Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

This entire community is screwed up and off in its own little world as far as user/content management is concerned. The audio portal is just one facet of that screwed upness. If you want a real solution, attack the problem at its source, go somewhere else. Tom Fulp seems to be convinced he can run this place differently than any other community of a comparable size in the world.

Threads dedicated to specific topics and kept alive for weeks, months, even years, does not make sense. Posting every single new song in a single list without the slightest hint of differentiation, not even genre, doesn't make sense. Not enforcing any regard or guidelines as to what defines each genre, much less putting them in place, does not make sense. Allowing users to vote on any entry any number of times on any given day, does not make sense.

Essentially, what this place is, is a truth serum for society. We're a bunch of evil kaniving bastards, and this place harbors and displays that perfectly. If you want fairness, go somewhere that's actually managed, rather than one that puts forth a facade of management and lets its users run rampant overtop of one another.

Some of thats wrong...but fuck it. You guys know this shit is fucked up or this thread wouldnt be here. And if anyone with any influence or say in it actually gave a shit, stuff might start changing. But it hasnt. The solution is still to go somewhere else, even if I am wrong about a thing or two.

I mean, think about it...everyone always says the audio portal is here strictly to serve the flash artists, right? But how many really good songs are there on here, even best of all time songs, that deserve to be there, that aren't featured in any flash videos? And how many flash videos, even flash artists, are there in the flash portal that absolutely refuse to use audio portal music? Despite this irreputable fact, you guys are gonna sit there and tell us the audio portal is strictly to serve the flash artists? My ass. The truth is, there are thousands of people that come here, strictly for the audio portal, and twice if not thrice as much just for the flash portal. Whether NG and mr. Fulp want to admit it or not, the two are independent entities. It is irresponsiblility, negligence, and down right fucking laziness that prevents the staff here from giving the audio portal the attention and maintenance it deserves, not some righteous and divine purpose like the fact that its devoted to the flash artists.

NG, like any community of this stature, started out modestly. No one behind the scenes expected it to become what it has. Same goes for the audio portal. But the shit happened. When other communities deny their obligation to their viewers to properly maintain and upkeep the facets of their website, they loose viewers. Mr. Fulp and the NG crew have benefited in this respect from the many series, and re-watchable video content in their flash portal. No doubt, that is and always will be the focal point of the website. But it has become a scapegoat for them to ride out and say the audio portal can be cast aside. You are all...nay, we, are all fools for believing in it and following it and contributing to it for so long. I can't say that if a great majority of the audio artists left this place that it would get any better, I imagine it probably wouldn't. If anything, its condition only proves to me the lack of respect NG has for audio artists. But we would be better off for it devoting our art and our hard work, sweat and tears to some other community that better appreciates us for what we do.

Make no doubt about it, and do not be duped my fellow musicians, this place has neglected you, will not change for the benefit of you, and refuses to recognize your contribution to its visitor flow, and as such has wronged you for it. It's not fair, that we contribute how many dollars in advertisement revenue to this website, and yet they give us nothing...they yield for nothing, saying that we are part of a secondary facet to the primary effect, neither of which seem to completely cooperate with one another. Even in its own mission statement, the website cannot fulfill its dubious purpose. It's a completely arbitrary example of internet community and social environs. You need not suffer it, there are countless alternatives willing to welcome you with open arms and impart unto you a system breeding fairness and proper recognition for talent and influence. This place is made of clicks, who rule it, and trends which fuel it. You need not suffer this horseshit any longer.

why can't some of us just go the the NG office in person? Even if we don't get access to anyone we need to speak with, some physical presence should send a message.

At 10/26/09 02:59 AM, Don-Sanchez wrote: why can't some of us just go the the NG office in person? Even if we don't get access to anyone we need to speak with, some physical presence should send a message.

As if the message isnt already clear to tom fulp, do you honestly think hes in the blue on this? Things just arent that simple when you have thousands of people walking around on your site..

At 10/25/09 07:35 AM, EoD696 wrote: My ass. The truth is, there are thousands of people that come here, strictly for the audio portal, and twice if not thrice as much just for the flash portal.

I like you. You make good posts.

It's almost like EoD is under the assumption that this is the only place on the internet on which people like me (as well as other audio folks) advertise my music. Like I don't upload my music here, and then link other people on other forums (on which it is easier to grab someone's attention) to this place so they can hear what I got. Gotta upload your music somewhere.

I mean, you guys DO go to other forums, right?

Right?

Yeah Pretty much...

