An Essay of Feedback (Literally)

[Mogul Dash 31]

Feature Suggestion Outline

 

these are just my thoughts as I go along looking through the site. They are mindless ramblings that may or may not be possible or may go against your end vision for this site, but they are ideas none the less.

 

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Search Feature:

 

Now, I apologize if I missed something reading through the sticky's, but the way the Track / Artist pages displays information will ultimately be the sites downfall. Without a properly categorized search bar, it will be very frustrating to find certain artists, and songs. I ASSUME that the implementation of a search bar is on it's way but I wanted to mention it. In my opinion the first page someone should be brought to when visiting pony.fm is a simple search bar (With the option to login/sign up/signout/upload/ and view profile info at the top of course). Think of how Pandora does it, when someone visits the site, the first thing they want to do is obviously play music. By having this search bar front and center it adds a very quick way for someone to immediately jump to the artist/song/genre they like. I believe some mySQL databases could easily pull this off. It would also eliminate the tabs up top, that read songs / artists. To me it seems counter intuitive to have, when the same thing could be done with a search bar.

 

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Newest Uploads / Popular / Newest Artists:

 

Instead of having the Tracks / Artists tabs at the top replace them with these. Maybe even throw a random button in there? There need not be anything up there at all, but it might be appealing to some.

 

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Add Playlists, Play All Feature:

 

Let me elaborate on this. This would go hand in hand with the search feature. Lets say I want to hear all tracks by the living tombstone. I would simply type in the search "The Living Tombstone" and would be presented with his profile page and a list of all his songs. Now it might be beneficial to create a play all feature, that would simply play all of songs made by The Living Tombstone. This might be dangerous from a bandwidth perspective, but it is just a thought. Say I really like the song, I wish to add it to a playlist that I can also go back to later and play through in the same way I was able to play all tracks by the living tombstone. Now tomorrow, I can log into Pony.FM and turn up my playlist, and listen through it while doing homework. The same principle could apply to genre's. I could simply type in the genre I wish to listen to, and call up a list of all the songs listed under "dubstep". I similar fashion to Pandora. I could then play through all the songs listed as dubstep in a music player. 

 

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Batch Downloader:

 

this feature would be truly unique to any Brony music site I have come across yet. Quite possibly unique to any music site for that matter. Say I have come across an artists page, and I really like his stuff. Adding a feature to download in quick succession, selected songs made by said artist would be a great help to many users. To eliminate the redundancy of having to go song to song to hit the download option. If server strain is an issue perhaps limit it to 8 songs and create a download cue. So when one song is finished downloading it starts on the next one. The same could be done for user made playlists. Queuing up and downloading all the songs in your saved playlist.

 

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Small things:

 

-I noticed that not everyone has an avatar on the site, to me this gives a very unclean look. Perhaps require people to chose there logo when they make accounts as artists, or don't display logos at all. Or only display it on the artists actual page?

 

-The clear vision of what this site is going to be when it's finished. I might have missed this to, but to me Pony.FM has a chance to really stand out among the other sites. EQBeats is cool, but it doesn't have flair to it. There is currently no brony site that acts in a way similar to Pandora, and I think there is potential for pony.fm to fix that, and bring something refreshing to the table.

 

-I think pony.fm should be geared more towards bronies coming in and wanting to build an online playlist, and listen to music via an online player (using artists of there choosing of course). Straying away from the normal, "store your music hear" kind of thing. If you know what I am getting at.

 

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I hope I don't sound to....bossy here, because the site has LOTS of potential and is in very early stages. So far it looks great, and I want to see the site succeed. I am just offering feedback that would steer the site in a direction that hasn't been done before. If you have trouble envisioning what I have said above then just go to Pandora radio, and it will all sort of come together. I feel like that interactive nature that Pandora has would translate really nicely into what you have so far. This would steer this away from sites like EQbeats, Celestia Radio. Which are nice, but offer no easy way for the user to fully discover what the community has to offer. I could be wrong about this statement, but I feel as though you are trying to create a unique site that sets itself apart as well.

 

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Thoughts on the Upload Page:

 

-The uploader should be able to type in a genre rather than having a list. Or rather, have an other option, with the ability to then type in that "other" genre.

 

-I also noticed that as it is, the "other" option is not at the bottom. It shouldn't be in alphabetical order, because "other" is not a genre.

 

- The Type of track option seems to go against the "flow" of everything else on the page, and may even be unnecessary. Usually people will tag there songs as such, and if there is no way to search for strictly remixes, originals, etc then the feature is moot to begin with. However, perhaps I am missing a deeper reason to have this option available

 

- The scroll down menu that appears when you click "remix of an official song" also seems to server no real purpose, and most musicians do not know the exact name of a show official song.

 

-I feel like the Explicit Lyric box should be down somewhere around the area that you enter the lyrics.

 

- the licenses area is also an item that had me do a double take. Since I have not encountered this one any other site (Well I have but they were worded differently) The box sizes should also all be the same for aesthetic purposes, and more than once I tried to select the feature by clicking on the whole box, rather than the little circle. Which might make the process quicker, but isn't that big of an issue. I would recommend using the creative commons style licenses for this section. I also felt like the Remix license was a bit hard to understand. Do you mean, Someone is allowed to take and remix your track? Or does it mean that the song itself is a remix? When I choose a different option, the box should light up green. It could be confused as being selected the way it currently stands.

 

-Submitting a form that is incomplete results in the page totally resetting all previous input parameters, this is annoying.

 

-The cover art photo should be displayed when uploaded

 

(I will edit this thread as more feedback is added! Keep up the good work team!)

Edited December 21, 2012 by Mogul Dash