Anorax

Maybe there can be an "Audio Content" genre or something? I dunno. Seems like a pretty good idea, especially when I finally can get to work on some episode overdub projects...

However! sometimes when using a basic uploader (and I've noticed this in Chrome), that in one of the bottom corners a small little dialog box appears showing you the current upload progress (in chrome it's the same little box that shows up when you hover over a link and the link's url shows up in the corner).

Franceium? Is that you? First of all, there should only be two, maybe three that you haven't heard of. I don't know what ContextWeb or SkimLinks is, but I can have a good idea. But Flattr? Come on, you have got to have heard of that. No? Well, let me enlighten you. is a system based on microdonations. You log into the flattr website and set up a monthly donation limit. Then you go about the interwebs clicking on "Flattr buttons". Say you've made 20 clicks on Flattr button. If you want, you can call these clicks "flattrs". These clicks are then linked to your Flattr microdonation account. Therefore you're now flattring (lol) 20 people or websites. Now, you've also set up your monthly donation amount to be $40. Each month, this money is evenly divided between every single flattr button you've clicked (which means in this scenario, the owners of those 20 buttons each get $2 in that month as a direct donation through Flattr). It's a quick and easy way to support websites that you enjoy, and that have a Flattr account. As you can (or can't?) see, has three people actively Flattring MLPf. That means MLPf gets a donation from these people every month, however small it may be (as designated by each Flattrer's donation settings). It's a brilliant idea that really should be more widespread than it currently is. Arrivederci!

Hmm... which selection would go to the "mod review" team? I'm assuming the "reviews" maybe on moderator accounts, they have a special page that lists all songs marked as "review requested" - or, as I like to think of it, "mod review". And as such, accounts of people who are part of the Judges Panel would have a special page in their accounts where they can not only view the "mod review" songs, but the "critical review/possible featuring" songs as well. basically, mods can see one special tag - reviews, and judges can see two - "reviews" and "crit. review/ feature submission" this way, if a judge isn't busy actually judging, they can make a "regular" review of the 'mod review' tracks.

as an add-on to this, why not add a "rollback" feature, where the server keeps a compact lossless version (FLAC) of all previous versions of a track? Say I upload an updated version of a song to replace the previous version, come to find out that after a while, people stop listening to the track because I added a change that nobody liked. Well, poor me, because I stupidly overwrote the original version on my computer with the "new" version. This is when it would be helpful for the pony.fm server to have a "rollback" FLAC of the original for me to rollback to. Just a thought. EDIT: To make things a lot simpler, the "rollback" files would be only viewable by the artist (and moderators/admins!) by default, unless they decide that they want the listeners to take their pick of which version to download. I was tempted to open up Fireworks and make a diagram, but I don't think that's really needed with this idea

I noticed that on the Artists page, you can't sort through the list by clicking on the headers of the other columns. You can't sort by reverse alphabetical order, date of joining the site, or number of tracks uploaded. Eventually people will want to use this sort of, well, sorting in the future

What about an option for pony.fm that allows you to mark a song as WiP? This WiP option would block downloads only because it's an unfinished product, while also tagging the song as such. People are less likely to attempt to download if, one, downloads are, of course, disabled, and two, they can clearly see that it is not, in fact, a finished product. Another possible mark or tag allowed would be to "disable" downloads and to, instead, replace it with an external purchase link? (mark as "external purchase" or something like that) Let's say, for example, Silva Hound had a pony.fm account, and he uploaded his new song "CKDS". How, he doesn't want people downloading it for free (because it's part of a commercial album), so he can put in the Bandcamp URL of his song (or the album URL that it's a part of), and this link will replace the download links. And yes, you can also rip audio from Bandcamp and Soundcloud when they have [free] downloads disabled. Will people do it? Yes. However, it's a low-level deterrant that some, if not most, people won't bother working around.

Diagram tiem! sweet bro and hella jeff style why play cont is usful ok, enough with the comic sans while page spamming may not be an issue, it may not accurately display the "play" count a song gets This is especially true now that Pony.FM has external embeds in the MLPforums another way that the "views" may not equal "plays" is where the page is loaded, not to play the song, but to read the description or download the song if someone has already listened to the song. While view-only results work well with sites like YouTube, YouTube counts "views" as "plays" - when the video starts loading and playing, it counts a view - not when the page loads (this is especially true if YouTube has a way for the video uploader to disable "autoplay on page load") just my 2 cents on this

hmm... I don't know. While I really think this is a good idea, I don't know how well it could be implemented, with all the other ideas floating around. It just might break some code somewhere else, or some other code might break it. Then again, Pony.fm is in alpha, so...

