I suppose try tagging me in the launch post and the prize post and that should work.

Here's a thought-- When I'm scrolling on my phone through people's audio submissions, I accidently blam-vote sometimes. Can we get a confirmation as a safety measure to disable errant thumb/finger taps on mobile?

I'd love to see more than a handful of users just whistling stolen/etc audio. The number of votes and comments I see on blatantly stolen music is kinda gross.

Considering how many there are, it doesn't take long for someone committed to get a nice shiny Deity.

^^^^^^ This a million times. There's so much stolen content that people favorite, review, and just seemingly brush under the rug like it doesn't matter they stole something. I'm all in for a separate whistle for the audio portal!

I would love it if the artwork we attach to our audio tracks had a bigger role.

A tiny little circle next to the track doesn't really achieve anything other than a tiny point of difference.

When you open up the track, there is no image at all, although I do love the way Newgrounds presents the wav :)

I feel this a missed opportunity. It would be an easy way to allow users to customise their submissions.

Using Soundcloud as an example, they have a nice picture window next to the track.

When you actually click on the track this is further expanded.

Of course not all users have their own artwork for their music, but this could be a great opportunity the Newgrounds Art community to create stock images! This could be an easy art competition to run as well, with winners having their art immortalised permanently on some of the best audio tracks in the portal.

What do we all think? :)

Saying that, I do like the little CD pics on the front page

Yeah, I have an idea. When people vote, it shouldn't be anonymous. We should see the user name of who gave us a 5/5 or a zero bomb. People are confident at this time to secretly zero bomb, without even hearing the song. I think they must do it just to get their own song up higher on the list.

I think that’s a main reason, moreso now than before since genre pages are now sorted by score by default instead of most recent. When and why did that happen?

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet but I truly believe that requiring a user to listen to at least 50% of the song before allowing them to rate would not only hinder zero bombers (who wants to waste that much time to zero bomb many songs? Ok, I guess there are still a select few here with way too much time on their hands) but result in more genuine scoring in general. There must be some magic code that can be thrown in to detect when a user has hit that listening mark.

Finally, many review sites have algorithms in place to detect and prevent fraudulent voting. Someone who throws out many 0s within the span of a few minutes, for example, is probably not voting genuinely. In that case an automatic action, or actions, can be taken to mitigate their voting impact.

I agree. It wastes space to reduce use of the saved full-size image to tiny circular-cropped icons on some pages yet not the track page itself. The circular icons can be kept but the track page should show a larger square image to accompany the music, as that’s what artwork is for: music and artwork together form the intended experience.

Also, short descriptions should be shown on track pages.

I really just think they ought to be exposed. That way we can clearly see who zero bombed, and from that, deduce their reasoning behind it. Like maybe they just uploaded a song, and want tobe number one. That way, we can repay these people the favor and zerobomb their shit music, even if it sounds good, an asshole clearly made it. It doesn't take a "good person" to make good music. I'd rather be a fan of someone who doesn't suck as a person, than be a fan of some creep that sounds amazing.

Seriously. One of my all time favorite bands is Nirvana. But would I want to hang out with Kurt? No way. He would be doing his heroin thing, and being deregulated.

While we're on this topic. Poor Dave and Krist were just trying to play in a band, and Kurt suddenly starts bringing in all his ideas for Heart-Shaped Box with a field of poppies, and a junkie Jesus, and all this smack imagery.

Can you even imagine how that must have sucked for them?

I had a friend who basically turned into a guy talking about DMT 24/7. It fucking broke my heart. My friend was gone, replaced by this cartoon character that wouldn't shut up about illegal drugs that I am not interested in.

So, I really do take that into account now when I think about Kurt. What he did was selfish, and ultimately, he screwed over every last person in his life to get high. He was a sad, unfortunate man who made his problems so much bigger than they had to be.

Any way, I'm getting off track here. What I really mean to say is that the audio portal is mostly filled with songs that have a 1.5 average, thanks to nameless voters who might not have even heard the song.

I want to know who it is. Because it's quite a few people. And I want to see if they make any contributions to this website. I want to see the artwork or music of someone who thinks so highly of himself, and so lowly of others. Because chances are.. If they even do haveany contributions here, they're most likely average as fuck.

I haven't read all the suggestions in here but I think being an uploader from 2009 - 2012 in the old format and looking at the new format I have some ideas.

