Can we please get multiple titles again?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:58 pm

kudos to you, fightmasters.

incidentally, can we tell for sure that the downloads jb cites are not web-crawly-bots just downloading things because they're *.mp3? i wonder the same sort of thing when i look at my own site's webstats.
-bill

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:30 pm

I am positive that most of my mp3 downloads are from singingfish's spider, because I like to look at my server logs.

I also have to disagree with Spud's distinction between "Internet site for musicians" and "site for Internet musicians," because this has always been a site for Internet musicians. In the very early days, all the music was basically experimental stuff from people who just wanted to have fun with the medium and the challenge of interpreting a title, often in as non-traditionally a way as possible.

I know I sound like a broken record on this point, but I miss the days when pricklypears and NiL and so on were the standard. But the new "Internet musicians" aren't even doing anything interesting or exciting, it's often just crap for crap's sake (or maybe for some attempt at notoriety? I don't really know what motivates them), which is a pretty big trend on the Internet in general (see how popular sites like 4chan and myspace are [I realize there is no actual comparison between those two particular sites but they're both firmly within the 10th root of Sturgeon's Law]).

Personally I think that Octothorpe has always been a perfect example of what Song Fight was about, and whoever said that about Octothorpe being either a symptom or a herald of the "downfall" should feel very, very ashamed.

Post by **Spud** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:40 pm

fluffy wrote:I also have to disagree with Spud's distinction between "Internet site for musicians" and "site for Internet musicians"

fluffy wrote: But the new "Internet musicians" aren't even doing anything interesting or exciting, it's often just crap for crap's sake ... which is a pretty big trend on the Internet in general.

Musicians experimenting with what they can do with the internet vs. people on the internet experimenting with what they can do with music.

Is there a difference? Discuss.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:54 pm

I'd just like to chime in to point out a possibly obvious point about the stats that JB posted: they don't differentiate between current/recent fight downloads and archive downloads. 99% of that could just be people downloading free MC Frontalot tracks for all we know. So technically they don't really prove that "we" (the currently active participants, which sadly doesn't actually include me) are still getting listeners. MP3s are being downloaded from the site, but as to what fights/artists are getting listeners, it's impossible to say from those stats.

adrift in a draft · Post by **adrift in a draft** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:02 pm

Spud wrote:
Musicians experimenting with what they can do with the internet vs. people on the internet experimenting with what they can do with music.

Is there a difference? Discuss.

What's a musician? - is it someone who is already skilled? - or - is it someone who is serious about getting skilled?

sample kiddies and rappers with purchased beats seem welcome and they're not musicans. People seem welcome as long as the aren't crashing the SF party as goof. Maybe SF needs a mission statement so reviewers/voters can deciede if a song jives with that statement. If it doesn't then skip the review. Maybe even vote button to remove the song from the fight page....

meh

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:08 pm

Spud wrote:
fluffy wrote:I also have to disagree with Spud's distinction between "Internet site for musicians" and "site for Internet musicians"

fluffy wrote: But the new "Internet musicians" aren't even doing anything interesting or exciting, it's often just crap for crap's sake ... which is a pretty big trend on the Internet in general.
Musicians experimenting with what they can do with the internet vs. people on the internet experimenting with what they can do with music.

Is there a difference? Discuss.

I realized there was a superficial contradiction when I wrote that but I felt my post was too long as it was, and I don't think I can really properly elaborate on the difference without bringing a lot of subjectivity into it.

There's a definite difference in motivation, though. pricklypears and asmsmsmspstk, for example, were honestly experimenting with a new medium, which was borne out in their forum posts defending their music. Lightning Ear Fart, however, was just specifically being disruptive, as he made plainly obvious by his forum presence (although I did enjoy some of his tracks, honestly). Then tracks like Jim Varney All-Stars and Goatfucker and so on were in a hazy middle-ground where they were investigating things about the site and/or community without trying to get a specific reaction (JVAS was Sparks seeing if entries were filtered, and Goatfucker was parodying Internet trolls or something, though the end result was pretty much indistinguishable from an actual troll so I guess it was a failure).

