Collaborations

[DusK 1,264]

Collaborations between musicians are frequent in this remix culture as well as any other. However, the current setup on Pony.fm seems to be geared solely to solo musicians or artist groups with their own profile.

 

What I'm suggesting is a way to possibly add co-artists whenever uploading/editing a track, in a way that:

1. All artists show up in the song descriptions and, if those co-artists are on Pony.fm, are appropriately linked.
2. Those songs to show up on co-artists' profiles with their other music.
3. The ID3 tags display artists correctly (i.e., for my "Becoming Popular acoustic/orchestral cover, the tag would display as "DusK, Corralfur").

 

It could be an input field labeled something like "Co-contributors (leave blank if you did this song alone)", with some sort of way to "tag" other Pony.fm artists (an @ symbol before the username in that field?), and maybe could give those co-contributors a notification to acknowledge the collaboration wherever user notifications will be on the site.

 

Dunno how tricky this would be, but I think it would be an awesome step up compared to other sites that don't have this kind of thing.

Edited December 30, 2012 by Feld0
Let's have a semantic list. :-)

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

You're right, @DusK, that Pony.fm is currently geared very much toward solo artists. I recognize that collaborations are extremely popular, though, and would love to restructure Pony.fm to be able to accommodate them. The main problem is finding the best way to actually structure the feature, and that's why there isn't anything to that effect yet. Thanks for your suggestion.

 

Originally, I was planning to simply allow artists to enter a custom "artist" field that would be used in the ID3 tags and displayed on the page. Now that you bring it up, though, it makes a lot more sense to properly credit multiple artists in a way that actually links the track to all of the artists. Pony.fm can then put all the names together to generate the ID3 tag.

 

Here's a problem, though: someone needs to be the "owner" of the track. The track's owner is the one who is able to edit and delete the track. In collaborations, would it be a problem if only one of the people involved "owns" the track (rendering the "additional artists" field purely cosmetic), or will it be necessary to make it so that a "co-artist" essentially becomes another owner with equal privileges?

 

 

Related to collabs, I have thought about implementing an "organization" feature like GitHub's, which can "own" tracks and belong to multiple "owners" itself, thus allowing multiple users to have access to uploading and editing tracks in the organization's name. The organization would have a display name just like a user, which would form the basis for its ID3 tags. The thing is, such a feature is most likely to get very complicated very quickly, so if I can do something with "tagging" additional artists to denote collaborations, that would be a lot better (moreover, what's the point in creating a whole new profile for a one-off collab with another artist?).

[DusK 1,264]

I figured such a thing might be tough. XD

Here's a problem, though: someone needs to be the "owner" of the track. The track's owner is the one who is able to edit and delete the track. In collaborations, would it be a problem if only one of the people involved "owns" the track (rendering the "additional artists" field purely cosmetic), or will it be necessary to make it so that a "co-artist" essentially becomes another owner with equal privileges?

Honestly, and this is coming from a guy who has done a LOT of collabs and looked to others to accurately describe his work on release, having the uploader "own" the track and dictate what goes into the description/album art/etc fields probably wouldn't be much of a problem. Usually, crediting and editing issues from co-contributors are taken care of simply with the co-contributor asking whoever's in charge of that stuff to edit accordingly. Musicians (and in my experience, album publishers) are a nice bunch, they usually take care of it in a timely way.

Ideally, though, you could make it so the uploader could allow others to edit the track's info on a per-song basis. Maybe a check box with the descriptor "Allow tagged co-artists on Pony.fm to alter this track's info?".

Edited December 30, 2012 by DusK

[Anorax 29]

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

Edited January 4, 2013 by Anorax

[Dreamsong 253]

As a pony who's mostly just a singer, I totally agree!

 

It would be verra nice to have all contributing artists acknowledged for their work!  <3

Edited March 7, 2013 by Dreamsong

[Dreamsong 253]

On the new art/media site, Weasyl.com ,  to keep disk-space down by discouraging multiple uploads, from what I've ready they've included a pretty neat, simple-sounding collaboration system...

 

One user uploads the original...

 

...Then invites the contributing artists as collaborators.

 

...The song then shows-up in the collaborator's gallery as if they themselves had uploaded it.

 

(I've never used this collab system on Weasyl, I'm only inferring from the snippets I've read about it.)

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

On the new art/media site, Weasyl.com ,  to keep disk-space down by discouraging multiple uploads, from what I've ready they've included a pretty neat, simple-sounding collaboration system...

 

One user uploads the original...

 

...Then invites the contributing artists as collaborators.

 

...The song then shows-up in the collaborator's gallery as if they themselves had uploaded it.

 

(I've never used this collab system on Weasyl, I'm only inferring from the snippets I've read about it.)

 

This is likely how I'll end up implementing the feature on Pony.fm. Nice and simple - you invite other users as collaborators, and the track appears on their profile as well as yours.

 

Multiple uploads are definitely something I discourage.

[Freewave 1,145]

This hasn't happened yet, correct?  Dreamsog and I havew collabed twice and we have seperate uploads on each of our accounts.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Freewave

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

This hasn't happened yet, correct?  Dreamsog and I havew collabed twice and we have seperate uploads on each of our accounts.

 

No, it hasn't. It's on the list, but it won't happen before beta begins.

 

It would be best if you did not upload duplicate copies of a track in the meantime, to avoid duplicate content issues with search engines and users. This feature will come eventually, but it isn't a high-priority one.

[JasperSynth 11]

Sorry to bring this thread up from the grave, but I have a question about it.

 

On the new art/media site, Weasyl.com ,  to keep disk-space down by discouraging multiple uploads, from what I've ready they've included a pretty neat, simple-sounding collaboration system...

 

One user uploads the original...

 

...Then invites the contributing artists as collaborators.

 

...The song then shows-up in the collaborator's gallery as if they themselves had uploaded it.

 

In a system like this, would there be a way to add non members as collaborators?

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

In a system like this, would there be a way to add non members as collaborators?

 

No. The way this system will work will require every collaborator to have a Pony.fm account. It shouldn't be too hard to invite everyone you work on a song with to get one, though.