yeah u got a point there... but I don't feel as though that's
the same thing..
I'm just afraid that genre's are gonna overpower others
that's the classical in me speaking

At 7/4/06 11:48 AM, AdmiralConquistador wrote: Are there not a buttload of different flash genres?

There are comedies, serious shorts, weird things, games, puzzlers, actions games, music videos, etc. Possibly even more genres than there are genres of music avaliable on NG.

sry about the double post, my previous post was to quote this one

We need a favourite audio artists and favourite song list, in our profiles. I got a lot of artists in mind :D

We gotta do something about 0 voting. But I don't know what :(

Yeah, I know this has been said, but I defnitely want more characters than 30 for the song description. Look at the Flash descriptions, for goodness' sake! Most of the time I don't get to say everything I want.

At 7/4/06 04:11 PM, Watercolour wrote: We need a favourite audio artists and favourite song list, in our profiles. I got a lot of artists in mind :D

I as well.

It would also help us with our ego, whether we should have one or not :D

At 7/4/06 04:11 PM, Watercolour wrote: We gotta do something about 0 voting. But I don't know what :(

1) Vote weighting:
Implement a voting power factor that reduces the power of your vote the more your vote average is under the overall site's average vote. Do not increase the power for a voter's average if it goes higher than the overall average. For example, assume the average overall accross the board vote is 3. As long as a persons average voting record averages out to 3 or more, then there is no change to their vote weight. If they vote 0 too much then their average vote will become low and their voting weight will be low. So that way they can zero spam all they want but it will have very little effect. People would stop. Also, those who would vote 2 for everything will also reduce their voting power over time.

2) New accounts have a half the voting weight for the first week and a first month probationary period. If their voting record is highly skewed anytime during the first month, (ie one or two artists get high marks and many others get low marks -- say an 5 to 1 ratio) then their voting privelege is removed for a month. Then they can start over. This will prevent a lot of new accounts created just for vote spamming.

an option to browse all genres at once.

Additional ideas:
1) The obvious UI stuff like allow description editing, loop deletion, etc. The description should be called Short Description, and an additional bigger field should be added to better describe the submission (say limit 500 chars). Currently, we have to review our own song to describe how we made it.

2) Recognize that the AP site has two main uses -- loops for flash AND song/remix peer review/recognition. Allow each audio submission to be designated as either a loop or a song. Allow users to select if they want to see loops, songs or both. I could see a lot of people posting loops out of their songs for easier use in flash. Currently it seems like there is no incentive to do that, especially when you hit the 2 upload max per day.

In fact, if the functionality were separated (songs from loops) I could see a hugely expanded cooperation between artists and flash designers. Incorporate into the Flash Portal an easy interface to peruse loops by genre from the AP. Provide a way for a flash artist to request specific loops or loop changes from specific audio artists, all viewed and managed within our personal pages. (Make it easy so we don't have to remember what we requested from who)

Face it. Most audio artists want to make songs, not flash loops. Therefor, give us an incentive and make it easy. Allow us our desired functionality to submit songs and gather peer feedback & recognition, but also make it easy (and desirable) for us to provide loopable sections from those songs for the flash artists to use.

I write mostly songs but they all contain loops. What is my incentive to take the time to break those loops out and submit them for flash use? I have no native need to do that, but a little incentive might go a long way here.

3) Allow songs to be designated for streaming only (not to used by the flash artists) as long as one or more loops from the song are provided separately for free flash use.

4) Allow 5 loop uploads of 1k or less, and 1 loop upload of 2k or less per day. Boost max size for song uploads to 5k, limit one per day. If you first delete a song, allow another upload.

5) Automate (and enforce where possible) the audio creator's recoginition credits when audio is used from the AP. Part of our incentive to provide loops is the recognition. We'd like to know when a flash developer decides to use or download one of our loops. That information should be automated within the system (provided in a list with artist name & date downloaded). Then we could check the work of those flash artists to see if they used any of our loops. If our loops are used without recognition we should be able to report it and have some dialog and recourse to force recognition or removal of our loops from their submission.

