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Also, perhaps a randomly selected "featured artist" every week or day?

 

 

 

the Phony Brony

 

Post Scriptum: Apparently i need a minimum of zero characters in this post. :P

 

Is randomly selecting an artist really the same thing as "featuring" them? Personally, I feel that a "feature" is something that should be reviewed by a human being. What if the randomizer's picked artist, frankly, sucks?

 

I want to make some kind of "featured artist" or "today's artist" thing happen, but I'm not sure that automating it as a random choice is the best way to do it.

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Just gonna chime in here. I'd totally be down with being part of a QC team for featured music if it were to happen. I've actually been looking to start some sort of site or blog spotlighting high-quality brony music, using OC ReMix as a standard for the process. If such a thing were to be a part of Pony.fm, I'd have a means to get this started, and you'd have your featured music.

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Is randomly selecting an artist really the same thing as "featuring" them? Personally, I feel that a "feature" is something that should be reviewed by a human being. What if the randomizer's picked artist, frankly, sucks?

 

I want to make some kind of "featured artist" or "today's artist" thing happen, but I'm not sure that automating it as a random choice is the best way to do it.

I understand. A voting system wouldnt work too well because everyone would vote for a famous guy but if we could have a QC team like DusK is thinking of, perhaps it could work out.

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Just gonna chime in here. I'd totally be down with being part of a QC team for featured music if it were to happen. I've actually been looking to start some sort of site or blog spotlighting high-quality brony music, using OC ReMix as a standard for the process. If such a thing were to be a part of Pony.fm, I'd have a means to get this started, and you'd have your featured music.

 

I understand. A voting system wouldnt work too well because everyone would vote for a famous guy but if we could have a QC team like DusK is thinking of, perhaps it could work out.

 

I think a human team to review uploads and pick out promising ones to feature will indeed work well. Should there be a blog tied into this, or not?

 

Here's an idea I just had for how to implement this:

  • Users can be added to the QC team, which will give them the ability to feature content.
  • When featuring a track, the reviewer will be asked to enter a short synopsis of the track and a paragraph of critique.
  • The x (number to be determined) latest features will be displayed in a slider on the front page with the reviewer's synopsis.
  • If a track is featured, the critique it received will be displayed on the track page with a beautiful "Featured!" badge.
  • There will be a page dedicated to listing all content that was ever featured in a single list.

Can you picture that in your mind? I could put some mockups together to visualize these ideas, if anyone thinks it'll be helpful.

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I think a human team to review uploads and pick out promising ones to feature will indeed work well. Should there be a blog tied into this, or not?

 

Here's an idea I just had for how to implement this:

  • Users can be added to the QC team, which will give them the ability to feature content.
  • When featuring a track, the reviewer will be asked to enter a short synopsis of the track and a paragraph of critique.
  • The x (number to be determined) latest features will be displayed in a slider on the front page with the reviewer's synopsis.
  • If a track is featured, the critique it received will be displayed on the track page with a beautiful "Featured!" badge.
  • There will be a page dedicated to listing all content that was ever featured in a single list.

Can you picture that in your mind? I could put some mockups together to visualize these ideas, if anyone thinks it'll be helpful.

 

That would be awesome - actually, I think it would be fun to be one of the reviewers! It'd introduce me to some new styles I'm sure, and hopefully a myriad of great artists.

 

On the flip side, it would definitely need to be a team effort; I like my trance/ambient/drum and bass music, but genres like metal really aren't my strong suit. Having a few different reviewers would help diversify the pool a bit.

Edited by CloudFyre
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I think a human team to review uploads and pick out promising ones to feature will indeed work well. Should there be a blog tied into this, or not?

 

Here's an idea I just had for how to implement this:

  • Users can be added to the QC team, which will give them the ability to feature content.
  • When featuring a track, the reviewer will be asked to enter a short synopsis of the track and a paragraph of critique.
  • The x (number to be determined) latest features will be displayed in a slider on the front page with the reviewer's synopsis.
  • If a track is featured, the critique it received will be displayed on the track page with a beautiful "Featured!" badge.
  • There will be a page dedicated to listing all content that was ever featured in a single list.
Can you picture that in your mind? I could put some mockups together to visualize these ideas, if anyone thinks it'll be helpful.

 

 

 

 

I could see that working, but what I had in mind was a bit different. Using OCR's system as a base, the process I had in mind would be like this:

  • A user submits his music feeling that it's worth being featured.
  • A quick pre-listen determines whether or not any major and blatantly obvious production or composition issues are present (usually not the case, most people that upload their music to the Internet at least have some handle on how to make it).
  • The track is voted on by a set of reviewers, each giving detailed critique regardless of vote.
  • The track passes and is featured if x YES votes are received before y NO votes, with x required being one more than y, adjusted for the size of the reviewer's panel z where x is 0.4z, with the minimum value of y, regardless of z, being 3. So if there are 10 reviewers total on the panel, a track needs 4 YES votes before 3 NO votes. This lightens the workload on the panel as a whole so that not every single reviewer must review every single track, while the slightly larger number of YES votes required compared to NO votes ensures that slightly more unanimity is necessary for a track to be featured than rejected, which acts as a very effective filter in any cases of subjectivity. This would all happen on the forum in a private section, one thread per song.
  • The forum thread for a song's judging would be made public when the song is featured, or when the song is rejected. This is so that any musician can see how the vote was done, and at least just as importantly, a rejected musician can use that critique to better his music.
Some examples of how OCR handles this:

 

OverClocked ReMix main page. The side bar shows a list of songs that passed the cut and were posted to the site, with the most recent post at the top. We could do things a little differently than OCR here, omitting the writeup and posting songs right when they pass the vote instead of putting them into a queue to be posted later.

 

Public judges decision forum. Threads are moved to this forum after being voted on. They have a system where only songs that didn't make the cut are displayed, with the others simply being made public in another hidden area of the forum that can be accessed by clicking a link in the post where the song got featured. This way, even artists that didn't get featured would at least know why and how they can make their music better in the future.

 

Direct rejection letter. Obviously, sampling the show and direct covers are both a big element of remixing within the brony music scene, so our standards would be a bit different, but the idea would be still the same; if the song, as you put it Feld0, frankly sucks, this letter could be used in lieu of a formal judging. Such a song would have to be waaaaaaay below the bar, though. Like ear-grating bad.

 

OverClocked ReMix also does direct acceptance on occasion, but I can see that working poorly in this fandom.

 

A bit complex, but it is a system that works wonders in objectively and consistently showcasing top-notch music within that particular community, something the brony music scene could really use, especially considering the most popular site in the fandom features music as if it were randomly drawn from a hat or something.

