NG Audio! Go! Go!

[TomFulp]

We would like to announce a revolutionary new addition to Newgrounds. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the AUDIO PORTAL!

Newgrounds Audio Repository

This new extension of NG allows musicians to upload their music loops and sound effects, to enter the "NG Public Domain". This means that while you will still retain ownership and credit for your audio submission, users will be allowed to freely use it in their Flash submissions, without fear of royalties or licensing fees!

The time for an audio Portal has come. The net on internet music broadcasting is slowly dropping, and Flash authors will BE FORCED to stop using commercial audio and start using something completely free. The industry doesn't seem to understand the promotion they gain by the works of their fans, so we must turn our backs on it. It is time to musicians and Flash artists to come together directly for the common goal of fresh entertainment!

We now ask that all aspiring musicians on NG start uploading their audio to the repository, and all Flash designers start downloading it for use in their work! We have limited the audio filesize to 400k to avoid file-swapping for entire songs. Any abuse of the new system (ie uploading music that is not yours) will result in account deletion.

This new system will grow organically as it is used, so all feedback is highly appreciated! We want to make this an endless resource for Flash developers, with a wide selection of music! It is also a great place for aspiring musicians to be discovered. We will soon be adding new fields to the Flash submission page, where authors can credit the musicians via unique ID numbers associated with their audio files. This ID is contained in the filename, and will be all a Flash author needs to provide full credit to the musician.

Questions? browse the new section first, then feel free to respond if your questions aren't answered.

I hope this brief explanation is enough to get things started. The new section may be rough around the edges, so please respond to this thread with any suggestions!

SUBMIT YOUR ORIGINAL MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS!

[Kaymon]

This would be cool. Especially for people that have a hard time finding good sound for their movies/games.

[Esmender]

Interesting addition. Let's see how it goes.

[TomokoSasaki]

this is a great addition to NG, perhaps revolutionary.

However, you just KNOW someone will abuse the system, uploading their crappy dragonballZ theme tunes lol.

[TomokoSasaki]

I submitted a sounf FX, however, imade a mistake in the discription... Can I not edit my audio submission?

[Kaymon]

Did someone just say DragonballZ? That's not a show, it's a handful of animated characters that spend 90% of their time "powering up" for a battle that lasts 1 minute.

[QuarterMelonClock]

Just out of interest, are sound effects copyright too? Because something like that is hard to trace and enforce originality. I can see the entire spread of flashkit and CS SFX making their way into the APortal pretty soon.

also, i'm guessing this is a planned addition, but will APortal submissions appear in profiles and is there any way of tracking submissions of particular authors?

[RiftMaster]

Wow! Cool addition Tom!

Will you be uploading any royalty free sound effects?
If so maybe you could upload that sound effect you use in some of your games (the crunching splat sound like when you chop an FBI agent in Alien Hominid)
I've looked high and low for that great sound effect and could never find it ;)

[QuarterMelonClock]

At 2/13/03 10:05 AM, QuarterMelon wrote: also, i'm guessing this is a planned addition, but will APortal submissions appear in profiles and is there any way of tracking submissions of particular authors?

ohhhh... nevermind that last bit :D

[QuarterMelonClock]

OH OH OH! Now i remember the idea i had earlier. Perhaps you could allow users to sample sound FX which are under a certain file size. you could make a popup with a flash movie which contins a preloader, and controls. Flash MX can load the sound file at runtime allowing us to easily sample the file quickly, rather then downloading, finding it, then opening it in some form of audio program. And it wouldn't be too much strain on bandwidth if it was only avaliable for files less the 50-100k or something like that.

[fourdaddy]

i like QuarterMelon's idea to bring it up before download, but have my own question as well. i play bass and wondered if i were to submit the bass line from a song if it would be considered stolen or inappropriate. i dont know if there would be much demand for what i can do, but id like to try anyway. and one more thing, would there be a way that we coud be notified that our audio had been used in a submission? i would like to see what some people would do with my audio. great addition to the site!

[digitallemonclock]

At 2/13/03 09:27 AM, TomFulp wrote:

stuff

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE PORTAL FULP!

[Burning-Feet-Man]

it would be a good idea to make a request box so people could ask for what sound they want and then some people can get it for the artist.

[HeRetiK]

hey, nice addition. let's see if your idea works out well!

[HeRetiK]

note: please make a little change on the banner of the audio portal. it's to hypnotizing. next time I enter the audio portal I bet I'll sit in front of the monitor gazing at the banner for hours.

[hoagiejones]

400k ?! HA! All you are going to get is little sound loops. Can you up the anty so I can upload my rock music, IE. 1.5 Megs? I don't know if you are aiming for the flashkit sound archives idea, or somewhere people upload their entire songs to get voted on.

[TomokoSasaki]

At 2/13/03 10:49 AM, Unmindful wrote: 400k ?! HA! All you are going to get is little sound loops. Can you up the anty so I can upload my rock music, IE. 1.5 Megs? I don't know if you are aiming for the flashkit sound archives idea, or somewhere people upload their entire songs to get voted on.

The reason the limit of the size is low, is so people don't submit complete songs. it's only music loops or sound FX im afraid.

