Reasonfreaks

[butchmanring]

We are still furiously working and brainstorming a major update to the site, and one of the things that has come up is the possibility of hosting songs for members in much the same way as Soundclick/Dance-Industries do, but we wanted to make it a little different.

Taking this a step further we decided that we would look at the feasibility of members profile pages with a range of 10 or so skins or looks. Here is an example of what i mean...

Example Page
(and yes that is a picture of me )

We would like to know...

•What would you like to see on your page?
•Is one page enough?
•If not, how many pages would you need and why?
•What other features would be a good addition to your page?
•Would you prefer the security of streaming instead of direct downloads?
•What is your prefered internet based audio format?
•Are set text layouts that you fill in as fields the way to go? Or would you prefer to set the layout yourself?
•Would you like the option of providing your own skin?
•Have i forgotten to ask anything?

Any and all answers will be taken into consideration.

Thanks guys
Butch

[gentleg]

Hi

Nice one!

•What would you like to see on your page?

Link to my own site

•Is one page enough?

yes

•If not, how many pages would you need and why?
•What other features would be a good addition to your page?

favourite artists (with links to other easonfreaks members)
1 text line per song
a way to integrate comments: link to thread on reasonfreaks ? (per song?)

•Would you prefer the security of streaming instead of direct downloads?

downloads, I want people to listen to my music n their ipod and such
both high (128+kbps) and low (64 kbps) for dialup / quickcheck
maybe also direct links to mp3's hosted elsewhere?

•What is your prefered internet based audio format?

mp3

•Are set text layouts that you fill in as fields the way to go? Or would you prefer to set the layout yourself?

text layouts please, I have enough other things to do : )

•Would you like the option of providing your own skin?

maybe as a .css ?

•Have i forgotten to ask anything?

try to make it as integrated into reasonfreaks as possible: lots of links and stuff

cheers

[roel-stessens]

G had said this very good.
For me just the same as he said, only maybe more than one text line to present the song.
Maybe a few lines like:
- style
- story behind the song / inspiration
- programs used / devices most used in the song / any recorded instrument?

I like to read how others have made the song


Maybe also a possybility to upload the .rns or .rps file for those who doesn't want to keep secret how they made it. These are much smaler files and it's maybe usefull to see the setup of songs by other artists. I don't think that anyone here is realy going to steal something from another person.

[roel-stessens]

another thought of me:

Put a mediaplayer in the reasonfreaks site that plays random songs of its members. If your going to host the songs on the site it's possible.

You can than hear the songs while browsing the forum.

Don't know if you should be able to skip a song and like that choose wich song you hear or that everybody will hear the same song at the same moment (like a radiostream) so that you will be forced to hear everybody's songs.

roel

[butchmanring]

Good idea there Roel.

Keep 'em coming guys. We really would like to hear feedback from you all to know whether this is worth looking at. Even if you just post in and say "Yeah wickid. Do it!"

Butch

[monib]

•What would you like to see on your page?
The page is a good enough design, I would say have a couple different designs, so everyones won't be the same. So we have a choice of what to put where.
•Is one page enough?
Yeah for reasonfreaks its enough, than if we wanted we could link of to our separate webpages.
•If not, how many pages would you need and why?
1 is fine.
•What other features would be a good addition to your page?
A part where you put down what you use hardware/software.
•Would you prefer the security of streaming instead of direct downloads?
Streaming would be cool, but I would still want d/ls just because sometimes its less of a hassle.
•What is your prefered internet based audio format?
Mp3 <--- its the easiest to convert to, and you don't have to d/l extra software. I hate RA...
•Are set text layouts that you fill in as fields the way to go? Or would you prefer to set the layout yourself?
Let us do the layouts, kind of like arranging our own room.
•Would you like the option of providing your own skin?
Yes, but for me, I think someone else would have to make me one, just cause I suck at graphics.
•Have i forgotten to ask anything?
No I don't think so. I do however have a question or 2.

Who would host the actual files? Would they be linked of to another site, or stay on reasonfreaks? Also, what would be the criteria of getting you to host the files?

That's about it.. Oh yeah, its a bitchin idea =D>

[politrixmusic]

Hmmm, Well here are a few thoughts...

*Note* I didn't read the Previous posts all that well, so I appologize in advance if I happen to reapeat anything!

A few quick thought's...

A space for production notes on each track would be really cool.
As someone that works in a recording studio, i tend to write everything about the proccesses that i go through when creating a patch, or sound or loop, or tune or whatever. Even just a simple area to write what was recorded instrumentally through what kind of Mic/pre/etc.. and what was programmed midi style, etc... I always like to know how someone went about acheiving certain things and subsequently having the abillites to figure out some alternative way of doing it.

Hmm, the other thing that I would like to see, is just Location.
Where in the world is this music coming from?