 

The big issue would be getting a bunch of people together that know a significant amount about what goes into a good track in terms of composition and production, and would be willing to listen to several tracks in any given day and provide detailed feedback on them, and could be 100% objective and judge a track by Silva Hound, MandoPony, and some new guy nobody's ever heard of in exactly the same way, judging entirely on the music and not the name behind it, while disregarding personal and subjective tastes that the judge may have regarding music (though for the latter part, it's kinda hard to vote solely on genre or style bias while not trying to come off as such when a precursor to that vote involves an evaluation based on production and composition values, that judge would just end up looking like he doesn't know what he's talking about).

Edited by DusK
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I think a human team to review uploads and pick out promising ones to feature will indeed work well. Should there be a blog tied into this, or not?

 

Here's an idea I just had for how to implement this:

  • Users can be added to the QC team, which will give them the ability to feature content.

  • When featuring a track, the reviewer will be asked to enter a short synopsis of the track and a paragraph of critique.

  • The x (number to be determined) latest features will be displayed in a slider on the front page with the reviewer's synopsis.

  • If a track is featured, the critique it received will be displayed on the track page with a beautiful "Featured!" badge.

  • There will be a page dedicated to listing all content that was ever featured in a single list.
Can you picture that in your mind? I could put some mockups together to visualize these ideas, if anyone thinks it'll be helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

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:

I could see that working, but what I had in mind was a bit different. Using OCR's system as a base, the process I had in mind would be like this:

  • A user submits his music feeling that it's worth being featured.

  • A quick pre-listen determines whether or not any major and blatantly obvious production or composition issues are present (usually not the case, most people that upload their music to the Internet at least have some handle on how to make it).

  • The track is voted on by a set of reviewers, each giving detailed critique regardless of vote.

  • The track passes and is featured if x YES votes are received before y NO votes, with x required being one more than y, adjusted for the size of the reviewer's panel z where x is 0.4z, with the minimum value of y, regardless of z, being 3. So if there are 10 reviewers total on the panel, a track needs 4 YES votes before 3 NO votes. This lightens the workload on the panel as a whole so that not every single reviewer must review every single track, while the slightly larger number of YES votes required compared to NO votes ensures that slightly more unanimity is necessary for a track to be featured than rejected, which acts as a very effective filter in any cases of subjectivity. This would all happen on the forum in a private section, one thread per song.

  • The forum thread for a song's judging would be made public when the song is featured, or when the song is rejected. This is so that any musician can see how the vote was done, and at least just as importantly, a rejected musician can use that critique to better his music.
Some examples of how OCR handles this:

 

OverClocked ReMix main page. The side bar shows a list of songs that passed the cut and were posted to the site, with the most recent post at the top. We could do things a little differently than OCR here, omitting the writeup and posting songs right when they pass the vote instead of putting them into a queue to be posted later.

 

Public judges decision forum. Threads are moved to this forum after being voted on. They have a system where only songs that didn't make the cut are displayed, with the others simply being made public in another hidden area of the forum that can be accessed by clicking a link in the post where the song got featured. This way, even artists that didn't get featured would at least know why and how they can make their music better in the future.

 

Direct rejection letter. Obviously, sampling the show and direct covers are both a big element of remixing within the brony music scene, so our standards would be a bit different, but the idea would be still the same; if the song, as you put it Feld0, frankly sucks, this letter could be used in lieu of a formal judging. Such a song would have to be waaaaaaay below the bar, though. Like ear-grating bad.

 

OverClocked ReMix also does direct acceptance on occasion, but I can see that working poorly in this fandom.

 

A bit complex, but it is a system that works wonders in objectively and consistently showcasing top-notch music within that particular community, something the brony music scene could really use, especially considering the most popular site in the fandom features music as if it were randomly drawn from a hat or something.

 

 

 

Now, to address this:

The big issue would be getting a bunch of people together that know a significant amount about what goes into a good track in terms of composition and production, and would be willing to listen to several tracks in any given day and provide detailed feedback on them, and could be 100% objective and judge a track by Silva Hound, MandoPony, and some new guy nobody's ever heard of in exactly the same way, judging entirely on the music and not the name behind it, while disregarding personal and subjective tastes that the judge may have regarding music (though for the latter part, it's kinda hard to vote solely on genre or style bias while not trying to come off as such when a precursor to that vote involves an evaluation based on production and composition values, that judge would just end up looking like he doesn't know what he's talking about).

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).

Edited by Anorax
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Why not have both?

A Random Feature System and a Selective Feature System.

The Random one would be.. well.. random and be labeled as "Artist of the Day" and would only last for, well.. obviously, a day.

And the Selective one would be handpicked by a group of people and be labeled as "Featured Artist" and would last for a whole week.

 

Both will be displayed at the Front page or something.

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I could see that working, but what I had in mind was a bit different. Using OCR's system as a base, the process I had in mind would be like this:...

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...

@@Feld0,

 

DusK's proposition looks very good - in fact, it's probably one of the better internet write-ups that I've seen in a long time.

 

So, in light of this, I'm going to inject that proposal with some questions/answers/solutions, most of which will seem very basic. For the time being, the questions and solutions I pose are merely sanity checks for my own peace of mind.

 

Process for receiving a "featured" status [Edited per other people's suggestions]:

 

Step 1: A user submits music to the "featured" queue.

(No issues here.)

 

 

Step 2: A quick pre-listen determines whether or not any major and blatantly obvious production or composition issues are present.

(Questions/issues merged with Step 3.)

 

 

Step 3: Real critiquing. At this stage, the song is passed into the larger pool of reviewers, and a pre-determined number of them (10?) do a written critique of the song.

 

Question: Who, and how many people will pre-listen? I'm sure most of us here are good with music structure, etc., but we all have our own native territories. I feel right at home around Trance, Progressive House, and other Electronic genres, but I must admit that if I were judging something like Metal or Rap, I wouldn't know the difference between a "Beethoven" work and a 3rd grader's work. (Maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but the idea stands.)

 

Solution: In order to avoid fatal mishaps due to unfamiliar genres, the minimum number of previewers must contain a certain percentage (majority?) of people who feel "comfortable" within that genre. As an idea: Reviewers can pick 7(?) genres that they feel comfortable with, and from there, the majority of reviewers for any given track must have that particular genre within their 7 (or something to that effect.)

 

 

 

-----------------

 

Example:

 

The song "Metal Thing (The Remixer's Remix)" is submitted to the "Metal" genre by user FillInTheBlank. (Step 1)

 

At the time of the submission, the "Pre-review" rules are as follows (Step 2):

 

1) A minimum 3 (?) reviewers are required to listen to the track for critical errors.

2) Out of the minimum 3 reviewers, a majority (2 out of 3) must deem the track "passable" in order for it to continue on.

