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Post by secretagent on Apr 2, 2008 18:00:12 GMT
I've been thinking for a while about how we can attract more contributors to this section of the forum. Apart from the usual 3 or 4 people who leave comments most tracks are downloaded then ignored which,i would guess,puts people off uploading tracks? Electromancer was a great site for alot of reasons,one being a monthly chart which showed the most downloaded and most played tracks,this created a fun competitive edge to the site and competition spawns creativeness. What i've got in mind(but not sure how it would work)is anyone who has a track to upload can upload it to a single server,we can use my liquidscreamer.net account,then every download would be recorded and added to a chart(this is the bit i don't know how it works)we could encourage comments but ask politely that everyone who downloads a track could leave a mark out of 10. This could be added up in a seperate chart,so you have a chart of most downloaded alongside a chart of total scores. I'm sure this would encourage passers-by to start uploading tracks,if only to see their names on the chart(everyone used to love their initials on the top scores of galaxian and asteroids didn't they?) Just an idea and i would need help/advice on the technicalities. Whaddya think?
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 2, 2008 19:34:10 GMT
I think great but I haven't the first clue how Marvey did it. All downloaded files are trackable and I can do it as easily on my server. The stumbling block is letting people upload their own tracks. That requires some doing. First of all, there's the obvious FTP route but that's going to put off a lot of people who don't have an FTP client or even know how to set one up. Secondly, it's a massive risk making your webspace into a public server by handing out your login details and password to all and sundry. There's no way I wouldn't even entertain that idea because I would wake up one morning and find some knob would have deleted the entire dubsounds site and furthermore, stolen all my samples. I never signed up to electromancer so I don't know how he handled that side of things but I expect he used some kind of javascript html platform for the uploading and probably had another automated script that generated the statistics for downloading. All I can offer is that people send me their tracks via email and I put them on a dubpod and compile a weekly chart based on the download stats that i get from my server (I used to monitor Dubby FM broadcasts this way). Like Dubby FM though, I would assume we would get upwards of 1000 hits a week and only have 8 of us posting our comments. It would be interesting to hear from someone who reads the forum who knows far more about html and scripting than I do to see if we can't design something and put it on the main www.dubsounds.com site which gets much more traffic than this forum (by a long way). Unless this was to happen though, I wouldn't know how to do it. I could put a DEDICATED dubpod on the main site rather than our protected one in here and monitor that. I already use my dubpod software on the main site for previewing my drum machine samples so I can have as many pods as I like and if the material is original, I will have no performing rights violations to contend with. Yeah, that last idea is workable. It just means that I would have to manually compile our chart each week. I think I could do that easily enough. So that leaves three stumbling blocks. 1. Encouraging people to email in mp3's which is less immediate than them being able to do it themselves. 2. Finding some way to pressurise people into leaving comments on tracks. 3. Spreading the word around the internet so people know they can come here and put their music up for voting and comment. Come on then guys. Add your own thoughts but please try to make them as practical as possible so we can actually do what Martin has suggested.
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Post by secretagent on Apr 2, 2008 20:13:52 GMT
If each track had it's own url,couldn't we then assign a hit counter to each "page"?
How we would then transfer all that into one chart must be a html thing?
To do it manually would be way to much of a burden to put on yourself shaun,it can be done automaticaly,we just need to find out how.maybe nervejam could have a word with marv on the nervejam forum(or does that seem like i'm trying to steal traffic from nervejam?apologies if it does)
Uploading to electromancer was just like uploading to myspace,they present you with an upload form,no need for passwords etc.
I'll keep searching on the net for info ;D
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 2, 2008 20:37:04 GMT
Compiling a chart from server stats would be a piece of piss martin. All I do is put all the tracks in one directory and then I get a list showing how many times each file has been accessed... Quick cut & paste from my stats page and you have a chart. No big deal. Agree, it would be nice to set up a myspace type of upload but then again, it makes me a bit nervous that I don't have any control over how much data is being loaded onto my server. I think that would concern Joey as well. His deal of "as much webspace as I need" is already generous when you consider the site already uses up 3Gb of his server Perhaps I should buy another webspace specifically for it. There wouldn't be a risk to my main website files then and there's some good deals on at the moment. More comments from everyone please.
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 3, 2008 5:47:53 GMT
Well everyone else seems to have been in and had a look so unless they've all gone off to have a think, I guess it's just you and me Martin
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Post by secretagent on Apr 3, 2008 6:01:27 GMT
To be fair to everyone else,this would probably only concern gavin,mark and bern(and yourself),i was thinking more along the lines of trying to attract new contributers
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 3, 2008 6:08:44 GMT
I was just prodding
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Post by secretagent on Apr 3, 2008 6:28:27 GMT
If we can suss out how to do it we could leave a comment on our myspace friends pages inviting them to submit a track to the chart,hopefully their friends/fans would support them by downloading their tracks to get their favs to the top of the hit parade!!!yay.
If we cast a big enough net we will catch enough fish #electrocute#
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Post by Gavin on Apr 3, 2008 8:21:18 GMT
Good idea . Thats about all i can contribute im afraid. As far as my knowledge of html is concerned,i thought up until recently that the internet was made of spaghetti.
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Post by TheProdigy on Apr 3, 2008 15:50:22 GMT
Shaun
I fired this post off to a friend who does this sort of thing in his sleep and has already done similar things for other sites.