I will brag in the other forums

At 10/27/09 10:48 AM, EmperorCharlemagne wrote: It's almost like EoD is under the assumption that this is the only place on the internet on which people like me (as well as other audio folks) advertise my music. Like I don't upload my music here, and then link other people on other forums (on which it is easier to grab someone's attention) to this place so they can hear what I got. Gotta upload your music somewhere.

I mean, you guys DO go to other forums, right?

Right?

I'm not saying everyone comes here and only here, but I know that those people are here, otherwise this thread wouldn't be. Who fights for improvement on an internet community that's screwed up, if they know of better ones to go to? Thats just silly...

At 10/27/09 12:51 PM, EoD696 wrote: I'm not saying everyone comes here and only here, but I know that those people are here, otherwise this thread wouldn't be. Who fights for improvement on an internet community that's screwed up, if they know of better ones to go to? Thats just silly...

I'm just thinking of ways to fix it. True, there are many other websites where our music can be appreciated more, since Newgrounds is all about flash, but I'd rather help solve the problem than run away from it.

I don't like pointing out problems if I don't have solutions. So here's my suggestions for improvement...some of them, if it were I making the calls, I'd scrap the portal, and work an entirely different GUI from the ground up using the same database, and base that GUI off an alternate system that has proven itself in a time tested environment against a comparable user mass, like Soundclick or GarageBand or the Sony Acid site.

First, force flash artists to use audio portal music. Sure, they can utilize whatever music they like, but that music has to be submitted and approved into the audio portal first. This way, you avoid copyright infringements much more thoroughly, and you improve traffic throughout the site and cooperation between the two portals.

Second, the featured artist is much more important than that silly piece of eye candy asshole robot visualization for the top 5...not to mention the fact that your featured artist should be more important than the top 5 most voted on submissions of the week. Switch the two around. And maybe make it so the featured artist is a voted on sort of deal, with a poll in this forum. That's just a personal thing, I believe much stronger in democratically elected recognition than staff forced to bear additional burdens, like finding a good artist to feature that hasn't been recently.

Best of all time...scrap it. Like Mr. Fulp said in his imaged reply to the box man, its a self fulfilling prophecy, no matter how you spin it. Show the top 5-10 submissions for each genre (one iframe, with a dropdown box to select genres), if any submissions are there for longer than a month, remove them from the capability of being on that list.

Do the same deal with the top submissions, for the most recent submissions (iframe list of 5-10 submissions, differentiated by genre, selected by a dropdown box). This way when I'm checking out new stuff, I don't somehow stumble upon a 13 year old american girls idea of what russian polka should be, and people get longer exposure to the viewers that might actually be interested in their style of music.

Publicize contests. Officially organized or not, contests are a huge fuel for the fire in many musicians in this place, and such should be capitalized on, in the front page. Offer awards for these people, and front page exposure. Notice the and, not or. Front page exposure is everything in this place, because when you get down to it the system is FUBAR, the front page is all that anyone could ever hope for as far as exposure is concerned. The rewards could include anything from multiple votes per day, to displaying a pic or banner in place of one of the ads. Its whatever kind of arbitrary, in house benefit can be mustered, but its something that signifies a since of accomplishment and doesn't eat into the websites revenue, because we all know its all about the benjamins.

That's all I got for now. You do those things, it will make life easier for everyone, except the poor sap who gets stuck implementing the changes.

At 10/27/09 01:13 PM, EoD696 wrote: First, force flash artists to use audio portal music. Sure, they can utilize whatever music they like, but that music has to be submitted and approved into the audio portal first. This way, you avoid copyright infringements much more thoroughly, and you improve traffic throughout the site and cooperation between the two portals.

What I don't agree with you in is forcing flash authors to use music from the AP. This could cause many problems like not being able to make music videos, and loads of people ranting throughout the flash forum. It would increase exposure in the AP, but I don't think it's the best way to do it.

IMO, exposure isn't the main problem. What needs removing is zero-bombing (and if you look in the page before this one at the bottom, you'll see my solution to removing zero-bombing). By doing that, the audio portal automatically gains more exposure. Many artists have given up making music due to the fact that their songs have low scores (obviously because of zero-bombers). If there are no zero-bombers, people would gain more self-confidence, submit more songs to the AP without giving up and therefore increasing the amount of artists on the AP.

Another simple way to gain more exposure is to fix those links at the bottom of the page, as I said earlier. They can give a much clearer view of all the songs from recent to oldest, and by doing my idea of refreshing the recent tracks list every week, and by doing my recommendations idea, not only will it remove zero-bombing almost completely, but it will also increase publicity in the AP, and make the Top 5 be more fairly chosen.