 

His song checks out; there are no blatant mixing clashes, nor were there any ear-splitting chord progressions. The song is cleared for review.

 

 

The song continues on, and at the time of submission, the rules for REAL critiques (Step 3) are as follows:

 

1) A minimum of 7 reviewers are required to vote on AND critique the song.

2) Out of the minimum 7 reviewers, the majority (4 out of 7) are required to have the "Metal" genre in their "comfort zone" list.

3) To become a featured track, a majority + 1 (5 out of 7) must vote positive.

 

 

This tips the scales slightly in favor of the artist in terms of genre, but allows for some honest feedback from others who are not of that genre as well.

 

Although he is probably more nervous than Twilight is after forgetting to write a letter to Princess Celestia, user FillInTheBlank is guaranteed that at least 4 out of the 7 reviewers will be people who can more accurately grade his long slaved over track. All 7 reviewers write their feedback and cast their votes. If the majority vote is positive, the song is then officially a featured song. If the majority vote is negative, the song is not featured. In either case, the artist ("FillInTheBlank" in this case) still receives the 7 reviewer's feedback, and a notification is sent to inform him of the final decision.

 

 

*Wipes forehead* That was long...thoughts?

Edited by CloudFyre
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You might be onto something there regarding step 3 (not so much step 2, that's a bit excessive for pre-listening, see Anorax's explanation below).

 

A big point of my outline, though, is the presence of reviewers that could objectively judge genres they don't make themselves. They do exist (i.e., me, I've actually had to judge out of my genre specialty a LOT as an album director), it's just a matter of finding them.

 

Generally, though, using OCR as another example, I find that many of the judges on OCR end up judging tracks that fall into their preferred genre of creation anyway. For example, you can find a write-up by OA and Fishy on just about any rock-based submission to OCR. I think that, if we had a variety of genre specialities by the panel, what you're suggestion would sort of just happen naturally.

 

At the same time, the feedback recieved from experienced musicians that aren't people who themselves do the genre of music they're reviewing is just as valuable. Knowledge of production aspects like soundscape management and dynamics, and basic music theory all apply regardless of genre.

 

You definitely have the right idea about trying to keep feedback useful and unbiased, though. I don't really see too much of an issue with a "comfortable genre" requirement for the majority of judges for any given track. The only problem I could see with it is getting enough judges with a variety of genre backgrounds to actually allow this to happen; the brony music scene is very saturated with a few select genres, EDM in particular.

 

 

 

As a side note: Cyril has expressed interest in being a panelist if this happens.

Edited by DusK
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finally, I can use BB!

Here we go:

@@Feld0,

 

DusK's proposition looks very good - in fact, it's probably one of the better internet write-ups that I've seen in a long time.

 

So, in light of this, I'm going to inject that proposal with some questions/answers/solutions, most of which will seem very basic. For the time being, the questions and solutions I pose are merely sanity checks for my own peace of mind.

 

Process for receiving a "featured" status:

 

Step 1: A user submits music to the "featured" queue.

(No issues here.)

 

 

Step 2: A quick pre-listen determines whether or not any major and blatantly obvious production or composition issues are present.

 

Question: Who, and how many people will pre-listen? I'm sure most of us here are good with music structure, etc., but we all have our own native territories. I feel right at home around Trance, Progressive House, and other Electronic genres, but I must admit that if I were judging something like Metal or Rap, I wouldn't know the difference between a "Beethoven" work and a 3rd grader's work. (Maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but the idea stands.)

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).

Solution: A minimum number of previewers (3? 5?) must listen to the song before it's passed on to the actual critiquing stage. Additionally, in order to avoid fatal mishaps due to unfamiliar genres, the minimum number of previewers must contain a certain percentage (majority?) of people who feel "comfortable" within that genre. (We could have reviewers choose their top X number of comfortable genres, and then use those statistics to determine who needs to critique what tracks.)

I'm not sure if these standards are needed - it's basically a QC screening between the absolute shit and anything else.

 

 

Example: the song "Metal Thing (The Remixer's Remix)" is submitted to the "Metal" genre by user FillInTheBlank. At the time of the submission, the "Pre-review" rules are as follows:

 

1) A minimum 5 reviewers are required to listen to the track for critical errors.

2) Out of the minimum 5 reviewers, a majority (3 out of 5) must have "Metal" in their top "most comfortable genres" list.

3) Out of the minimum 5 reviewers, a majority (3 out of 5) must vote positive in order to pass the track on.

 

With those rules in mind, reviewers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, begin a quick voting process. However, it turns out that only reviewers 1 and 2 have "Metal" in their "comfort zone". Thus, one of the reviewers (let's say reviewer 5) backs out, and reviewer 6 (who is comfortable with Metal), takes over. The voting continues as normal.

 

 

 

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):

There are several common reasons why submissions might not make it to OCR's next stage of evaluation (bolded & italicized if applicable to this submission):

  • the arrangement is merely a MIDI or game music format file assigned new instruments and/or given added effects
  • the arrangement is not different enough (e.g. structure, tempo, instrumentation) from the original game music <-- this could be relative to MLP remixes excluding vocal samples?
  • the arrangement is too texturally sparse, too underdeveloped and/or too repetitive
  • the sound quality (e.g. sample quality, sequencing, mixing, processing, recording) is poor
  • the writing or performance quality (e.g. frequent clashing or wrong notes, mismatched key signatures, sloppy timing) is poor
 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Step 3: Real critiquing. At this stage, the song is passed into the larger pool of reviewers, and a pre-determined number of them (10?) do a written critique of the song.

 

Question: As before, who listens to the song, and how do we prevent accidental mishaps?

 

Solution: Mirroring Step 2, a higher majority of reviewers that are "comfortable" with that genre must be the ones to review the song. This tips the scales slightly in favor of the artist in terms of genre, but allows for some honest feedback from others who are not of that genre as well.

 

Example: FillInTheBlank's song "Metal Thing (The Remixer's Remix)" [in the "Metal" genre] is passed on from Step 2 (aka the majority of the pre-reviewers voted for the song). At the time of submission, the rules for REAL critiques are as follows:

 

1) A minimum of 9 reviewers are required to vote on AND critique the song.

2) Out of the minimum 9 reviewers, majority + 1 (6 out of 9) are required to be of "comfortable" with the Metal genre itself.

3) To become a featured track, a majority (5 out of 9) must vote positive.

 

Although he is probably more nervous than Twilight is after forgetting to write a letter to Princess Celestia, user FillInTheBlank is guaranteed that at least 6 out of the 9 reviewers will be people who can more accurately grade his long slaved over track. All 9 reviewers write their feedback and cast their votes. If the majority vote is positive, the song is then officially a featured song. If the majority vote is negative, the song is not featured. In either case, the artist ("FillInTheBlank" in this case) still receives the 9 reviewer's feedback, and a notification is sent to inform him of the final decision.