The gist of his response was it's simple in ASP.NET but I guess the trouble is, can you create and host your own ASP.NET pages linking to and from this Pro Boards site OK?
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 3, 2008 17:34:11 GMT
Well first of all let me thank you Mark for helping and asking an expert for me, you're a diamond ;D Asp is a server script and YES, my server supports it. The pod software uses asp javascripts as well as swf flash files. I won't be running this through the proboards forum as this is just a bolt on to the main domain. I think it would be far simpler (and reach a lot more people) if it were to run on the main site. We can always talk about the results in here...
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 3, 2008 18:10:24 GMT
Right then... Mark you have a PM ;D Further thoughts... If all this stuff is going to go on a dubpod style player, it could end up getting pretty cumbersome when we have say 50 odd tracks. Instead, I though we could have themed players for different styles of music. Also, I need to find some sort of script that could provide some kind of poll (like the type we get on forums) with a few simple button pushes that would allow the gen pub to vote for tracks they like. Maybe a 5 star system? We could make it a detailed questionnaire but I think that might put people off. Also, as I already mentioned, I think myspace music might have been one of the things that made electromancer fold in the end (apologies if I'm speaking out of turn). I already said, it was too much work and pointless offering band pages in the 'mancer style so instead, the lure for myspace bands would be: a. another outlet for their music b. the competitiveness of a chart and voting system c. linkbacks to their myspace pages so people can go and find out more (thus replacing the need for the provision of homepages here). The upload function should therefore have a few fields that people can fill in. 1. band/act name 2. myspace url 3. genre they wish the song to be included in (we could all get together on this thread and list what genre's would be suitable - although I always said genre's are for idiots ). 4. email contact (for me so i can let them know the file is accepted/rejected*) * only for legal reasons such as copyright infringement etc. (not my own taste) 5. Forum handle (well the buggers can bloody well join the community if they want in ). 6. the function where they drag and drop their mp3 With me so far?
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Post by secretagent on Apr 3, 2008 18:59:53 GMT
I'd do away with genres,it's like knowing what your present is before you open it.
If your into electronic music you're not going to download a metal track.
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 3, 2008 19:51:26 GMT
But that doesn't help does it? How do I keep the numbers down otherwise? You can't have 50 or even 100+ tracks up on one player surely. No-one's going to wade through that #scratchhead#
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Post by Gavin on Apr 3, 2008 22:48:09 GMT
But that doesn't help does it? How do I keep the numbers down otherwise? You can't have 50 or even 100+ tracks up on one player surely. No-one's going to wade through that #scratchhead# Why not limit the number of tracks. So have a "latest 20 tracks" then they get shuffled to the back of the pile when more tracks replace them?
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 4, 2008 6:06:47 GMT
I thought about that Gavin but isn't that going to mess up calculating the chart rating? You see the number one could be ditched for something everyone thinks is rubbish simply because it's been on there a while and the duff track has replaced it in rotation. It gets a bit complicated doesn't it? On traditional UK charts the number one can stay up for as long as it keeps out selling other records. That's possible because the chart is compiled from all records on sale in the given country. Going back to electromancer that would have been based on every track available on the site. There has to be some way for all the mp3's to be made available for voting and so we're back to square one because I can't physically make every song available that gets sent to me. Here's an option... Perhaps instead we have a player at the top with the top 20 downloads and a player below that with new arrivals. The new arrivals have the opportunity to get into the top 20 if they can get enough hits to replace an existing top 20 track. If however, a new track fails to get into the top 20 within say a month, then it gets booted and can only get an opportunity to try again if the artist re-submits it (as a re-release). This then leads to the problem of what to do with "classics" that did very well but have had their day. I would be loathe to see them go so is there then an option for a third player? Something like: Player 1 - Top 20 Player 2 - New Releases Player 3 - Classics One of the things that may happen is that someone will "hype" themselves into the chart by hitting the play button over-and-over but I actually think that's quite funny and reflective of the real world music industry anyway I doubt it could be sustained for very long and so, (again) like in the real world, we may have the odd "one hit wonders"
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Post by secretagent on Apr 4, 2008 6:39:43 GMT
How about something like this overplay.com/opchart.aspBut without the genres until we can get enough contributers to not have 8 empty sections and 1 full one
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 4, 2008 9:46:28 GMT
It’s a bit odd but absolutely nothing on that page made me want to play any of that music Martin. I wonder if it was just the vulgar webdesign the overall layout or just that it was so impersonal.
I have to admit that I wouldn’t mind ripping off some of their programming scripts though.
I think some people are going to be a bit surprised how many myspace acts are going to come out of the woodwork for this. It all depends on how it’s pitched of course but the few people I’ve spoken to about this think Martin has come up with a great idea.
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Post by secretagent on Apr 4, 2008 14:50:57 GMT
Jeez,i never meant the lame layout!!!!! I just meant the ease at how to access the tracks etc The mancer chart had number of plays and downloads after the track title which updated automatically after a play/download. Did i mention scream(dubhead re-experience)was number 1 for the month of july '04?
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 5, 2008 7:20:01 GMT
Martin, I knew you meant the code, not the appearance (I credit you for having some taste, even though we call you "vest man") So we got to number one and you didn't tell me #boohoo# Was that #1 in the "slash 'yer wrists" chart? #rofl# Perhaps I should send that website an email. "Dear webmaster, We think your graphic suck the big one but we're gonna rip off your code anyway if it's all the same. Love Tricky Dicky" I'm such a stirrer
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