I suppose a quicky fix for the zero voting thing would be to post a list by user, sortable by the number of 0 votes. The culprets would quickly be obvious.

...assuming the database captures that data. If not, start capturing it now. Then post the list in a month. We will see who has NO HONOR! ;)

We should definately have the ability to write keywords for our songs/loops, so flash people can more easily find what they want.

At 7/5/06 06:25 AM, Metalcan wrote: We should definately have the ability to write keywords for our songs/loops, so flash people can more easily find what they want.

Now that is a great idea.

Man, we're giving the NG guys a LOT of work haha
looks like their gonna hafta do some overtime on this project
but damn.. its about time...

btw, great idea metalcan

WOW, these are some GREAT ideas! Simon, Khuskan, Rucklo, you guys are really making a huge difference.

In fact, your ideas pretty much made most of mine obsolete! Yours are more organized, and they should be used. But on the decorative side (in a totally straight way...)...

I strongly support the idea for Audio artist / Flash artist tags. It'd show many ignorant flash artists (let's face it--many flash artists just dont know we have so many audio resources here) that the audio portal is a great way to collaborate and make short-term development teams. I dont know, I just think it'd really expand the realms of the Newgrounds Flash Portal.

Maybe there should be a section of the audio portal for sound effects? Or maybe we don't have enough audio engineers for that to take off. Nah, forget that...

Sorry that I babbled so long for pretty much nothing, but I'm SO EXCITED to see great ideas such as those of Khuskan, Simon...etc. Keep it up! We have a chance to change the audio portal here!

apparently u didnt read the entire thread haha
u missed... just a few points...

- More characters for comments
- Gone with the player
- Remove the voting system. Make a submissions score reflected by half of the averaged total review scores.
- Remove the "Total score" from the review and make the total score an average of the four factors.
- More mods to control the audio theifs
- Work out experience for reviewing on audio submissions.
- IP logging to prevent users from mass downloading their own tracks
- Audio batting average, of course. I'm getting tired of going through and adding it all up in excel :-P
- Multi author submissions for collaberations.
- More rewards!!
- One-a-day voting
- No more messing up the ID3 tagging in mp3 files.

those are just the ones i agree with

Khuskan, ur a genius btw :P
just wanted u to know that

At 7/4/06 10:06 PM, UnderTundra wrote: 4) Allow 5 loop uploads of 1k or less, and 1 loop upload of 2k or less per day. Boost max size for song uploads to 5k, limit one per day. If you first delete a song, allow another upload.

I fail to see why there should be a limit in the number of tracks you can upload a day. The system has rarely been abused as is. It's very hard to do so as NG is very picky about the filetypes you upload - You actually have to have a valid non-protected MP3 for it even up accept the upload.

Accepting wav files would be a mistake, even if it was for loops and yes, a limit would be needed. Why? Because you would essentially be able to rename a txt file to .wav and upload it and NG would be none the wiser.

Something needs to be done about the lack of NG portal users. The voting system is also flawed because 0'ing a song in its infant stage will often remove any hope of exposure ever again, it's way too easy to just casually bomb an entire page of songs to dust. Zero bombing is probably what i hate the most about NG audio atm. On my old account "MFR" i had all my popular tracks voted off the first pages forever because of an argument with another user.
Blam/protection systems need to be implemented too, and something to spark user's interest in NG audio. EXP is sure to do the trick. Moreover, simple things that being able to access user's NG audio reviews from their profile page has never been implemented, as for stuff like batting average and favourite audio submissions.

I feel that the NG Audio portal should take a step away from the "loops for flash" concept and put us a bit closer to the Flash authors in terms of exposure, features and even safety, (good luck zero bombing a flash submission) but still have a place as providing music for the Flash portal. It's just that i'm sick of the NG Audio portal being a sloppy half-job, for it is.