 

 

*Wipes forehead* That was long...thoughts?

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:

 

As a side note: Cyril has expressed interest in being a panelist if this happens.

oh HELL yes Edited by Anorax
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Hmm...I didn't realize how basic the pre-review really was. Apparently we can nix that section. [i edited my post to reflect the changes below.]

As for the "comfort zone" idea, I'm not talking about restricting reviewers to just *one* genre. I was aiming for something much higher. (5 genres? 7? More?). I do everything under the electronic spectrum (and that's mainly where I stay), but I also enjoy quite a bit of instrumental/orchestral music, and a few other genres as well. (All of which I could easily review without hesitations).

Otherwise you'd be right: we'd end up with 3000 reviewers.

In all honesty, I created that idea not for our sake necessarily, but for the other members' peace of mind. Can I review music I don't usually venture into? Yep. But the general, everyday person might feel a tiny bit less stressed with the knowledge that their music is in the hands of someone who knows it inside and out, instead of someone who doesn't stray there very often.

On one hand, we could simplify everything and ignore the idea completely. However, that reeeeaaaally leaves an artist in an uncertain position if the "luck of the draw" gives him a high number of reviewers who are all relatively unfamiliar with the genre. (They could do very well, but on that same note, they could also do very poorly.]





And I know we're quoting a lot of OCR here, but I have to say:

When it comes to OCR's evaluation system, I've heard some...varied opinions, to say the least. I'll leave it at that.

I have no "horror stories" or any other specifics that come to mind, but just keep in mind that we're not becoming another OCR. Can we implement some of their ideas? Sure. In fact, it would probably be to our benefit. We just have to keep things in context.

 

Edited by CloudFyre
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As for the "comfort zone" idea, I'm not talking about restricting reviewers to just *one* genre. I was aiming for something much higher. (5 genres? 7? More?). I do everything under the electronic spectrum (and that's mainly where I stay), but I also enjoy quite a bit of instrumental/orchestral music, and a few other genres as well. (All of which I could easily review without hesitations).

 

Otherwise you'd be right: we'd end up with 3000 reviewers.

 

In all honesty, I created that idea not for our sake necessarily, but for the other members' peace of mind. Can I review music I don't usually venture into? Yep. But the general, everyday person might feel a tiny bit less stressed with the knowledge that their music is in the hands of someone who knows it inside and out, instead of someone who doesn't stray there very often.

 

On one hand, we could simplify everything and ignore the idea completely. However, that reeeeaaaally leaves an artist in an uncertain position if the "luck of the draw" gives him a high number of reviewers who are all relatively unfamiliar with the genre. (They could do very well, but on that same note, they could also do very poorly.]

It is a fair point. I can't really say I'm opposed to it, but mainly because, as I said before, it would kind of just happen that way anyway. If the panel is large and varied enough in respect to genres and styles, judges would tend to naturally gravitate towards judging genres they feel the most comfortable with judging, especially considering what it would require of them; a knowledgeable, unbiased, professional critique of the work.

 

Keep in mind, ideally, it wouldn't be a forced vote. The required number of YES votes would be 0.4 times the number of total judges, maybe with a max if a large judges panel were to be a thing (4 yes votes before 3 no's is a good max, imo), so not all of them would have to vote. This way, a judge would never be forced to judge a particular piece that they don't want to. I'm not advocating for judge lethargy, of course; they'd still have to do their part, but I know for sure that if I were to judge a piece I honestly felt I didn't have the advice necessary to improve, or knew exactly why with respect to style a particular piece was above the bar for me, I wouldn't judge it at all.

 

And I know we're quoting a lot of OCR here, but I have to say:

 

 

When it comes to OCR's evaluation system, I've heard some...varied opinions, to say the least. I'll leave it at that.

 

I have no "horror stories" or any other specifics that come to mind, but just keep in mind that we're not becoming another OCR. Can we implement some of their ideas? Sure. In fact, it would probably be to our benefit. We just have to keep things in context.

 

Most of the bad opinions about OCR come from people that simply didn't have what it took to pass the panel and, instead of taking criticism and using it to get better at music (as any good musician would), they insisted on holding sour grapes and badmouthing the site or its panel. I can understand why those people would hold a grudge too; after all, they just waited for months with their fingers crossed and got rejected. That happened to me more times than not. But it was essential to me becoming better at my art.

 

Make no mistake, that judges panel is a tried-and-true method, over 10 years running without a single hiccup. To the end of showcasing the very best its respective community has to offer, that method works better than a popular vote (i.e., Everfree Radio, VG Mix) or a private forced-time vote at the mercy of under-experienced and biased reviewers (i.e., EqD), all while having the side effect, thanks to the review process, of allowing the music community as a whole to grow in their music. We could do quite a few things differently, like posting tracks that pass immediately as opposed to a much later date (especially considering the sheer volume of brony music as compared to VGM remixes), or truncating the featured tracks into a single post per posting period, but the underlying idea of several experienced, unbiased reviewers voting on tracks based on a relatively high standard and relaying essential feedback is the one thing that should not be nixed, because it just works.

 

That open-ended review process would also work well in taking care of any judges that might vote based on inexperience with or bias against a particular genre or style. Quoting again:

it's kinda hard to vote solely on genre or style bias while not trying to come off as such when a precursor to that vote involves an evaluation based on production and composition values, that judge would just end up looking like he doesn't know what he's talking about

 

Calling out a judge who voted "no" on a track because a traditional metalcore kick didn't "boom" like a trance kick and "clicked too much" wouldn't be very hard to do. Of course, if the judges are chosen correctly, such a thing wouldn't happen in the first place.

 

As for choosing the judges, I believe it was djpretzel that hand-picked OverClocked ReMix's first panel. Now djpretzel was a musician, which gave him a good idea of what to look for in judges, but I think it really should be Feld0's choice should such a system be implemented, despite Feld0 himself not being that experienced as a musician (as far as I know, anyway, he could be the world's greatest woodwind player for all I know). Pony.fm is, after all, his baby.  ;)

 

EDIT: Here's a little (grammatically marred) insight from Cyril on EqD's pre-listening process, which I reiterate should NOT be the process for featuring songs on Pony.fm imho:

 

I quit the prelisteners becuase I barely wad oing it and it was 10 fucking songs at a time that had to be judged right them

 

which is fucking retarded

Edited by DusK
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Most of the bad opinions about OCR come from people that simply didn't have what it took to pass the panel and, instead of taking criticism and using it to get better at music (as any good musician would), they insisted on holding sour grapes and badmouthing the site or its panel. I can understand why those people would hold a grudge too; after all, they just waited for months with their fingers crossed and got rejected. That happened to me more times than not. But it was essential to me becoming better at my art.