Even all of the above, however, seems like a form of Internet-based performance art, and so even LEF and Kokiri Warriors and so on are much more legitimate than things like "hey I have GarageBand so I'll make a looping backing track and rap over it so I can win this contest." It's a matter of motive, I guess. Duchamp, Warhol and Kaufman vs. <a href="http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=25186">hack standup comics who just want a reaction</a>. It's hard to objectively quantify the difference between them, but the difference is (to me) pretty clear.

Post by **Spud** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:40 pm

I agree that there is a lot of subjectivity. What are "enough" review? What's a "good" review? (good enough?) What's a "good" song? What are "too many" songs in a fight? What if getting too serious drives people away? What if not being serious enough has already done that? What is "serious"?

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:44 pm

adrift in a draft wrote:sample kiddies and rappers with purchased beats seem welcome and they're not musicans.

But they can be! That's the magic here.

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:50 pm

Holy crap. I might not be ready for Seattle. Perhaps I could be acclimated gradually? Are there stepping-stone cities along the way?

He makes a good point, though. Towel head isn't racist; anyone can wear a towel.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:04 pm

Lord of Oats wrote:Holy crap. I might not be ready for Seattle. Perhaps I could be acclimated gradually? Are there stepping-stone cities along the way?

Atlanta.

Post by **Spud** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:05 pm

I think you can get harassed for stereotypical comments anywhere. Racist or not, his point was to offend, and he did. His mistake was in getting up on stage with offensive material without knowing how to handle a heckler. Well, that and thinking he was funny in the first place.

Post by jb » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:16 pm

I'm trying to remember, over the last five years or so, something Fluffy liked at the time it was current... cities... jobs... songs... movies... games...

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:21 pm

Well, considering that none of those things are topical to the forum except in Daily Roll Call, and DRC only came into existence very recently, you'd probably have missed out on all the things I liked when I liked them.

I will say that I don't like it when people use off-topic stuff to try to discredit me when I'm trying to help make things better. BUT SINCE YOU SEEM TO CARE:

Cities

I loved Seattle when I lived there, but I didn't have much cause to say how much I loved it. I'm starting to get the feel for San Francisco but, again, it doesn't seem necessary to broadcast this fact every comment.

Jobs

I loved my job at Amazon for the first two years, but after that management suddenly got very terrible. I actually DID state how much I loved my job and the work I did there.

Movies

Are you kidding? There are a fuckload of movies I've loved. Come to my living room and see my HUGE TOWERS OF DVDS.

Video games

Again, you must have missed my gushing over Twilight Princess, Ratchet And Clank: Tools Of Destruction, Everyday Shooter, and Super Stardust HD, all of which are quite recent.

Music

Let's see, I gushed at great length about In Rainbows, and I buy a LOT of music and don't actually feel the need to gush (or rant) about it at length unless someone else brings it up.

In short: just because you only see my complaints doesn't mean I don't like anything, it just means you're not looking where I'm not complaining.

j$ · Post by j$ » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:24 pm

Spud wrote:I agree that there is a lot of subjectivity. What are "enough" review? What's a "good" review? (good enough?) What's a "good" song? What are "too many" songs in a fight? What if getting too serious drives people away? What if not being serious enough has already done that? What is "serious"?

Not a direct answer to your questions, Spud, but here is my considered* response to your post. I am posting it small to make scrolling past it easier.

a few provisos - a) I don't think anyone is obliged to make a song, or review other peoples, or even post a thing to enjoy songfight.
b) There is no objective 'good' or 'bad'. There is stuff you love, you hate, and mostly a whole bunch of stuff in-between.
c) 'Everybody's talking, nobody's listening' - Johnny Cashpoint's 'Moscow, Idaho'
d) Nothing I say below is aimed at anyone but me.

For me, community is about sharing. You give to receive, and vice-versa. Be that input about songs, reviewing, making friendships or just shooting the breeze. That sense of the ensemble, for me, is what makes Songfight so great, and it's a good life-lesson in my experience. For me the boards have always been about communication of new ideas, musical or otherwise.