I think that by doing the above, zero-bombers and lack of exposure wouldn't be problems anymore, and it can be done without completely redesigning the AP as you suggested.

At 10/27/09 01:57 PM, Supersteph54 wrote: Many artists have given up making music due to the fact that their songs have low scores (obviously because of zero-bombers).

Really? How many? Any examples?

Every time I stumble on someone's userpage and read through their various posts, there will be one (possibly a couple) stating that they're:
a) Giving up music
or
b) Leaving newgrounds for a different website

I haven't come across ONE person who wasn't still submitting music. Sure they might leave for a month, but they'll be back. They'll always be back.

It's like when I try to give up WoW.

At 10/27/09 02:01 PM, jarrydn wrote:

At 10/27/09 01:57 PM, Supersteph54 wrote: Many artists have given up making music due to the fact that their songs have low scores (obviously because of zero-bombers).

Really? How many? Any examples?

Every time I stumble on someone's userpage and read through their various posts, there will be one (possibly a couple) stating that they're:
a) Giving up music
or
b) Leaving newgrounds for a different website

I haven't come across ONE person who wasn't still submitting music. Sure they might leave for a month, but they'll be back. They'll always be back.

It's like when I try to give up WoW.

Don't you see it as obvious? With the flaws the AP has, many people are bound to give up making music. I mean, I almost did after submitting my first song and it getting 0-bombed, since I didn't know how abused the voting system was at the time.

Oh, and enjoy your examples:
Scooter-16
Borntodj167

They may not be much, but I'm just giving you some proof. I know both of these persons in real life, and they both gave up after seeing how far their score drops down a few minutes after they submit a song.

I can mention loads of songs that deserve top 5's, but didn't get them, and if you ask yourself, I'm sure you can too. Entering top 5's and 30's rely a lot on luck, since 0-bombers ruin the scores of every song they see except theirs.

What I'm trying to say is that 0-bombing really sucks and by removing it, the AP would be twice as good.

I submitted the recommendations idea to the Newgrounds Evolution thread, maybe it'll get noticed over there...

Anyone feel like sharing their personal worst score on a song from zero bombing?

3 votes so far and still, the song is at 0.00. xD.

At 10/31/09 02:43 AM, Centrist wrote: Anyone feel like sharing their personal worst score on a song from zero bombing?

3 votes so far and still, the song is at 0.00. xD.

A song of mine had about 15 votes and it was at 4.59, and then I went to bed and woke up to find it 4.29... X(. Oh and the third song I submitted was at 7 votes with 1. something...

one of my best works yet and it had a score of 0.50 or something after 6 votes.
currently on 1.22 after 7 votes.

newgrounds is awesome!

Im considering looking for another site to host my music currently.

At 10/27/09 02:01 PM, jarrydn wrote: It's like when I try to give up WoW.

making music and submitting it to newgrounds is a horrible addiction!

it's my turn to speak of the injustice. whats really funny is when i make a cover of a video game song i get like 10 "5's" in a row and reviews. then i make an original song the next day and i get like 4 votes and its always a mediocre score

but i try to balance in my mind whether my music actually sucks that bad or its newgrounds being discriminative and lame

so there's my rant

I just happened to read some posts here and think that EoD696's comments on this page make a lot of sense. If you consider yourself a serious musician, you easily start to feel dumb for submitting music here. A good friend of mine who's an industry composer looked for a place to distribute some of his free music, so I recomended him to give it a shot on the NG Audio Portal. It just took a week after he removed all of his content due to a lot of bad luck. I felt pretty embarrassed after that and will surely think twice before recommending that place a second time.

I'm not sure what the creators had in mind regarding the kind of reputation of this place. Posting music here whatsoever, seems like a desperate approach sometimes.

At 11/19/09 09:40 PM, krssvr wrote: it's my turn to speak of the injustice. whats really funny is when i make a cover of a video game song i get like 10 "5's" in a row and reviews. then i make an original song the next day and i get like 4 votes and its always a mediocre score

but i try to balance in my mind whether my music actually sucks that bad or its newgrounds being discriminative and lame

so there's my rant

exactly, thats what i noticed.
The portal is filled with remixes of existing vg tracks getting high scores. But when someone makes an original melody its often ignored or blammed, why? Because people cant bring themselves to actively listen? Or do they not know how to? Can they only bare what they already know?

hm...