Agreed. The AP would get MUCH more content if it officialy existed as a music community, akin to OCremix etc not a resource community.

The new slogan of Newgrounds is 'everything, by everyone'. The audio portal and flash portal have exactly the same sized buttons right next to each other. The only thing that even hints that NG is mainly for flash is the fact its -mostly- flash on the front page.

I'm sure a whole new audience can be bought to NG simply by expanding the AP to take on par with the flash portal.

I am aware such changes would be extremely unlikely... but seriously, look how popular dedicated music portal websites are these days.

Yea. NG Audio has to stop being a bastard child between a Flash resource and a media portal. And you're right, we might attract different kinds of users if we had a more mature Audio portal with more features.

*All of Khuskan's ideas*

I disagree with the previous discussion.

I belive that if NG could specialise in shorter loops and sound effects, the AP could grow and become a HUGHE library for flash artists, not only from NG, but all over the internet. And that would most likley be very good PR for NG.

Why I don´t belive in the AP going "Music first" is the fact that there already ARE so many music sites, that are good. Of course, noone said NG can´t beat them, there are plenty of resources to do so, but then they would most likley have to let go some of the flash portal.
I belive its a matter of not having that much resources as they want. There are millions of brillliant ideas, but do remember that NG´s income is primarily from ads on the site, and i would ass-ume (lol tank) that they sell the ads with the flash portal.
That´s why this is majorly a flash site (someone plz tell me im wrong if i am...) and will stay that way, at least until the time changes and the market with it.

So, what my real point here is, that if NG would choose to go "general music first" with the AP, then there would become a gap between the AP and the FP that would be even greater than it is today. Wich is a shame, because both flash and audio artists would benefit from having a closer collaboration with eachother, and in the end, Newgrounds.com would become even greater due to having better "originaly NG" flashes, with great audio.

Anyone disagree with me?

In response to Rucklo, I strongly disagre.

Just because there are other music sites does NOT mean that Newgrounds should immediately begin providing loops, seeing as there are probobly just as many databases for loops as there are for full compositions. Newgrounds is seated in a position where the right improvements could easilly launch it over other music AND loop portals, creating even greater PR for wider audiences. Moving to just loops would be a waste.

One thing I can say, is that if seperation were at all a reality, then I'd be game for loops and music sections.

Well, R00ts, im not saying that i belive there shouldnt be any full songs around. But i do belive that it should be restricted one way or another. Perhaps you should have to deserve putting full songs on the portal, by making loops or something. In that case, the longer songs would actually be of at least SOME quality...

Or perhaps when (if) we get a system with awards, i belive most of the awards should be based on loops, meaning full long songs would have a really difficult time getting through, unless theyre actually really good.

Still I belive the best way to go to BEGIN with is to focus on loops and sound effects.
We´ll see what the administrators have in mind. Would be fun to get some kind of commentary, a vauge point in any direction, so we slave users can keep spawning ideas and keep dreaming lol (tank). >:(

I h8 to disagree with my alt but i like full songs better for themes and wut not loops r ok for a short flash but if its somthing big u want to hear a full song .

Rucklo poses an interesting point, but I believe hindering the songs on the audio portal by any means would upset the community, and most would immediately strongly oppose the changes. Now hindering can mean multiple things, both hurting what we already have and leaving the songs aside for loops in the next long awaited update hurt the majority of the AP's feelings, and we don't want that, do we Rucklo?

BTWLOLH4X!

The AP should never specialise just for loops. Thats what it tried to do when it first opened, and it failed. The chances of a flash artist actually using your music is pretty low unless you're -really- well known. It would be eaisier to get popular among other audio artists that than it would be to get popular with flash artists.

Also, I personally and a lot of other musicians here just don't make loops. Most musicians on the portal make full tracks, so what, pray, would be the point of downgrading the website into something that dosn't currently support, and most of the AP users don't use it for anyway.