It seems to me that alot of people that are into making music, are doing it in groups, or at least in part with freinds. If the so called "freinds" are users of this site, it might be fun to mention them somewere along the line so that fans of your music can listen to that of the artist that helped you to create it.

anyway, that i suppose is my few cents.

[zimulator]

It's a great idea. I reckon 1 page is all you need. Just some buttons for each track, with room for a description by each. Some sort of self-uploading page would be fine. Some of that PHP stuff can let you do it pretty easily, and you can get ready made proggy's to do it all for you I think...

Just a simple front page for you, plus a password protected back page where you can upload a track and write some info for it. I guess adding the option to make your own background would be cool too. Perhaps there could be a small .jpg file that you can download and import into Photoshop to act as a grid, with postions of buttons marked etc - that way you can make a single.jpg file for your page background that could be under 100k and fill the whole page for you...? Again, just an upload option on the backpage would make this very easy.

I'm also all for everyone participating, but I think it would be sensible to consider some sort of way to ensure that it doesn't get abused as a free upload site for one-off posters. I'm not quite sure what the answer is, but I think it needs to be considered - unless there's somebody happy to pay the bandwidth bill!! Perhaps one idea would be to set up something where you pay a small fee to get a page through Paypal? I dunno - maybe it should be free though. I wouldn't mind paying 2-3Euro for it in theory though, if it meant I had an easy space to upload tracks to and distribute url's of. I suppose if you get 2-3 tracks free, then pay a little bit for extra space that could be a good compromise.

Anyway. A great idea all round, however it works!

[viba]

Hi, great move..Ithink it would be a good idea to setup a profile page with streams, info, and pictures...info on each track etc...

Perhaps this could be offered in various templates or skins to reflect style or personality in some way.

Also, I noticed some other communites such as ours have released complilation CDs of their members. I'm very interested in the feasibility of this and wonder if it's something u guys have looked into b4,

Overall, Im very satisfied with the site..
Keep it up

RESPECT

[didymus]

Hey Butch,

That’s a great idea!

I think one page would be enough, I kind of like the way the pages are set up in Dance Industries. The artist details are in a column on one side and the tracks are listed on the other.

Perhaps there could be an area on the page where we could post links to any Refills / Waves / RNS files we might have hosted on other servers.

I would personally be happy with a generic RF layout as long as there was somewhere for a mugshot and or logo. Some people might like to include album art with each track.

Text fields sounds good.

I prefer mp3 format, it’s fairly universal.

I happen on a site called: http://www.em411.com/
They request a fee for hosting music on their site, this is to cover the increased bandwith costs incurred from their host.

Martin.

[bitbrain]

?What would you like to see on your page?
?Is one page enough?
?If not, how many pages would you need and why?
?What other features would be a good addition to your page?
?Would you prefer the security of streaming instead of direct downloads?
?What is your prefered internet based audio format?
?Are set text layouts that you fill in as fields the way to go? Or would you prefer to set the layout yourself?
?Would you like the option of providing your own skin?
?Have i forgotten to ask anything?

In order,
1. My splash or foto, a couple lines about me, a list of songs I've uploaded with one or two lines of description text each.
2. Yes.
3.
4. A list of my links to other songs on here.
5. Streaming is the way to go. 112 kbps(lo-fi) / 224 kbps(hi-fi) mp3 is good.
6. mp3. ogg is better but not as easy to create.
7. Keep it simple, let us fill in fields. Doing the layout yourself would steal too much time that I could have spent making music.
8. The main thing is the music. I'd even settle for one skin for the whole site as long as it's stylish. But that's just me, I get it if some guys wanna personalize. It's better to have a couple skins to select from rather than having to do the whole layout.
9.

I personally would like to see a rating system and why not the ability to buy songs with PayPal?? Like MSN and iTunes. It's the way of the future, man...ring...

[wizzard]

Hi Bitbrain,

Your idea is great about selling songs but it's very much work.

1) Everything must be legal
2) Paying out the artists

You mean buying member songs?

If i can find someone who can helps program with this and someone who knows the law very good then it would be no problem

But your ideas are great. Thanks

[bitbrain]

It's the one thing I miss about other music hosting sites, I mean if you really dig a song it's a great possibility for the artists to make (humble amounts of) money from their music, but it has great symbolic value! Because it's one thing to say you like their song and give it maybe 8/10, but if they actually pay to hear your work more than once, you know it's really appreciated.

I think most of us have a humble opinion of our songs because we know what flaws it has, and don't compare ourselves with real labels. But the fact that someone paid to put your song on their USB memory or whatever changes that.

I guess the easy cop-out would be to have a secure form where the user him/herself sends a PayPal donation to the composer, and then you get to a page where you can download the .mp3. The legal stuff is hard, guess it's best to look at how other sites like MSN Music manage it.