Alright guys, would like to know your idea about this innovative idea
I am a Dutchmen, so don’t sue my English.
During the development of our (= crew) electronic dance music I have been asked several times to offer a service to judge tracks and promos. Due the limited time that a human beiing have, I am not able to provide every single track of well-argued comments. On many online forums people will post their tracks to get reply’s / feedback from other community members. Some comments are constructive, some are not.
Back in Holland, there are loads of new talented producers. Also, internationally, there are many producers with quality tracks. In the past 4 years I have meet a lot of people. The innovative idea behind this concept is the well-argued feedback you’ll receive as artist.
The idea will be: The forum will contain the following people:
Producers will register an account on the forum, and can post their FULL tracks. Their tracks will not be visible for unregistered people. Within their thread, they receive feedback of our reviewers. The reviewers are people who finished a audio-related study, audio-engineer, studio owners and labels. Don’t worry about the reviewers, they get their earnings as well. You will be sure that your track will be reviewed and commented as a producer.
The comments will be constructive, like suggestion of new synths, how to edit their climax step by step, how to mix their final track… Every comment will help the producer to make their track ‘release-ready’.
The label PR people will pick tracks from the forum, if they think the track will be a good one for their label.
Id love to get criticism and help from advanced producers
First song I made in fruity loops was some Hardstyle too
But It could use some work (mastering)
Its a very good idea and would keep people liek myself motivated because starting off producing by yourself is a very hard and daunting task, but thats not to say I dont enjoy it.
Hardest thing to find is good feedback, there are the 3 types. Those that know nothing about music, those that think they everything but know nothing, and those that do actually know something. This last one is hard to find.
I find when I give constructive input, people are still defensive… it is their baby. I know in my life where I’m defensive too, sometimes to argumentative amounts and am willing to accept the discussion, but that takes a chunk of acceptance of the critique and credibility of the person doing the critique. There are tracks on Soundcloud that I will still play, but I’m going to work it hard to make it groove, most aren’t are really willing to hear all that is missed is make the snare hold it together or fill in the groove with the hi’s.
The key is to finding people that really want to utilize this information. I hear plenty of my mistakes, would love for some one to point out weak points, and be able to build. Most people think they are there already at the next step, a step or three below, each step along the building process. I guess it call it thickskinnedproducer.com
What I’m really curious about is how you want to pay/compensate the reviewers for their efforts…
Anyway, there are some more ideas I’d like to share:
It would be great to not only get reviews from the reviewers, but also from advanced producers/professionals. Audio-engineers may be great to judge the (technical) quality of tracks, but I think it’s only people who have been doing this themselves for a long time that can tell you those little tricks of the trade that you don’t learn in any university but aquire only through years of hands-on experience.
I don’t know if you have planned something like this, but you may want to introduce some kind of rating system for the tracks if you want the platform to be interesting for A&Rs/label owners. Typically those people have a huge pile of demo tracks to listen to already, so they probably won’t be willing to dig through many different tracks to discover the rare hidden gems. If there was some pre-selection, e.g. by the reviewers rating the tracks they listen to, the platform would become much more interesting for label owners, as the tracks that are not ready for release would already have been sorted out.
Thanks. I agree with you about this oppurtunity we are able to offer to all the producers.
Hehe FL is one of the most used producer programs. Producing these days is very hard, agree with that. There are so many producers today - so we would like to give everyone the option to comment their track by professionals, so they can fix those recommendations.
Don’t worry about good music reviews. We have been working more than 4 years with people in the electronic dance scene. Back in Holland there are several study’s who have been completed by our crew to judge the tracks fairly. Also, the approximated labels, studio owners and other people are invited to the forum and will be active on the forum as well. (They have signed a contract )
Thanks!
Thank you.
Of course it’s their baby, but one of the main rules of the forum will be: accept the feedback, don’t defend your own track and don’t sue the reviewers. You can ask everything you don’t understand what the reviewer is writing about, but don’t sue him. Discussions are ok, but getting defensive like: ‘screw you, the synths of this track are ok…’ - yeah, there is a nice ban button for this one.
Hehe, the part of the thick skin, I really agree. The attitude should be fine of every community member, if not: byebye.
Don’t worry about the compensation, the reviewers will earn their part of effort. (some of them are offering their mastering course, some of them are advertising (selling ads), and so on…)
First idea: this was already part of the concept. Other producers are free to share their comments about a track, as long as the feedback is constructive.
The second idea: the forum software will be the same as DJTechTools. There is a build-in rating system to accomplish this idea. Already added to the feature list, but thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reaching me out. Could you send me an email with more information about yourself to martijn(at)dj-lounge(dot)com, maybe we can offer something to each other.
The track review forum will be a part of the DJ-Lounge concept. So the forum won’t be the only source of earnings. Monetizing this forum (feedback, reviews) will be different for each reviewer. We have agreements with artists and label owners (we publish their new release on the frontpage, in exchange for a review on the forum for example.)
I’m also curious how this is really funded as most bedroom producers don’t exactly want to pay much or anything for such a service. Ads? Ads won’t work either as this is one-to-one eye ball operation, ads require thousands of eye balls per page.
I think directly seeking advertisers can work as music stores, gear manufacturers would have truly a direct line to their consumer. I’m not likely to click on an ad that is randomly thrown at me, but the ads here get a click thru about 3 times a week depending.
I really like the idea of rating what other people think of a reviewers opinion so that community members are socially awarded the stars or badges or what not. Seems like trophies motivate people even when they are not real.
As I said, only the ones that are interested in feedback for their track will look at the page so the only high-frequency eyeball page will be the entry web page and some of the registration, info/about ones and so on. Me thinks this is not a viable business model, but it’s cheap to start web enterprises and foil in case it does not work out.
You should indeed try to go for a community-centric model, so the more someone gives good feedback, their reputation goes up. So it becomes like an online game. See stackoverflow.com as an example how this works in the programmer world.
Where do you read about the part that bedroom producers should pay to receive feedback on their track? This service will be free for some now - maybe we will add some premium features in the future. Also, we do know how to place the ads on the right places. DJ-Lounge has been running quiet a long time - and generated loads of clicks and pageviews!
Added!
The feedback system is working like that. People will receive ‘ranks’ and can earn points to archieve an amount of reputation. More information about the rating system will be added soon.
+One more reason why reviewers could also be interested in some system like this is the following:
If a reviewer working as a mixing/mastering engineer has helped one person several times and the criticism has always been very constructive and the person that was helped really feels to be on the same wave length with the reviewer he/she might consider handing over the reviewed or some future tracks to the reviewer for mixing/mastering purposes. So both would have benefitted from this in the end.
That’s not what I meant. My approach would be better summarised as ‘give-reasonable-and-substantiated-criticism-leading-to-an-undoubtedly-better-result-so-that-the-producer-recognizes-you-really-know-what-you’re-talking-about-and-might-see-it-as-a-good-investment-to-give-his-track-to-you-to-get-it-perfectly-mixed/mastered’
)