after spending hour in frenzy I realise I forgot this site, because of reasons above it wasn't in top priority and I don't have time to upload right now. Maybe later. See the pattern?

First off, when I pressed "submit feedback" on pony.fm, I didn't expect that a full-blown public topic will be created instead of direct conversation. I've become aware of this topic only after I got an email notification that I was mentioned x.x Now, on the topic of lossless-only. I am having no problems with lossless uploads since I always render wav (my DAW doesn't allow lossy renders, thankfully). I am more concerned about other musicians that use DAW's with direct mp3 export option -- asking them to go back and rerender in wav might be too much of a step and I've already heard some concerns in private conversations about that. It's easier to ignore this site for them than battle with an old project that might not render exactly the same way because of hardware and software changes/upgrades/updates/reinstalls. Until all DAW's magically will disallow rendering directly into lossy formats, this will continue being an issue. Don't forget that sometimes an MP3 can be the only thing left -- projects can be lost in big crash (happened to PinkiePieSwear), synths can be resold (happened to me) and rerender can be no longer available. I wholeheartedly support lossless, don't get me wrong. But please consider the fact that brony musicians aren't the bunch that got their act together of having multiple backups of everything, rendering always in lossless, and keeping lossless copy of their music handy. Bandcamp is in position of denying you source of income if you don't upload in lossless. Pony.fm doesn't have that luxury.

I think you should relax this a bit. Just make some sort of reward for those who do upload in lossless. For example, if someone uploads mp3, don't recompress, just leave the mp3 download as-is, only rewrite tags. But if someone uploads lossless, make put a "lossless" badge in front of it. If someone uploads ogg or aac, it's up to you if you recompress it to mp3 or not. Not many people know what to do with these, so not giving them mp3 just because of uploader is kinda weird. You can put a warning during upload that lossy aren't good — "You're uploading an .ogg. People will be able to download only in .ogg format without losing quality, please upload in lossless if possible."