Also this is the time to capitalize on that fact that there is NO GOOD AUDIO PLATFORM FOR UPCOMING ARTISTS THAT ARE ACTUAL MUSICIANS AND NOT CLOUT PRODUCERS. This community is by far the strongest and best community of people that I have ever worked with and got to know. They gave lots of people who have now made it in the industry a GREAT place for criticism and suggestions.

That being said, the weekly top 30 system that reset at Wednesday at 12AM i personally think really made the site great. Finding out who was very active and serious about making great music always hit the top 30 and really defined where to go to find the best music. Yea the system was a little flawed with 0 bombers right before the refresh BUT if you put time and effort into your music for your fans they rewarded you with the push you needed before the reset. Right now it seems like it is very hard to find up and coming people unless you fan them to see the new uploads. To re-implement a top 30 weekly chart per genre that people understand how it chooses the top songs and not hidden behind an algorithm would be great for everyone. This system really to me was a rewarding process to staying active. posting music and pushing myself to create content for the fans. To be able to say that you had real control of pushing your music to people and not uploading a song that get lost in the mix.

Secondly the drop down to sort music is not very clear. What is defined as an new song? How can a new song be properly and fairly pushed in a certain genre to your fans? How should a creater set up their uploads to make sure the fans see them and help push them to chart for others who don't have many fans? Is the recommended system working correctly? I think the best way to solve this is work on more details filters, that really spells out how it is searching for music. Maybe most comments in a day on a track, most votes, biggest improvement in plays from the last upload to the current most recent upload. I feel like having algorithms that are not transparent pose an unfair advantage to some and discourage use of the site in general. Obviously everyone isn't going to be making progress and killing it every time getting more popular but to be able to fully understand why this track did worse than another track through analytics is HUGE. I think that's why soundcloud got as big as they got, and people paid to see these stats, they paid 200 dollars a year at one point. It is totally a marketing strategy soundcloud used as well as youtube.

I think as a creator these are the main questions and concerns. To take youtube as an example, people who upload videos that work with the you tube algorithm get pushed, yes this can be very bad for people who don't know but very good for people who do know. And not to compare platforms since some people just make videos that don't work with the algortihm, for example making a 10 min vlog is much easier than making a 10 min animations and animators get screwed (which is why they should stay here) Just to note youtube is alittle bit of a bad example because I think this scruity of the algorithm is so widely important because of the potential to make ALOT of money while on a platform like this, i'm assuming monetizing content is not the goal and shouldn't be the goal.

I also understand from Tom that this is a business and he should also be thinking how he can get bigger corporations to recognize that great talent that exists on the site to make it thrive. I know you are NEVER about that and the community has been self supportive of the site to keep it afloat WHICH I WANT TO STAY IS AMAZING. But it is safe to say that I personally want this site to be the go to place for people to find music like how people will use buzz words like Spotify and I would say soundcloud about 6 years ago as a up and coming platform. If this is not the intent I completely understand and respect that. I feel like there could be a very successful middle ground for the site if this is something you have been trying to do.

All the framework is here and has been here, time to refine it and get artists back on this site. I personally have no problem reaching out to artists that are more "mainstream" but started on this site and ask them if they would be interested and bringing back the music to be featured on newgrounds to really sell this platform as a place to be. I would never want to see this platform die even tho I personally have been SO inactive that I almost sound like a hypocrite at this point. I really have not worked on music in the past 5 or 6 years that I would say I abandoned the site.

I feel a lot of artists look at new grounds as the stepping stone to better things, (I mean yea its called NEWgrounds) a place to start to get real criticism and find out how they can make music that people will enjoy. Then move to sites like soundcloud/spotify and further. I'm not sure if you guys want to change the distinction and create an audio portal that people can stay on and actually be rewarded to sticking to (like youtube has become for many people)

To sum it up the site needs to be focused to being transparent with the user and offer a real way to test music with more analytics, see if its good and interact with the fans like other sites can not do. Ill give another great example of a site that was one of the best platformed i used. It was called turntable fm where you would go into a lobby as an avatar and there were 5 dj booths. It was a virtual club where people would create rooms based on whatever they like, each person would play a song for people and the crowd would up vote and down vote a song like Reddit then that person would hop off and open a spot for someone else, everyone had a playlist and was there own DJ. There was a feature to add the song playing to your own queue. A really great tool to grab music quickly you never heard before, they offered uploading tracks so producers with totally unreleased music could play it out, get a reaction and hopefully have other users pick up the track to play. It was a exponential way to get your music around. I used it and it jump started my career as i made personal connections to people that loved the same music i love. I was posting to new grounds at the same time and the two combinded made me addicted to creating music. Obviously that is a completely different platform than here but the idea of playlists, adding music from the site to peoples own playlists and being able to share those playlists (spotify does this) is something this site can really incorporate.

