tIB
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There is no way of putting this without appearing needy, though I'll apologise in advance since I think the end might justify the means in terms of prompting a decent discussion.

So, there are quite a lot of us here, some known to this community already, some not so known. It's quite a job keeping up with the new releases on top of real life and my own studio time... I'm definitely failing miserably to do this in weeks 2 and 3 after finding time to listen to a lot in week one.

Anyway, Im currently in the zero club with my most recent track, along with 20- or so others this week, and a page worth on the full listings. That's either down to a ton of bad music or a a focusing of listening habits onto a group of more established artists. I'd be interested to know what people make of this- is it putting them off posting future tracks, is the community too large, should we make more of an effort to post a comment, particularly on those tracks with very few comments?

I'd considered much of this before signing up, though Im not sure I expected the listening process to be so time intensive- at the minute Im in suck it and see mode, in that Im not entirely sure if I will see this project out... If I cant find the time to listen and comment on other peoples stuff than my reason of being here is failing.

Id be interested to know others thoughts on this...

Alistair James
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TBH, I feel really bad as I don't get time to listen to the majority of tracks and even when I do I've not commented, mainly because when I have chance to listen its normally on in the background. If I get a track up early one week I think I might make an effort to use the free time to listen to and comment on other people's tracks smile

tIB
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^ I did that last week though still struggled due to other commitments.

infradead
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Tacoma WA

i've been so busy with work stuff this week the only stuff i've listened to are songs that were recommended by other people on IRC.

i feel guilty about it but can't really do anything about it..

dylannau
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Minneapolis, MN

While it is nice to know people actually listen to your music and enjoy it, this project to me is more about creating somewhat finished projects and to look back 50 weeks from now and hopefully have learned a few things and made shit ton of music.  Also, listening to what other people are doing often inspires new ideas and makes me try a bit harder next time to be as good as the top guys on here.

Ashtom
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Switzerland

I must confess I don't have much free time to make the tracks so needless to say how difficult it is to squeeze an active listening session in my schedule. That being said, I think I'll try listening as much as possible and will put priority on people who actually leave comments on my tunes *hint*

DrumurBoy
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Saskatchewan, Canada

i thought about this a little bit last week and my conclusion was if i want people to comment on me i have to go comment on others entries. Granted i have more time than most, the easiest way to become known in a community is to actively participate in it.

tIB
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Interesting points, ta for the input. I dont really like the idea of inactively participating in a community so Ill try to get some listening done myself. Other than that Im wondering whether a track play counter would be a good thing or not...

roboctopus
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Madison, Alabama

You also might want to give it some time. I've been working on listening to every track and commenting on as many as possible, but It's taking several days!

AndrewKilpatrick
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Worthing

I think we've also entered a weird place where comments=popularity. It's odd but logical, maybe if there was a like (not dislike, counter-productive) or play count this would suffice? I know I personally would get as much fulfilment knowing people are just listening, though the nature of the challenge makes Trash80's choice for just comments make ALOT of sense.

Also, I do have the time to listen to everything, but I decided as I'm doing the round-up blog posts, not to comment on any songs. The pros are I have a time to live outside of weeklybeats (as the blog itself, plus listening time and time for me to be indecisive about my favourites usually takes about 8-10 hours over two days, depending on how many entries there were, so plus 5 minutes PER song to think of something constructive... as Roboctopus said, days) but the cons are, that the songs I genuinely love but were cut from the 16 that go into the blog (top 5, 10 honourable mentions, and whatever cTrix has been up to) don't get any, well, love.

tIB
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AndrewKilpatrick wrote:

or play count this would suffice? I know I personally would get as much fulfilment knowing people are just listening

I think a play count would be a good idea- it would certainly make my posting of stuff here feel a bit more valid if i thought it was getting the odd play.

AndrewKilpatrick wrote:

though the nature of the challenge makes Trash80's choice for just comments make ALOT of sense.

care to expand on that?

AndrewKilpatrick
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Worthing

It's a challenge not a contest, so with the exclusion of numerical one-up-man-ship you are left with a site where people who are doing this to improve their skill as a composer and/or musician (which I'm assuming is everyone, as a community this inclusive is never going to make anyone 'big' outside of it tongue) can be given constructive feedback or reassurance what they are doing is good without having to worry about ratings or being front paged or anything like that. There JUST being comments does take a lot of the pressure out of equation, leaving people the room to experiment more than they may have otherwise, and feel secure about doing so. Is in essence what I was getting at. Or he could just be lazy ;P

tIB
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^ its a good point, and an aspect I hadn't really thought of tbh. That said I could do this alone, so the point of doing it in a community seems to be to listen and share ideas with others.

Im not criticizing anything here btw, just making sense of what this is and what it should be for me. One thing is for sure, I need to work on finding time to listen more otherwise its a pointless exercise.

AndrewKilpatrick
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Worthing

I don't think everyone was taking it as criticism, you've got pretty legit reasons too, ones which I'm sure many others, including myself partially, share.

Hopefully  as people begin to drop off we'll start getting about 60 weekly entries, so listening to all of them will be more realistic for everyone!

Theta_Frost
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UTAH

I too have been thinking about better methods for CC.  It's granted that people will listen and comment to established artists with a following and such.  But kudos to the people who have managed to listen to every song and comment the large majority!  That's just a little out of the question most of the time - there must be a better way!  Maybe we could have buddies or groups on different weeks that critique each other or similar?

little-scale
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adelaide
tIB wrote:
AndrewKilpatrick wrote:

or play count this would suffice? I know I personally would get as much fulfilment knowing people are just listening

I think a play count would be a good idea- it would certainly make my posting of stuff here feel a bit more valid if i thought it was getting the odd play.

I listen to the majority of the WB stuff in iTunes via the RSS feed - so for the most part, my listens would not count towards play count. I'm sure I am not the only one doing this.