 

 

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.

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Man, this is our most active feedback thread yet! :D

 

Before I get into replying point-by-point to things that have been brought up, there are a couple of things I want to make clear:

  • I have no issue with using OCR's system as a base, as long as our mindset remains "create the planet's best pony music community", not "create a ponified version of OverClocked ReMix". From the look of the thread so far, this won't be an issue.
  • It was an awesome surprise to find out a few of you hail from OCR!
  • Equestria Daily is well known for its inconsistent standards. I would wager to guess that it grew faster than its managerial ability did, resulting in a loss of consistency and neutrality over time. They're popular, yes, but I really think that a lot of people won't hesitate to jump ship for their pony music needs à la FimFiction.net if a rock-solid - and to be blunt, better - alternative appears. We're talking about a custom web app, backed by the world's largest FiM forum, going up against a freely hosted Blogspot site. We can do this. :)
  • There is no practical limit to how simple or complex Pony.fm's feature review system can be. Once we decide upon the mechanics of the system, I can write it directly into Pony.fm (and if needed, MLP Forums) to fully integrate it with the site.
 

Now, mega-reply time! Get your quote-fu ready.

 

I could see that working, but what I had in mind was a bit different. Using OCR's system as a base, the process I had in mind would be like this:

  • ~ snipped ~
Some examples of how OCR handles this:

 

OverClocked ReMix main page. ~ snipped ~

 

Public judges decision forum. ~ snipped ~

 

Direct rejection letter. ~ snipped ~

 

 

Thank you for providing these links, DusK. I really like the idea of making the judges' reviews public. What I think would be particularly awesome is if we could review every single submission to Pony.fm. Honestly, I don't think all artists have the self-confidence needed to submit their work for a feature (coughcough@PhonyBronycoughcough, which could result in a whole lot of feature-worthy music being missed.

 

This would also make the act of uploading music to Pony.fm ludicrously valuable in comparison to SoundCloud, YouTube, Bandcamp, and co.: the reward of getting a semi-professional critique of your music merely by uploading it. One could think of it as a symbiotic gesture to connect Pony.fm with artists and give them the all-important "a human being actually cares about my work!" feeling. First impressions count, and this could have dramatic implications for user loyalty over the long term.

 

It does raise the question of artists who do not want criticism... personally, I think that is a bit immature and a backwards way of approaching an art, but that doesn't change the fact that some people simply flare up and take criticism way too personally.

Most of the bad opinions about OCR come from people that simply didn't have what it took to pass the panel and, instead of taking criticism and using it to get better at music (as any good musician would), they insisted on holding sour grapes and badmouthing the site or its panel. I can understand why those people would hold a grudge too; after all, they just waited for months with their fingers crossed and got rejected. That happened to me more times than not. But it was essential to me becoming better at my art.

How could that be approached?

 

 

 

 


OverClocked ReMix also does direct acceptance on occasion, but I can see that working poorly in this fandom.

Yeah, no. If something is going to be featured, the world deserves to know exactly why.

 

The big issue would be getting a bunch of people together that know a significant amount about what goes into a good track in terms of composition and production, and would be willing to listen to several tracks in any given day and provide detailed feedback on them, and could be 100% objective and judge a track by Silva Hound, MandoPony, and some new guy nobody's ever heard of in exactly the same way, judging entirely on the music and not the name behind it, while disregarding personal and subjective tastes that the judge may have regarding music (though for the latter part, it's kinda hard to vote solely on genre or style bias while not trying to come off as such when a precursor to that vote involves an evaluation based on production and composition values, that judge would just end up looking like he doesn't know what he's talking about).

 

 That's a heck of a sentence. May have been better off as a bulleted list. :P

 

Assembling a team of judges that has the skill, integrity, and enough time to do the job effectively, will no doubt be a task that needs to be performed with the utmost care. However, I think working out the actual judging process should be focused on before we begin throwing candidates around. I've just put together two posts below that highlight some of the finer aspects of this:

Question: Who, and how many people will pre-listen? I'm sure most of us here are good with music structure, etc., but we all have our own native territories. I feel right at home around Trance, Progressive House, and other Electronic genres, but I must admit that if I were judging something like Metal or Rap, I wouldn't know the difference between a "Beethoven" work and a 3rd grader's work. (Maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but the idea stands.)

 

Solution: In order to avoid fatal mishaps due to unfamiliar genres, the minimum number of previewers must contain a certain percentage (majority?) of people who feel "comfortable" within that genre. As an idea: Reviewers can pick 7(?) genres that they feel comfortable with, and from there, the majority of reviewers for any given track must have that particular genre within their 7 (or something to that effect.)

 

~ snipped ~

 

This tips the scales slightly in favor of the artist in terms of genre, but allows for some honest feedback from others who are not of that genre as well.

 

~ snipped ~

 

*Wipes forehead* That was long...thoughts?

 

 

A big point of my outline, though, is the presence of reviewers that could objectively judge genres they don't make themselves. They do exist (i.e., me, I've actually had to judge out of my genre specialty a LOT as an album director), it's just a matter of finding them.

 

~ snipped ~

 

At the same time, the feedback recieved from experienced musicians that aren't people who themselves do the genre of music they're reviewing is just as valuable. Knowledge of production aspects like soundscape management and dynamics, and basic music theory all apply regardless of genre.

 

You definitely have the right idea about trying to keep feedback useful and unbiased, though. I don't really see too much of an issue with a "comfortable genre" requirement for the majority of judges for any given track. The only problem I could see with it is getting enough judges with a variety of genre backgrounds to actually allow this to happen; the brony music scene is very saturated with a few select genres, EDM in particular.

 


 

 

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)

 

 

Thanks for the feedback, Anorax! That's funny that the idea I skimmed off the top of my head resembled the reviewing process of a well known, high-standards music community.

 

As I said a bit further up in this post, I'm not sure I quite agree with the idea of a featured queue. Part of me wants the feature to be a special surprise that every upload is eligible for, as I think - done right - it has the potential to bring the brony music community together in a way we've never seen before. I don't want an artist's own self-deprecating complex to get in the way of that.

 

 

 

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).

Video game remixes are very much a form of fan music. ;) I don't think it's mere coincidence that OverClocked ReMix is playing such a large role in this discussion.

