The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hey all, I just wanted to drop in and say I that I've been loving songfight for a good long while now. Some damn fine tracks have come out, but I'm surprised so few people know about it. Why is that? I have to tell everyone countless times what the address is. This place is incredible and more people should know about it (unless that's not an aim of course). I know building sites is rough work and takes some real time, but I'd love to lend a hand on a completely rad new design if that's appropriate, but it's just a thought. Before the thrashing begins, know it's all for the love of the site, not to down on anyone or anything.

MC DnB

It's nice of you to offer, but I don't think the site design (with which I have no qualms) is holding songfight back from mainstream popularity / more widespread recognition. Indie music is a hard sell, period. Tell someone "these people write great songs -- in a week!" and they'll be impressed, but they'll focus more on being puzzled over why/how people write songs in a week, rather than going and listening to the songs themselves.

I don't feel popularity really plays a part in the general songfighter mindset all that often. I'm not denying that most of us would jump at the chance to be famous, or even to gain just one more fan (I'd be ecstatic over those myself), but we're fortunate enough to have a community that, overall, focuses on musicianship, artistry, and generally creating enjoyable songs first and foremost, and other perks like popularity later.

I'm glad you're enjoying the entries. That's why we do it.

As the doctor correctly states, it's not about the site. When it is, everything else suffers. One of the most successful site designs in my mind is Somesongs.com...completely void of the "wow" element. So, when someone suggests a "rad design" I immediately go into "uh - oh" mode.

I love rad sites. I love to explore and be blown away by both simple and clever devices. But not when I'm trying to find something specific or experience content. And more often than not, rad sites break browsers, or fall unmaintained after a few months. Now, that wouldn't help indie music, would it?

Thanks for the offer, Rilla Dope, if we ever need help we're glad to know there will be lots of it available.

Song Fight is for true believers. In the beginning, Narbotic cast a magic spell that refracts the glance of an average person into the rainbow you glimpse over your shoulder when you turn your head too fast after looking at Song Fight.

JB

I called shotgun a long time ago... but there is no need to drive away.

jb wrote:Thanks for the offer, Rilla Dope, if we ever need help we're glad to know there will be lots of it available.

Song Fight is for true believers. In the beginning, Narbotic cast a magic spell that refracts the glance of an average person into the rainbow you glimpse over your shoulder when you turn your head too fast after looking at Song Fight.

JB

wow JB, that's really sweet. Reading that makes me feel like SongFight exists in Narnia.

I don't like rad sites. *SMILEY* Roymond pretty much summed up my feelings on them. Funcionality is what I like about most websites.

Another thing, I've been here christ, right at or over four years now. It actually has grown quite a bit. I've seen it fluctuate between numbers of fights and have watched the boards clutter up with new names (and faces). Some come and go, some stay longer than others...but it has snowballed picking up plenty of trash on it's journey *SMILEY*. I think it will continue to grow at it's own pace.

As John said, Indie music *IS* a hard sell. I have had almost nobody respect the site because it takes a different kind of person to stomach the good with the bad. If you try to upsell the site by talking about how good somebody is, then they might listen. After hearing a fight, they may be uncomfortable with the bad music that has also been injected. That and a lot of people don't have that ear for varied styles. Especially the general public. Heck, my mom won't like it because she hasn't heard it on the radio over and over again.

With all that said, those are the things *I* like about the site. I have myself improved over the years (at least I'd like to think so) and I've heard others slowly improve as well. It's a community and you sort of have to buy into it.

We hope you are buying into it. *SMILEY*

Hoblit wrote:...It's a community and you sort of have to buy into it.
We hope you are buying into it. *SMILEY*

..."And right now, Mr. RillaDope, in return for only 3 ours of your time to only listen to our presentation with NO OBLIGATION, you can have your choice of either 2 nights at the lovely SuchnSuch Resort, or a weekend of golf at the BlahBlahBlah Links. I must stress however, that this is NOT timesharing. "

Just kidding...Hoblit, you really explained what SongFight is really about very well. I hadn't considered what it is that brings me back, nor have been able to explain why people I direct to the site, other "music lovers", don't take to it. Now I get it...

Cheers!

Hoblit wrote:I don't like rad sites. *SMILEY* Roymond pretty much summed up my feelings on them. Funcionality is what I like about most websites.

Amen.
Songfight (and somesongs) are both nicely functional and uncluttered

I hear ya. Just making sure that's the path you want, not just the one you're on. I'm no expert, but I thought I'd take a stab at a little groove for you this week, just to add my .02 I hope this thing keeps going for a long time to come.

I've never thought about making a new front-end for SF but I've often thought about how easy it would be to completely automate the entire song submission process.