going to chime in real quick, a lot of times collaborations are usually seen as a main artist, with the track name having a suffix of (feat. collaborator) example being "Silva Hound - Hooves Up High (feat. rina-chan)" So, if both rina-chan and Silva Hound had Pony.fm accounts, Silva would be the owner, and rina would be accredited. However, feeding from DusK's idea, maybe rina could have edit rights with Silva having exclusive "delete" rights because he is the original uploader, and it is technically his track, seeing as rina is "featured" in the song

actually, I was wondering if the views would carry over from the private Alpha I to the public Beta? If so, it'd give the appearance of the Alpha artists having an unfair advantage. Maybe the alpha statistics could be "squirreled away" so that publically, the statistics reset for the beta, but the artist can view the alpha statistics privately (if they were in the alpha, that is)

copypasta from another thread where I brought up this idea: how about a "discover" page? As you can see in my mock-up, it's a page that lets the user choose between viewing the "newest tracks" page, the "top tracks" page, and a "random!" page. The random page could look like this (minus the fact that I was too lazy to rearrange the tracks from the above mock-up) this way, the user can load up a list of multiple tracks chosen at random via the randomizer, as well as having a direct play button built into the page for each track. Thoughts? Suggestions? EDIT: quick little thing I think I'll post here, but if there could be sound players set up on a main page (like the players on my Discover Random page above), how would the stats be monitored then? Views couldn't work, because a song's player could show up on a page and yet the song itself may not be played - this would skew the "page view" data. Would the current stats system need to be rewritten? What about adding a "play count" statistic to augment and/or replace the Page View one?

how about a "discover" page? As you can see in my mock-up, it's a page that lets the user choose between viewing the "newest tracks" page, the "top tracks" page, and a "random!" page. The random page could look like this (minus the fact that I was too lazy to rearrange the tracks from the above mock-up) this way, the user can load up a list of multiple tracks chosen at random via the randomizer, as well as having a direct play button built into the page for each track. although, this is really a seperate feature that is only related because of the "random" idea. ... I think I'll open up a new topic for this and just copy this over.

What if there was an option for the fancy uploader that allows someone to upload a group of songs as and "album compilation"? when the upload as album button is selected (grey square checkbox in the markup), a group of buttons appear that act as radio buttons next to each track, allowing you to "select" which track is "featured" - this track is the track that will show up on the pony.fm homepage under "newest tunes", possibly with a prefix. So, say that I were to upload the above as an album. when the uploads finish, only one track will appear under "The Newest Tunes" - the Babs Seed Remix - and will look like this (anything in brackets will appear as-is): [Album - 3] Babs Seed [Anorax Remix] or, simplified, the format would be this: [Album - %x] %T where %x is number of tracks in the album, and %T is the 'featured' track title. This can dynamically change when someone goes in to edit the 'featured' track. There should probably be specific Album editing properties in this window in that case, I'll have to mark these up later.

would the "request feedback" button be checked by default? I also think that this could also be implemented on the upload page - they're given an option to opt out upon upload, as well as later when they edit their track

That's a legitimate concern. Hmm... On OCR, sometimes you'll see a judge's result as NO (resub), which means that the judge thinks that the track in question is very close to passing, but has a few minor errors that tipped the scale from a solid YES to a NO. that's why you're allowed to resubmit a track on OCR. Now whether or not this could be used here I don't know. From what I've seen in the MLP community is that musicians tend to not post WiPs - instead, they don't share unless it's finished, and I don't know if they'd be willing to go back into their project file to tweak their song more. well, it seems that doublequotes don't happen by default, so... Yeah, don't worry about that. I'm not 100% sure but I think that OCR itself works with a system like this. There's maybe 8-10 active judges, but you'll only see three or four judges on a song at once, mostly NOs, and I think it's usually three NOs. Either way, this idea right here is practically a shoe-in at this point.

a carry-over from the Featured Artist thread, and the skype chat. Keep in mind that this also carries over from the Featured Artist thread and the ideas presented therein. The idea so far is that there should be a Judges Panel of sorts, that judges songs in the Pony.FM database for a possible title of "Featured Song" - whether it's "song of the day" or what, we're not sure. That's still up in the air. However, it was also brought up in the Skype chat about making sure that everyone who submitted a track got feedback, and you can see this above in DusK's comments. Herein lies the question of a "Mod Review" team, which can provide feedback to EVERY track when it's uploaded. the Mod Review team will be separate from the Judges Panel, but can still provide detailed feedback regarding the song. This not only provides the artist with constructive feedback regarding the technicalities of music, but it can also be an incentive for more people to come join pony.fm - why wouldn't you want to join a website that gives you [free!] constructive feedback on every song you upload? So, what are your thoughts on this idea?