 

I expressed my thoughts on this right at the beginning of this post, but Pony.fm's true value will come not from being yet another place that will let you throw up your music and forget about it, but being a place that truly embodies the spirit of the brony fan music scene. It is features like a sensible judging system that carefully chooses to throw traffic at artists that deserve it which will incite everyday conversations like, "hey, are you on Pony.fm yet?" (see: the Network Effect)

 

The brony fandom needs this website - and Pony.fm has every chance in the world to be it.

 

 

Why not have both?

 

A Random Feature System and a Selective Feature System.

 

The Random one would be.. well.. random and be labeled as "Artist of the Day" and would only last for, well.. obviously, a day.

 

And the Selective one would be handpicked by a group of people and be labeled as "Featured Artist" and would last for a whole week.

 

Both will be displayed at the Front page or something.

 

I'm working on implementing some randomization features right now. They'll exist, but I don't think it'll come in the form of another item competing on the front page for your attention. See these topics:

 

As a side note: Cyril has expressed interest in being a panelist if this happens.

Who exactly is Cyril, if I may ask? I'll admit that I'm not nearly in touch with the brony music community as I probably should be, but he sounds like someone I should know.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

~ snipped ~

 

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.

As for the "comfort zone" idea, I'm not talking about restricting reviewers to just *one* genre. I was aiming for something much higher. (5 genres? 7? More?). I do everything under the electronic spectrum (and that's mainly where I stay), but I also enjoy quite a bit of instrumental/orchestral music, and a few other genres as well. (All of which I could easily review without hesitations).

 

Otherwise you'd be right: we'd end up with 3000 reviewers.

 

In all honesty, I created that idea not for our sake necessarily, but for the other members' peace of mind. Can I review music I don't usually venture into? Yep. But the general, everyday person might feel a tiny bit less stressed with the knowledge that their music is in the hands of someone who knows it inside and out, instead of someone who doesn't stray there very often.

 

On one hand, we could simplify everything and ignore the idea completely. However, that reeeeaaaally leaves an artist in an uncertain position if the "luck of the draw" gives him a high number of reviewers who are all relatively unfamiliar with the genre. (They could do very well, but on that same note, they could also do very poorly.]

Managing a massive judges team will be the system's downfall. I like to keep teams small and lean, for good reason: small teams are agile, easier to connect with, and generally more productive on a per-person basis.

 

It should not be forgotten that Pony.fm is going to be a free service provided to an entire fandom. Should the whole thing come together, artists will be quite lucky that this service will even exist in a form that costs free-ninety-nine.

 

The primary focus should remain delivering an optimal experience for fans, but it is critical that the team delivering the experience be optimal as well, or they simply won't deliver.

 

 

 

 

And I know we're quoting a lot of OCR here, but I have to say:

 

 

When it comes to OCR's evaluation system, I've heard some...varied opinions, to say the least. I'll leave it at that.

 

I have no "horror stories" or any other specifics that come to mind, but just keep in mind that we're not becoming another OCR. Can we implement some of their ideas? Sure. In fact, it would probably be to our benefit. We just have to keep things in context.

 

Wrote some thoughts on this at the top of my post. :) Pony.fm is a pony fan site, designed to serve the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom with grace and style. As long as an addition to the site does not endanger that statement, it's fair game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We could do quite a few things differently, like posting tracks that pass immediately as opposed to a much later date (especially considering the sheer volume of brony music as compared to VGM remixes), or truncating the featured tracks into a single post per posting period, but the underlying idea of several experienced, unbiased reviewers voting on tracks based on a relatively high standard and relaying essential feedback is the one thing that should not be nixed, because it just works.

 

That open-ended review process would also work well in taking care of any judges that might vote based on inexperience with or bias against a particular genre or style. Quoting again:

 

Calling out a judge who voted "no" on a track because a traditional metalcore kick didn't "boom" like a trance kick and "clicked too much" wouldn't be very hard to do. Of course, if the judges are chosen correctly, such a thing wouldn't happen in the first place.

I really think not opening up the judges' reviews for public access would simply be a waste of perfectly serviceable feedback. If the judge panel is put together correctly, it would be silly for the artist to never find out what they had to say about their music.

 

Features could be scheduled to be released at a certain schedule after being queued, but I don't think we'll have nearly the volume of music to make that necessary. It may be fun in its own way of the release of new features is semi-spontaneous.

 

Putting a strict schedule in place could put unnecessary pressure on judges to adhere to it, which could increase frustration and the chance of a judge leaving. We don't really want that.

 

As for choosing the judges, I believe it was djpretzel that hand-picked OverClocked ReMix's first panel. Now djpretzel was a musician, which gave him a good idea of what to look for in judges, but I think it really should be Feld0's choice should such a system be implemented, despite Feld0 himself not being that experienced as a musician (as far as I know, anyway, he could be the world's greatest woodwind player for all I know). Pony.fm is, after all, his baby.  ;)

You're talking to a guy who plays piano, tuba, and trombone, and has completed Advanced Rudiments in First Class Honours w/ Distinction. While I'm hardly a professional musician, I can listen to the stuff critically and discuss it like an intelligent person. :P

 

With that said, a lot of you are far more deeply invested into music as an art than I, so I think it would be beneficial to choose the first judges in a cooperative process among the alpha testers.

 

Still, it should be noted that, as the site owner, I retain the exclusive right to decide on or veto anything. As long as everyone can respect that, we're good.

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So, now that I woke up, and here's what I'm getting from the comments above:

  • It looks like we'll definitely be basing the rating framework off of OCR.
  • We want to keep the number of judges down to a small number. (Which I understand)
  • As such, there won't be a need for any real genre qualifications, as judges will naturally lean towards their own genres. (Which also makes perfect sense.)
  • Feld0 plays more instruments than I first thought he did.


 

Calling out a judge who voted "no" on a track because a traditional metalcore kick didn't "boom" like a trance kick and "clicked too much" wouldn't be very hard to do. Of course, if the judges are chosen correctly, such a thing wouldn't happen in the first place.


That brings up another curious possibility: anonymous reviews? It's wouldn't be necessary for the artists themselves, but perhaps it would be more useful in guarding against the rest of the usually hyper-judgmental internet.
 

 

One (vey notorious and, frankly, quite hilarious exmple of this is the Killer Studio Chops incident.
...


Hmm...from a purely user-end point of view, I could see someone's frustration if just one judge is able to downvote their song into oblivion. (Even if all of the judges know what they're doing, and even if it's a very obvious musical issue, I'm sure someone will start screaming: "BIAS! BIAS!!)



On the issue of pre-reviews, I'd say that we need a minimum of 2 people to pass the track on. If no decision can be reached (one upvote to one downvote), then a third reviewer makes the final call by giving his thumbs up or thumbs down. That's it. It wouldn't be very taxing on the reviewer pool at large (using only 2 people, and at most 3 people to skim a given track), but it does give room for second opinions, should one exist.