Sure, there has always been a profileration of 'me-posts', by which I mean people using the boards to talk about themselves, and hopefully elicit people to respond to them, purely for its own sake. I consider these terribly selfish, though something of which I am as guilty as, if not more so (by my post count if nothing else) than most. What there is less of since the departure of the multiple fights, it seems to me, are ways of countering it.

I used to think - 'ah look three fights with ten songs, I can listen to one of those, even if I don't have a song in it - it's likely half an hour of my time, give my opinions, get some conversation going if I have said something interesting or useful. Hopefulyl someone will enjoy something I have said.' Often, inspired by either a song I heard in that short fight, or a discussion that had started, I'd go spend another half an hour listening to another fight. And so on. If not, then at least I have offered a complete review of a portion of the songs. With that exchange system i pretty much review week in week out, and most of the time, I would cover all the songs. I also believed I was contributing something to the community that wasn't entirely about me.

I have started reviewing thirty songs fights so many times, only to find there isn't enough to drive me on to reviewing more than a portion before I lose the will to live, regardless of the quality. It all blends into one long variation on the them. Maybe it's a time thing now I have a better job, or some nascant form of ADD, but I can't do it. Some people post part-reviews, but I wouldn't want to vote/conisder a fight where i hadn't heard everything. So I am not getting whatever if it is that inspires me, so I don't pay it forward.

I miss reviewing probably more than I miss the weekly contest. I can sit at home and make songs, get involved in side-projects, side-fights, keep posting around, but I don't feel I really make a positive contribution on the boards in the way I did, even if people didn't like /agree with/ enjoy my contributions. I think that is a direct result of there being a single fight, rather than multiple titles. It's less inclusive, oddly.

I love this place, log on rpetty much every day, look forward to reading posts from anyone. But to paraphrase a football slogan of old, you have to feed the goat to make him score.

So there you go, an old-style j$ me-post complaining about me-posts! As ever I am as hypocritical as I am self-indulgent!

*by 'considered' I mean i wrote this in word-pad first, before posting.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:38 pm

Lord of Oats wrote:He makes a good point, though. Towel head isn't racist; anyone can wear a towel.

Anyone can jockey a camel. Anyone can chuck a spear. Anyone can get their back wet. Start another thread if you want to illogically defend racial slurs.

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:47 pm

I consider it my duty to review every song for every fight in which I was a participant -- 'cause I think even the seemingly "useless" reviews serve a purpose.

(Mind you, I don't believe that EVERYBODY should be OBLIGATED to follow this protocol -- it's just my personal "Gospel of Songfight" if you will. It's important to me, therefore I review)

But forgive me, benevolent Spirit of Songfight! I'm a wretched sinner -- delinquent on two fights!

I still entertain a vague hope that I'll get around to finishing the delinquent reviews some day.

Where was I going with this? Oh right -- I'm thrilled to hear what Songfight 2.0 will bring! Go Spud and JB!

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 6:12 pm

anti-m wrote:I consider it my duty to review every song for every fight in which I was a participant

I used to feel that way too, but nowadays I usually don't even listen to every song in a fight that I am in.

It's a combination of experience (I can spot what I think will suck, very quickly, and I don't want to spend time on suck) and cynicism (nobody cares when I say what sucks, and why, and how to improve it).

jack · Post by **jack** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:31 pm

as hard as it is for me to see certain traditions die, j$, i think you finally sold me. i've always thought the one title approach was the one thing that should never change from the perspective of history and tradition. but you make a fair and valid point of how it's affected you and probably many others, and there's no questioning your love for the place.

i could have one really kick ass taco stand with a line out the door but at some point, the line dictates opening another store (or knocking out a wall) but to just ignore a long line will inevitably turn people away. which might not be a bad thing, if the attrition reduces the noise and not the signal. but in your case, the opposite has happened.

not that my opinion matters. i'm just trying to pad my already too high post count by talking about my favorite topic. me.

sausage boy · Post by **sausage boy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:00 pm

I'll dip my toe in.