Imagine an online form in which people could fill out the fighter/band name, what particular fight their song would go under, and the mp3 filename. It would then automatically regester the information in the SQL database, upload the file, rename the file and then change the ID3 tags appropriately. Then, at exactly 9:59am on Monday the entire site would automatically rotate and update itself. The only human interaction would be to correct problems if somebody filled out the inital form incorrectly wrong. However, I also see an automated Administration backbone which would make correcting these problems quick and easy to do.

Just an idea.

That would take all the fun and mystery out of it.

Southwest_Statistic wrote:I've never thought about making a new front-end for SF but I've often thought about how easy it would be to completely automate the entire song submission process.

Imagine an online form in which people could fill out the fighter/band name, what particular fight their song would go under, and the mp3 filename. It would then automatically regester the information in the SQL database, upload the file, rename the file and then change the ID3 tags appropriately. Then, at exactly 9:59am on Monday the entire site would automatically rotate and update itself. The only human interaction would be to correct problems if somebody filled out the inital form incorrectly wrong. However, I also see an automated Administration backbone which would make correcting these problems quick and easy to do.

Just an idea.

Define easy.

Well, I do the hard parts of that in the <a href="http://trikuare.cx/audio/Project/">Project</a> system, if you want it.

Personally I think the current site design is great, and although I'd like to see the HTML cleaned up a bunch and *maybe* a web-based submission system, I don't think that the basic mechanics of Songfight should be changed.

I also don't see why there's a big need to "make the site/community really huge," because it already IS really huge. It's already impossible to keep track of everyone here and pay attention to all the music and sidefights and so on; what purpose would it serve to bring Songfight to the whole world?

Communities are best when they're small and light, not when it's something that the whole world participates in.

once the whole world knows about something cool, it's not cool anymore.

Not necessarily, it's just that when you have a community which is made up of everyone in the world, it's no longer a community.

fluffy wrote:Not necessarily, it's just that when you have a community which is made up of everyone in the world, it's no longer a community.

right, it becomes a society at that point.

However, I don't think we are in danger of that. It *IS* hard to keep up with everything...sidefights, people, nicks, and even the regular fights...but thats natural in a community too. I recently have struggled to just to keep up with regular fights....I even missed a week and have to go back to that fight...sometimes it is difficult. But with that said, I can think of nothing more than I'd rather do than to *HAVE TO KEEP UP*. If keeping up is a fun chore. *SMILEY*

automated system sounds 'easy' once the 'hardwired programming' is implicated. (but you'll still get your trolls who eff with the system by uploading a gig worth of mp3s just to gunk up the allocated upload space etc...)

That's another good point. The current system has built-in moderation and so on, and JB can go like "Okay this is from someone who has submitted a lot of disqualifiable crap before, let's see if it still is... yes, it is" or they can see the message and make a judgment call about whether or not to moderate it or not (like, "sry this song is so bad but i culdnt get nething bettr in teh time perid" in the submission email).

Certain things could probably be automated better, but I'd certainly hate to see it move to a totally mechanical process. That would just make it easier for everything to get totally out of hand.

Spud wrote:

Southwest_Statistic wrote:I've never thought about making a new front-end for SF but I've often thought about how easy it would be to completely automate the entire song submission process.

Imagine an online form in which people could fill out the fighter/band name, what particular fight their song would go under, and the mp3 filename. It would then automatically regester the information in the SQL database, upload the file, rename the file and then change the ID3 tags appropriately. Then, at exactly 9:59am on Monday the entire site would automatically rotate and update itself. The only human interaction would be to correct problems if somebody filled out the inital form incorrectly wrong. However, I also see an automated Administration backbone which would make correcting these problems quick and easy to do.

Just an idea.

Define easy.

Something I still would be willing to do.

fluffy wrote:That's another good point. The current system has built-in moderation and so on, and JB can go like "Okay this is from someone who has submitted a lot of disqualifiable crap before, let's see if it still is... yes, it is" or they can see the message and make a judgment call about whether or not to moderate it or not (like, "sry this song is so bad but i culdnt get nething bettr in teh time perid" in the submission email).

Certain things could probably be automated better, but I'd certainly hate to see it move to a totally mechanical process. That would just make it easier for everything to get totally out of hand.

I'm not talking about removing the human element, just easing the workload.

As soon as someone gets a list of proxies and a spammer's worth of gmail addresses, a highly automated system will have a week with 1,337 submissions, each 13:37 long, each random noise loops. People are more willing to try and fuck shit up if they know that there is not an initial shitfilter with human eyes.

Yeah, exactly.

You know what? I think the site design is too good already. We should downgrade it, make it more confusing and stuff. Scare off all these damn people.

Barring that, it's fine how it is.