In the end, those of you more ingrained in OCR's system know about the pre-review process better than I do, so I'll bow to whatever the popular opinion turns out to be.


As for the actual review, this is still the best idea in my opinion:

The track passes and is featured if x YES votes are received before y NO votes, with x required being one more than y, adjusted for the size of the reviewer's panel z where x is 0.4z, with the minimum value of y, regardless of z, being 3. So if there are 10 reviewers total on the panel, a track needs 4 YES votes before 3 NO votes. This lightens the workload on the panel as a whole so that not every single reviewer must review every single track, while the slightly larger number of YES votes required compared to NO votes ensures that slightly more unanimity is necessary for a track to be featured than rejected, which acts as a very effective filter in any cases of subjectivity. This would all happen on the forum in a private section, one thread per song.


 
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So, now that I woke up, and here's what I'm getting from the comments above:

  • It looks like we'll definitely be basing the rating framework off of OCR.
  • We want to keep the number of judges down to a small number. (Which I understand)
  • As such, there won't be a need for any real genre qualifications, as judges will naturally lean towards their own genres. (Which also makes perfect sense.)
  • Feld0 plays more instruments than I first thought he did.
 

 

 

That brings up another curious possibility: anonymous reviews? It's wouldn't be necessary for the artists themselves, but perhaps it would be more useful in guarding against the rest of the usually hyper-judgmental internet.

 

 

 

Hmm...from a purely user-end point of view, I could see someone's frustration if just one judge is able to downvote their song into oblivion. (Even if all of the judges know what they're doing, and even if it's a very obvious musical issue, I'm sure someone will start screaming: "BIAS! BIAS!!)

 

 

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.

On the issue of pre-reviews, I'd say that we need a minimum of 2 people to pass the track on. If no decision can be reached (one upvote to one downvote), then a third reviewer makes the final call by giving his thumbs up or thumbs down. That's it. It wouldn't be very taxing on the reviewer pool at large (using only 2 people, and at most 3 people to skim a given track), but it does give room for second opinions, should one exist.

 

In the end, those of you more ingrained in OCR's system know about the pre-review process better than I do, so I'll bow to whatever the popular opinion turns out to be.

 

 

As for the actual review, this is still the best idea in my opinion:

~Quote from DusK~

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.

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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.

 

Interesting idea. I hadn't thought of a resub option - I like it.

 

Either way, this idea right here is practically a shoe-in at this point.

 

It appears so; it just depends on what everyone else thinks. :P

Edited by CloudFyre
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Man, this is our most active feedback thread yet! :D

 

Before I get into replying point-by-point to things that have been brought up, there are a couple of things I want to make clear:

  • I have no issue with using OCR's system as a base, as long as our mindset remains "create the planet's best pony music community", not "create a ponified version of OverClocked ReMix". From the look of the thread so far, this won't be an issue.
  • It was an awesome surprise to find out a few of you hail from OCR!
  • Equestria Daily is well known for its inconsistent standards. I would wager to guess that it grew faster than its managerial ability did, resulting in a loss of consistency and neutrality over time. They're popular, yes, but I really think that a lot of people won't hesitate to jump ship for their pony music needs à la FimFiction.net if a rock-solid - and to be blunt, better - alternative appears. We're talking about a custom web app, backed by the world's largest FiM forum, going up against a freely hosted Blogspot site. We can do this. :)
  • There is no practical limit to how simple or complex Pony.fm's feature review system can be. Once we decide upon the mechanics of the system, I can write it directly into Pony.fm (and if needed, MLP Forums) to fully integrate it with the site.
 

 

 

 

That last point actually gives your site a leg-up even on OverClocked ReMix's system, which requires users to host their music somewhere else and email that music with a submission form, which requires a decent amount of manpower to make sure that submission standards and rules are being met on a per-case basis. Your site really could take care of the uploading, updating of tracks, the entire submission process, submission delay enforcement (an important point that hasn't been brought up, I'll get on that at the bottom of this post), all that good stuff.

 

Thank you for providing these links, DusK. I really like the idea of making the judges' reviews public. What I think would be particularly awesome is if we could review every single submission to Pony.fm. Honestly, I don't think all artists have the self-confidence needed to submit their work for a feature (coughcough@PhonyBronycoughcough, which could result in a whole lot of feature-worthy music being missed.

 

This would also make the act of uploading music to Pony.fm ludicrously valuable in comparison to SoundCloud, YouTube, Bandcamp, and co.: the reward of getting a semi-professional critique of your music merely by uploading it. One could think of it as a symbiotic gesture to connect Pony.fm with artists and give them the all-important "a human being actually cares about my work!" feeling. First impressions count, and this could have dramatic implications for user loyalty over the long term.

 

It does raise the question of artists who do not want criticism... personally, I think that is a bit immature and a backwards way of approaching an art, but that doesn't change the fact that some people simply flare up and take criticism way too personally.

 

How could that be approached?

I posted about this recently in another thread. I really do believe there's a way to please just about everyone regarding that.

Yeah, no. If something is going to be featured, the world deserves to know exactly why.

I agree 100%, at least regarding this site. OC ReMix is only able to do it because the critique in those instances comes from the big guy himself. An example of this can be found here; while the judges didn't review it, djp noted that "this isn't DusK's crispest production, and I feel like some EQing down the mids and bumping up the highs would have given things more of an open-air feeling especially appropriate to the season".

 

The brony music fandom as a whole also has to deal with the aspects of bias that have been ingrained in its music scene via the most popular music featuring sites since the beginning (EqD, Everfree Radio, etc.), and still continues to this day. The VGM community doesn't really have to deal with such things considering OCR has been the dominant force in showcasing the best music from that scene for over a decade.

Thanks for the feedback, Anorax! That's funny that the idea I skimmed off the top of my head resembled the reviewing process of a well known, high-standards music community.

 

As I said a bit further up in this post, I'm not sure I quite agree with the idea of a featured queue. Part of me wants the feature to be a special surprise that every upload is eligible for, as I think - done right - it has the potential to bring the brony music community together in a way we've never seen before. I don't want an artist's own self-deprecating complex to get in the way of that.

As I noted in Anorax's thread, I find that the very best music is created by some of the most confident musicians. An artist's "self-depreciating complex" would more likely than not get in the way of being able to make good music to begin with. It's really another reason why a submission system works well.

 

On another note, people may feel the need, with feedback received after they've uploaded their track, to update that track (another featuring I'll be suggesting after I get done with this post) based on that feedback to give it a better chance at passing the judges and getting featured. Actually, that mindset of collecting feedback and fixing any issues with that song before submitting it to be judged should be greatly encouraged.