One (vey notorious and, frankly, quite hilarious exmple of this is the Killer Studio Chops incident. And that's just it, you can't please everyone, and not everyone is open to criticism either. That's the base issue. EqD moved to it's current "lets draw names from a hat" system because people were butthurt that their music wasn't passing the albeit slightly inefficient prelisteners panel. Whether or not these people would like an OCR-based judging system is yet to be seen - EqD also doesn't give reasons for WHY they denied a track, and pony.fm's "judging panel" would be able to give people feedback on why the song was rejected or passed. Would some people still be butthurt? Absolutely, but then again, that's bound to happen no matter what you do.

finally, I can use BB! Here we go: ok, not sure if you clicked through any other links that DusK provided, but one of the links explain the "prelistening" that DusK talks about. Basically, the prelistener would basically listen to the song to make sure of several things. That a.) the submitted song isn't a straight MIDI rip (OCR-relevent, not so much pony-relevent) or a straight cover (again, OCR-relevent), b.) the song doesn't have basic yet major flaws, such as combining keys that don't work (Ab+F#+Cmin all at once), terrible mixing issues (let's boost the bass 30db! Red means good!), or that the sound quality is poor (this includes using samples that, well, suck ass - pardon my french). I'm not sure if these standards are needed - it's basically a QC screening between the absolute shit and anything else. again, not sure about this requirement (the genre one). While I don't like Metal, I can sit down and listen to several Metal songs and know that song A was one that someone slaved over night and day on, and song B was slapped together in twenty minutes while wearing noise-canceling lawncare equipment (was going to say headphones, but that would denote that they were actually listening to the song) and blindfolded. The idea here is directly based off of the OCR "Direct Rejection" system. Here's some of the things that OCR checks for (prelistening, or OCR-style, Direct Rejection - same thing): this (and the above link) is included in every Direct Rejection Email sent by OCR. So if a mix fails to get past the prelistening stage, it's for these reasons. If a "genre" of music somehow relies on one of the above issues, then I don't know if it could be considered music, or any listenable music anyway. if you haven't yet, I invite you to look over the OCR Judges Decisions subforum <-- here is where the judges post the voting results for songs that do and don't make it. However, the judging results for a song that is YES'd isn't posted until the song finally is, while the results for a song that is no (resub) is posted right when judging is complete. In this forum, you can see just how the judges voted on each song, what they did and didn't like about the song, both production-wise and personal opinion, and you can see how it does or doesn't affect their final decision. My main concern with the Genre thing is that you will need a huge amount of judges because there are so many potential genres that could be submitted. At this point it's a question of manpower. Remember, you don't really want three-thousand-and-a-half judges. Think about it: even for a huuge community, OCR only has a handful of judges, maybe only a few more than ten. you want to keep the judge count small so that the judging is consistent. Hope this helps answer some of your questions. EDIT: I see that I was ninja'd by DusK. So, all I have to say is: oh HELL yes

I was reading down through this, and thought: Holy crap! You just described several ideas used in OCR!Comparing your list to the system that OC ReMix uses: Users submit their remixes to the submissions queue, along with a description of their track. The description can be as short or as long as they want. This description is displayed for the judges along with the song in question. a quick pre-listen screens for awful songs, and those that pass this QC test is then put in the Judges Queue (which is quite long on OCR) Three or four judges will listen to the song and judge it based on composition, mixing, and other areas of production. This also includes arrangement, which is important when it comes to OCR-style "remixing", although this won't be as important considering the fact that [Pony.fm] users can and probably submit original mixes along with remixes Songs that pass the judges panel get their own featured page, which on OCR includes a write-up by the site owner, DJPretzel. The last 10 OC Remixes are shown in an RSS feed panel on the website main page- as well as a main "featured" page that shows all songs (2500+ in OCR's case, which can be sorted by acceptance date or alphabetically) Of course, DusK said it better: Now, to address this: OCR actually has a system set up for possible new judges, which basically involves giving the new judge candidate a song to judge (that has already been judged by the judge panel), and to see what the candidate scores the song on. This way, the judges can see if the candidate is consistent with current OCR judge standards. However, getting a system like this off the ground won't be as easy. DusK, can you ask around OCR (maybe ask the judges) to see how they chose the very first judges? Nah, scratch that. I'm going to go ahead and do that real quick. If I get a reply I'll put it here. Now I get it, it sounds like we (DusK and I) are trying to create a pony-OCR or something, which is sort of the case, but not really. I just think that the MLP Community needs a website that prides itself on featuring good - no, great - fanmusic, much like OCR does (although OCR has a focus on Video Game Remixes), which we sorely lack - EqD, with the introduction of the MoTD system, has basically tossed music selection out the window - or as DusK puts it, into a hat to be randomly selected from. While a lot of people are happy that their music gets popularity (OMG guise I has views now lol!), it doesn't mean that their music is great - in fact, it can downright suck. A lot of people have stopped using EqD as a source for fanmusic because of the random quality. We need a website that showcases the shining stars without showing favoritism (which EqD was/is also guilty of).