It seems to me the solution would be to store every vote made by a user in a database and calculate statistics to show on the users profile, only viewable by moderators and administrators.

If you have a high amount of zero-votes you will get a temp ban.

At 11/20/09 01:11 PM, Whittaker wrote: It seems to me the solution would be to store every vote made by a user in a database and calculate statistics to show on the users profile, only viewable by moderators and administrators.

If you have a high amount of zero-votes you will get a temp ban.

I disagree... what if there's someone who by coincedence found a lot of spam on the portal and zero-voted them all. It's unlikely, but I'm sure you've heard of authors whose submissions are all either 2-second voice-acting submissions recorded on a half-broken mike with no effort put into them at all, or some collection of loops they found as default presets that came with their DAW. What if someone finds one of these authors and zero-votes all of their self-voted songs because they deserved it? Your suggestion would help take away zero-bombing but it could also interfere with ordinary voting.

Hey, i know i haven't posted much on the forums, but i do have an idea that may work without having to change much of anything. Maybe I'm the only one that does this, but usually I have an idea of what a song should get from a 0 to 5 when listening to it. Than I vote accordingly and usually if i'm doing a review, it's the review divided by 2. I do this weird numbers thing in my head and each of the 1-10 stars count for something, or if it's a song i favorite, it's a definite 5. If it's good but not something i would favorite or download, its a 4. Now, if there were a way to see how much your vote would affect the outcome of the score BEFORE you placed it, than you could vote better according to what you think the vote should be.

For example. Say the song has a vote of 2.23 (just a random number) and you think that it's a bit of an unfair number that it should be more of a 3.0 or higher. If you were able to see that voting a 3 would only bring it up to a 2.53, as opposed to voting 5 to bring it to a 2.99, than maybe you would vote more according to what you felt the overall score should be. Does that make sense? Seems to me that it would help curve the zero bombing affect. Even if somebody could make some sort of outside APP that you could bring up that you could plug the numbers in to calculate what votes would affect what....i mean, kind of a pain, but i would definitely use it.

Another problem, and this is one that I've even fell into. Is that musicians can be a bit vain. Maybe it's just me, but i've posted songs and than just sat there, waiting for votes, or check on it everyonce and awhile between facebook or youtube, or whatever crap. Without even regarding, or voting on other people's music. If we want it to be fair, than we're going to have to self regulate the audio portal. Look out for each other. Make a rule for yourself. Say you post one song, than go through and vote on all the rest of the songs on the list. Without zerobombing of course, unless, like somebody mentioned, it's utter crap with somebody screeching or something horrible like that. Or, pick a genre that your interested in, and go through the music and vote for songs you like. I find it hard to vote on music i know next to nothing about, so i try and stick to indie. But i have found some really good songs in there with votes of 0, that i single handedly bumped to the top of the page. Now, i don't know about ya'll, but that gives me a major power trip E-BONER when i do that.

In closing, i really don't think we can blame anybody else but ourselves. People wouldn't resort to zerobombing if others would take the time to give them a bit of exposure. Because that's what they're looking for isn't it? Just a pat on the back? Or some constructive criticism? I know we have the review crew, but maybe it should be expanded. Maybe we should put together an Audio Crew, that's broken down into Genre's. Because, like i said, i don't think it's fair to review on a Genre that's unfamiliar or that uses software your unfamiliar with. Unless of course it's an utter piece of crap or a brilliant piece of work. And i feel the same about flash submissions. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Maybe someone can poke some holes in my logic and wake me up.

LOL 4.33 LOL

At 11/23/09 07:23 AM, ParagonX9 wrote: LOL 4.33 LOL

ohh jermain :P

slaps with oversized dongle.

TEH DONGLE SLAP!

At 11/23/09 07:23 AM, ParagonX9 wrote: LOL 4.33 LOL

I know how to get your songs higher. collab with me.

you want 4 million hits, 100,000 votes and 4.55, you know who to call

its the only way to defeat the bombers!

At 11/21/09 05:57 AM, Supersteph54 wrote:

Your suggestion would help take away zero-bombing but it could also interfere with ordinary voting.

Yea yesterday i gave a track a 1 because it was an absolute piece of shit, and it even was in the best of all time (8bitfist)
I mean... are you serious? I did review it.

why dont you guys just be content that every song on newgrounds doesnt deserve a score of 4.99 - you've all gotten spoiled - before the redesign the average song score was 3.79.

also clupphead crews liek that are against newground's rules. Official ones neways.