I pretty much echo j$'s sentiments. Basically the way i look at it though, the smaller fights were quicker to listen to and be engaged by, while slogging through the larger fight is too much like a job. And I hate work.

As for reviews, I always listen to all of every song, especially if it is by a new guy. I remember when I was new, and I got pummeled in the review stakes, but they were also helpful in divining what it was that people liked of what I did, and what they hated. I could be accused of totally ignoring these comments, but thats another topic all together.

And thus ends me talking about myself.

Post by jb » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:47 am

HeuristicsInc wrote:incidentally, can we tell for sure that the downloads jb cites are not web-crawly-bots just downloading things because they're *.mp3? i wonder the same sort of thing when i look at my own site's webstats.
-bill

The vast majority of requests seem not to be from bots. 4% are from MSRobot, as shown below. Robots usually show up as high percentages of requests and downloads. In our robots.txt file we block "asterias", which is the singingfish crawler. It <i>appears</i> to be obeying robots.txt. That crawler was kind of abusive. But otherwise, crawlers aren't evil you know-- they index the Web so people can find the songs. I think there's something somewhere that prevents Baidu from crawling us too, but I can't remember where that one is. It's been a while. At .55% is the skreemr.com crawler. But .55% isn't terrible, so it can stay.

Listing the top 20 hosts by the number of requests, sorted by the number of requests.
#reqs %bytes host
68866 0.37% 64.15.69.3
52769 0.55% 24.68.74.198
29091 0.01% 66.230.192.158
27124 0.11% 77.100.202.77
19077 0.01% 66.249.73.76
14439 0.15% 67.78.34.174
14214 0.14% 67.78.34.170
14051 0.14% 67.78.34.166
11476 4.15% 209.133.64.213
9643 0.04% 213.246.63.110
7525 67.19.82.5
7373 0.01% 220.181.19.194
5658 0.03% 82.124.230.99
4819 0.03% 60.28.235.110
4218 121.45.250.55
3924 0.03% 69.107.117.252
3584 74.53.177.130
3526 121.45.234.35
3383 216.40.222.50
3325 0.08% 71.255.134.154
968617 94.13% [not listed: 166,860 hosts]

Post by jb » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:51 am

Lunkhead wrote:I'd just like to chime in to point out a possibly obvious point about the stats that JB posted: they don't differentiate between current/recent fight downloads and archive downloads. 99% of that could just be people downloading free MC Frontalot tracks for all we know. So technically they don't really prove that "we" (the currently active participants, which sadly doesn't actually include me) are still getting listeners. MP3s are being downloaded from the site, but as to what fights/artists are getting listeners, it's impossible to say from those stats.

This is true, and analog being imperfect, I can't find those stats at the moment. If you want to be a pessimist, I can't stop you.

Although I do think it's a lot more likely that someone would download a Front track from Front's site than from songfight.org.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:46 am

OK - here is how to make Songfight! perfect.

I like that Songfight makes songwriting a sport. And the way it is set up with the no-registration, hit-a-button, first-past-the-post-is-the-winner voting is pretty well perfect as far as I'm concerned.

I also like one title - because I don't like having to choose between titles and one title sort of focus' everyone in the one direction. But the hassle of reviewing lots of entries for one title does suck a bit.

Another thing I like is the awsome big-arsed song archive that Songfight! has. Now, I don't know how possible this is cos I'm not a geek - but I reckon it would be really cool if the songs in the archive could have the good-ok-bad buttons attached to them like on Somesongs. That way - outwardly, Songfight is exactly as it always was - BUT, if you are too busy to review all the songs but you still want to give some feedback, you just wait till the fight is over and songs go to the archive, then hit a good-ok-bad button for each one, and maybe drop the odd comment or two on the boards if you feel it appropriate. In the place of lots of reviews, which may or may not be useful - I would love to have a quantifiable ranking for my songs. And the archive would take on a life of its own as old gems are rediscovered and Starfinger's More Than Soup will continue to be sung by future generations.