Video game remixes are very much a form of fan music. ;) I don't think it's mere coincidence that OverClocked ReMix is playing such a large role in this discussion.

 

I expressed my thoughts on this right at the beginning of this post, but Pony.fm's true value will come not from being yet another place that will let you throw up your music and forget about it, but being a place that truly embodies the spirit of the brony fan music scene. It is features like a sensible judging system that carefully chooses to throw traffic at artists that deserve it which will incite everyday conversations like, "hey, are you on Pony.fm yet?" (see: the Network Effect)

 

The brony fandom needs this website - and Pony.fm has every chance in the world to be it.

That's really what gets me excited about this site possibly having a featured artists section like this. Right now, the goal of most brony musicians looking for validation that their music is quality is getting featured on EqD. This is terrible.

 

Being on Pony.fm's featured artists should be like what getting posted on OC ReMix is for a VGM remixer; a solid, unquestionable indication that your music is freakin' great, a cut above most in the scene. And putting that goal in front of musicians and giving them the tools to better their music to the point where it can happen could be the single best thing the brony music community has ever seen.

Features could be scheduled to be released at a certain schedule after being queued, but I don't think we'll have nearly the volume of music to make that necessary.

Way more brony music gets made and submitted to EqD than VGM remixes to OCR. More pieces of music are submitted to EqD in a day than remixes submitted to OCR in a month. Just something to keep in mind.

 

When this site opens up, and if it becomes the destination for brony musicians and and fans we think it could be, there will be a LOT of music coming in.

 


 

One more thing that should be addressed: If we have a tiered review system with no limits, nothing would stop someone from submitting any number of tracks per day to the judges panel. That would strain the hell out of the judges.

 

OC ReMix has a rule that submissions must be at least two weeks apart. I think this is also a good rule to work by. It helps ensure that the panel isn't overwhelmed, and makes it so that people are generally submitting only what they feel is their absolute best music, the stuff they really feel could have a shot at getting featured. In a way, it's a subconscious form of quality control before the actual quality control.

 

This is something that could be enforced on the site itself. Not even OCR can do that, because their submissions are handled via email.

Edited by DusK
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  • 2 months later...

Now to awaken the thread again :P

 

I think the issue with the judges voting for their favorite genres mostly, I think each genre could be judged on separate categories. Surely, people who hate a certain genres hate some of the songs less than others xD. For example, there could be a featured rock, dubstep, ambient, vocal, etc. song. Out of these, then the judges would chose the best.

 

Anyways

 

If we weren't going to use the judges system and instead use a system of listener voting, the votes would be skewed to the popular songs. I'm not sure if this was mentioned already but to get around this we could have a system of yes votes and no votes. That way, a song with only 100 listens could still be high up in the charts xD

Of course, the issue that arises from this is that a song with only 1 vote at all (a yes vote) would put it all the way at the top of the charts. If you made it so that the song had to have at least 10 votes, then the people who couldnt get that many would be unable to get to the featured song.

 

 

the Phony Brony

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PhonyBrony, on 10 Mar 2013 - 03:52, said:

I think the issue with the judges voting for their favorite genres mostly, I think each genre could be judged on separate categories. Surely, people who hate a certain genres hate some of the songs less than others xD. For example, there could be a featured rock, dubstep, ambient, vocal, etc. song. Out of these, then the judges would chose the best.

No decent music critic would let those biases and that degree of subjectivity impact his judging. A person judging music based on what he likes is different than a person judging music on whether it's actually good or bad.

 

I'll give an example. So far, I have judged 10 pieces of music for Brony Music Spotlight. Of the four I have rejected, I personally enjoyed two of them. Of the six I have passed, there are only three that I would actually listen to more than once. A good music critic has the ability to view and judge a track with objectivity and remove themselves from subjective viewpoints to a degree that most people aren't able to. Those are the judges you want, because it's those judges that best set a standard by which music can be measured.

 

It can actually be argued that separating judges into genre categories and restricting them from judging other genres of music would make for a worse judging process than trying to find judges that can objectively judge music regardless of genre, because pidgeonholing judges into genres they like could possibly further their biases to the point where they're judging tracks entirely on their own aesthetic preferences, a process that has been proven to be ineffective for maintaining a standard.

 

Like I said before as well, even judges that critique objectively will naturally tend to gravitate toward genres they have more personal experience with producing if the situation allows, such as a scenario where not all judges would be necessary to pass or reject a track. It's not so much because they don't like other types of music and their subjectivity is causing them to "stick" to the genres they themselves make, but rather because they're a bit more informed of that genre and can make judgements that are easier and take less time to do. This solidifies a standard.

 

TL;DR: People who would vote "nay" a track simply because they "don't like that kind of music" are not the people that should be judging music for a system like the one we're discussing anyway.

Edited by DusK
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If we weren't going to use the judges system and instead use a system of listener voting, the votes would be skewed to the popular songs. I'm not sure if this was mentioned already but to get around this we could have a system of yes votes and no votes. That way, a song with only 100 listens could still be high up in the charts xD

 

This brings up a topic that I'd like to cover briefly: featured tracks. (Not necessarily featured artists, but featured tracks.)

 

One pet peeve of mine that I would like to voice (in a good way!): I understand the idea of keeping the charts even (which is something that we'll need to do every so often), but we really have to watch out that we're not stifling popular artists solely because of their popularity. If they're getting a zillion views/likes/listens, that's not something that should be hindered. There should be some degree of control to be sure (that way one artist doesn't dominate the entire website week in and week out), but if we start knocking popular songs off of the charts because they're *too* popular, then we're effectively censoring what is an otherwise perfectly natural rating system. People will gravitate towards what they think is good music. It's just that simple. Mandopony and Eurobeat have insane amounts of views for very valid reasons: their songs are well done, and they communicate well with their listeners.

 

As my disclaimer: I'm not saying that was what you were implying at all. I just wanted to voice my opinions on the subject. (I'm not even sure if I said that right...take it with a grain of salt.)

 

 

On that same note: we have a top twenty for the day, but should we implement a top ten of the week? That seems a little more stable, as the twenty of the day will change pretty rapidly. (If not, I might start up a blog and do the top ten of the week.)

 

Edited by CloudFyre
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On that same note: we have a top twenty for the day, but should we implement a top ten of the week? That seems a little more stable, as the twenty of the day will change pretty rapidly. (If not, I might start up a blog and do the top ten of the week.)

 

I can't imagine some sort of "Most Popular" list wouldn't end up on the site in some way. A Top 10 of the Week sounds fine to me.

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I can't imagine some sort of "Most Popular" list wouldn't end up on the site in some way. A Top 10 of the Week sounds fine to me.

 

I assumed the same, but I figured I might as well put it out there. :)

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