Changes that I love is the collaboration sections. LOVE IT KEEP THAT A FOCUS.

I'm gonna wrap this up because its a rant but finally I want to personally Thank Tom Fulp for this amazing site that is still going strong with so many other sites coming and going. This site still has the same atmosphere, momentum and quality it had over 10 years ago. I seriously want to commend you and everyone else that has dedicated time to ALL the different categories of content on this site. The fact that this site has survived and Tom is listening to the people that made it this great place only solidifies to me that this site can SERIOUSLY go WHEREVER the vision is.

I really would love to reunite some of the original creators here in the audio portal who have went off to have successful carers in an effort to make the site known for its quality source of people. Also if any discords exist for the audio portal, please PM me as I would love to get involved. I'd seriously rather do music specifically for new grounds to help jump start the platform if that is the intent. I have spoken to OG newgrounders about this and they all seemed to be onborad.

I would love to hear from Tom and everyone on my thoughts. Love you guys keep it going.

Looks like this has been unpinned. :(

I would suggest replacing the current rating system with a simple like system (just thumbs ups, no thumbs down). This is modern, fairer, more standard and encapsulates project popularity in a much simpler yet perfectly sufficient way. Fixes the zero bombing issue immediately. Reviews could optionally accompany.

Thumbs up and thumbs down would result in an abuse of thumbs down. It'd be the same problem, just with a different skin. Also, I am inclined to think that the reason NG keeps the star system is because there are varying degrees of "like," and what do you honestly do if a track is so boring and average that you can neither like nor dislike?

And better yet, competitions. The judges' scores would no longer be accounted for or publicly visible even if as a matter of transparency, people wanted to have them visible. No, not a good idea.

Take away the thumbs down and you have a broken and unfair system whereby you get higher scores based on how popular you are, instead of the merits of your track (the current system at least shows lesser voted, but very solid tracks above popular, lower scoring ones). Tom would agree that NG was never about being a popularity contest.

Next time let's think suggestions through before putting them up, shall we?

On the other hand the current situation is broken for most NG users. The vast majority of tracks on NG have few listens and very few votes, going by largely unnoticed and accruing an average rating of 3 or less from the odd zero bomber combing through before they’re buried into oblivion, so ratings for most tracks are not really reflective of merit. I’m sure with the thumbs up system there are ways to accommodate for competitions (such as a separate scoring system) and popularity bias (such as new algorithmic ranking lists to counter this); however it would take more work and renovating to implement than fixing the current vote system by penalizing illegitimate voters, which is why my previous suggestions like a listening threshold before being able to vote, and a fraudulent vote detection system, still stand. Btw, anyone know why this thread got unpinned?

I knew this thing existed in the back somewhere lol

So for the longest time, various musicians on NG have been talking about how a lot of their review sections get clogged by people who basically put up comments (ex. "Geometry Dash anyone?"). While it isn't a problem for everyone (and vise versa, not everyone is the problem), I think the best way to remedy this is by implementing a section for comments either above or below the reviews.

Similar in style to the system used over at CHIPS, the difference between a comment and a review is that a comment doesn't tie itself to a score; in other words, someone can say something without giving a score on a piece. In a sense, since many current commenters place in a high score just for their comment, this system can help with giving honest scores better than in the current state. Plus, there can also be an option to keep notifications on for reviews and off for comments, meaning there's less clog in a user's inbox.

Lastly, one other suggestion involving this is that if these systems go into place there can be a character or word count for reviews only. That way, those who want to consider things like "What a banger!" as a review get the idea that what they instead have is a comment (and perhaps it might encourage them to expand upon why it is a banger!).

While this can be implemented towards any portal, I think the Audio Portal can utilize it the best right now, hence why I suggest it here.

yes look at me now dad i rarely post audio anymore LOL