[hoagiejones]

At 2/13/03 10:52 AM, TomokoSasaki wrote:

At 2/13/03 10:49 AM, Unmindful wrote: 400k ?! HA! All you are going to get is little sound loops. Can you up the anty so I can upload my rock music, IE. 1.5 Megs? I don't know if you are aiming for the flashkit sound archives idea, or somewhere people upload their entire songs to get voted on.

The reason the limit of the size is low, is so people don't submit complete songs. it's only music loops or sound FX im afraid.

In any case, it would be helpful if they weren't made into zip files, so one would be able to just click the link for download and hit open to test out the song real fast, and not have the hassle of unzipping it and such.

[TomokoSasaki]

In any case, it would be helpful if they weren't made into zip files, so one would be able to just click the link for download and hit open to test out the song real fast, and not have the hassle of unzipping it and such.

wouldn't that use alot of bandwidth though?

[willy-wizz]

the idea seems pretty cool, but since the file size limit is 400 im guessing only sound effects and loops can be uploaded, so how can new musicians be discovered if they cant upload any full songs. i know that the file size should be kept low because people will be submitting stolen songs, but atleast bring it up to 1 meg so a full song with lowered quality can be uploaded

[shak3s]

good idea!
on comment: I would like to listen before download.
That's in the works, right?

[The-Snee]

At 2/13/03 10:55 AM, Unmindful wrote:

At 2/13/03 10:52 AM, TomokoSasaki wrote:

At 2/13/03 10:49 AM, Unmindful wrote: 400k ?! HA! All you are going to get is little sound loops. Can you up the anty so I can upload my rock music, IE. 1.5 Megs? I don't know if you are aiming for the flashkit sound archives idea, or somewhere people upload their entire songs to get voted on.

The reason the limit of the size is low, is so people don't submit complete songs. it's only music loops or sound FX im afraid.

In any case, it would be helpful if they weren't made into zip files, so one would be able to just click the link for download and hit open to test out the song real fast, and not have the hassle of unzipping it and such.

I have to agree with the filesize thing, it is way too small. i have submitted a movie, and it was pretty average, but there was only praise for the music. unfortunaly, most of my tunes are about 2 mins long, with one of them about 8 mins- that one is 7 meg. I mean, if the portal could accept like 3 meg i could get most of my stuff up there. i am a lot better at music than flash. also if the audio portal was a lot more like the flash portal, with tunes being blammed etc, it would be a lot better.
i can see only good coming from this in the near future.
Meantime, can someone tell me some way of turning down the quality of mp3s, as on my movie the music is over 2 megs but the movie is only a few hundred kb. if i can reduce the quality i can get it up there. any suggestions?

[TomokoSasaki]

the_snee:

if you set your music to stream, it should compress the music. music only lasts as long as the frame does too! :)

[thisisasignin]

people who complain about the file size limit need to learn how to compress their audio

[arrogancy]

There's no reason you need 7 megs to upload a full song - because there's no reason that you should submit a Flash movie with a 7 meg song attached.Play around with the encoding - between 56 kbps and 96 kbps should be your aim depending on the type/length of loop.

I agree that the filesize limit should be around 1 - 2 megs because even with the trickiest encoding, you can only fit a minute or so into 500kb. That's fine to a degree, but some flash movies require more than short loops. Of course a way around this is to provide a link to the full song that the loop is taken from in the description so that people can download them from whatever site they're located at - which is something Tom should address on the front page.

Anyway, making all the music original is a good idea because it gets rid of people voting high because (random pupular song) is attached.

[Keyser-Soze]

Good addition. Makes things easier for flash animators and sticks it to the pube-faces who don't realize the benefit of having their working featured all over the web. Greedy, cum-swilling, peter-eating, enema-drinking, douche-bag-aholics who want to make money for anything they do.

I hate them.

[TomFulp]

At 2/13/03 10:05 AM, QuarterMelon wrote: Just out of interest, are sound effects copyright too? Because something like that is hard to trace and enforce originality. I can see the entire spread of flashkit and CS SFX making their way into the APortal pretty soon.

also, i'm guessing this is a planned addition, but will APortal submissions appear in profiles and is there any way of tracking submissions of particular authors?

I'll admit that sound effects are hard to track down, so we won't really be able to enforce them the way we will with music. I'm just worried about multiple users submitting the same shotgun sounds and whatnot - that will get annoying very fast. :(

-Tom

[SolarisDX]

Great idea Tom! I can't wait to see how this goes!!!

[TomFulp]

At 2/13/03 11:11 AM, willy_wizz wrote: the idea seems pretty cool, but since the file size limit is 400 im guessing only sound effects and loops can be uploaded, so how can new musicians be discovered if they cant upload any full songs. i know that the file size should be kept low because people will be submitting stolen songs, but atleast bring it up to 1 meg so a full song with lowered quality can be uploaded

Once we take care of our current bandwidth issues, we may expand and allow full songs to be uploaded by "established artists". Right now NG can't handle the bandwidth of both a Flash Portal and an MP3.com style complete music showcase... Although some day it would be nice. :)

-Tom

[TomokoSasaki]

I'm just worried about multiple users submitting the same shotgun sounds and whatnot - that will get annoying very fast. :(

-Tom

Isn't there a way to track wether 2 sounds are the same?

Perhaps, much like the whistle in the flash portal, there could be a "this audio is already in the portal" link?