Well, if there would be awards allmost only for loops, then there really wouldnt be that big of a difference from how it is now, would it? There are no worhty awards as it is today, and if there would be a system of awards for loops, this would mean that the loops on the site most likley would increase.

However, noone would stop you from making full songs, i shall assume the same filesize limit would stay.

These are only suggestions, and there are pro´s and cons. But, like I said in an earlier post, first thing NG administrators must decide is WHAT DO WE (admins) WANT WITH THIS PORTAL thatissofullofoppurtunitiesandsoon..... ???

A loop-friendly system would help out the flash artists ALOT, and bring flash+audioartists closer together, no doubt. This would probably mean less work for the admins too.

A full music-style page would get a great responce immideatley, due to the already large fan base NG have. It could give Newgrounds.com alot of new advertising partners, like online record companies, new (pro) artist album releases and so on. However, maintanence would requrie more work from the admins, since they would have to compete with already established music pages with great system such as garageband, mixposure and so on.

Or, perhaps there really wont be any energy put in the AP at all, but maybe some new graphic, and a basic award or so... :(
But, I shall assume that when the longed for revamp comes, it will be done good. We´ll see...

At 7/7/06 09:48 AM, Rucklo wrote: It could give Newgrounds.com alot of new advertising partners, like online record companies, new (pro) artist album releases and so on.

In other words a load of companies that have no interest in loops whatsoever.

Nobody purely makes loops anymore, and this is hardly a supply depot for the flash, no matter what its -supposed- to be. It's not a matter of making music for it to be used in flash, thats just a bonus that if a flash artist wants to use your music they can.

Loops are generally unrewarding. The chance of getting a loop in a flash is still very low, if not lower than getting an awesome full track in. Due to general increase of speed of internet connections, flash artists no longer fear large filesizes so they're more than happy to have files from 3 to 5 mb with several full music tracks in them.

Loops don't make you famous, arn't generally satisfying to make as so little work is involved, and you cant really put them on your iPod and listen to them occasionally, because they're far to short.

Given these points there is very little reason to expand the ability for loop support on NG. It is more than sufficient as it is, and they should be handled just like any other track on the portal.

Loops have been and gone, and although the portal still caters for them, they have little real benifits anymore.

now here's an idea and before you say it would take too much work just hear it out 'cause i made a solution to the hard work.

make two main categories. one for loops entitled "loops", and one for full songs entitled "songs". 'twould be a massive work load to have somebody go through the entire audio portal and pick what's what. so here's my solution. the author get's to choose from his own audio page what submission is what, either loop or song. this way we can categorize our own submissions and no ng staff would havta worry about that load of work that would take months if not years to comeplete.

if there are any older tunes that are on the audio portal that remain undecided, and therefore uncategorized, for over three months, then they shall be deleted from the audio portal. this saves bandwidth and server load and space.

i figure the genres can stay but underneath the main category idea. so if you click loops then you would get sent to the page of loop genres and vice versa for the song genres. makin' it easier to hear what kind of submissions you are lookin' for. that way flash authors can find the audio that they actualy want instead of having it created for 'em or lookin' elsewhere since searchin' through the audio portal now is like tredgin' through mud that's waist deep.

anybody else think that this is a nice idea and think it's feaseable?

Its a great idea, mhb, and with "sub-genres" you could be able to put your submissions in for example main; "loop" sub; "emotions-genre" for example.

What i mainly mean in the recent discussion is that loops should be more profitable than full songs, and this is based on the point of view i imagine the admins would have, at least thats the first point with the AP, to be a tool for flash authors. I think thats a great idea, and that it should be evolved, even though the AP have grown into something else. Awarding loops mainly would most likley result in more loops. Plopp.

WE NEED A DAMN IDM GENRE.
Seriously. That keeps some of us from posting to Miscellaneous where no one gets attention at all.