Kenogu Labz

and people said I was crazy when I nuked my stuff a week and a half ago.
Anyway, Soundcloud started to go downhill when they got rid of groups (because reasons), which were easily the best way to find new music and share your own; you didn't have to ostensibly resort to cold calling people to get a new follower. Especially if you just created an account — it would be like an anechoic chamber.
It would also help if I wasn't getting messaged and follows from at least one bot every day telling me about what a bad girl she's been lately.

I'm gonna get it because one really great looking game on launch is literally all you could possibly expect without being a whiny pissbaby

The more I read and watch, the more I don't want a Switch.
Price is the biggest issue. You Yanks are lucky with you $299 price tag. Meanwhile, it's $400 here, and games are going for up to $80. The fucking Pro Controller is $90, for fucks sake. Exchange rate or not, that's just too much. I have more disposable income than most people I know, and I can't justify that price.
Don't even get me started on that stupid "milking cows" mini-game bullshit. That's now what gets people to buy your system. Show us stuff like using the joycons to pilot a giant robot and blow up city blocks. Let us fly a spaceship around asteroids with them. Make a better showcase than marbles dropping into a box or whatever the fuck that was. Those are tech demos, not games.

i haven't seen him on the forums in awhile, I think he will understand. 
No one has said anything about my birthday in years on here.

Sup OCR! Journey to the Centre of the World is my second full length original album, and is available for download at Bandcamp! Journey to the Centre of the World is a 10 track album, which i've been working on for the past 2-3 years. The album is a big fat 80's inspired Chiptune/Rock fusion. It has authentic chiptunes, less authentic chiptunes, and big fat 80s production with operatic singing and crazy synth/guitar solos! And it's FREE!!!
https://willrock1.bandcamp.com/album/journey-to-the-centre-of-the-world

Track 1 features the Vocal Talents of Valentino Francavilla (Best known as the vocalist of ShockFront) and the famitracker chops of @DaMonz and the album also features a Remix by OCRs @DDRKirby(ISQ)!
You can download it on Bandcamp, or on overclocked records for the small price of free, but every donation helps me support myself and continue to make great music! If you end up enjoying the music, please consider paying what you think is a fair price for the download  
Thanks guys! REALLY hope you enjoy this one, a lot of effort went into it!
 
 

I heartily recommend checking out the My So Called 8-Bit Life podcast episode. Great talk, I personally took great pleasure from hearing about trackers and BBSs, the really oldschool stuff since that was definitely a big part of my nerdy youth too. But also great bits about composer response to American Album, plus I really appreciated hearing about difficulties when writing the American Pixels (time/motivation etc).

Hey guys. It's been a long time! I haven't submitted new remixes here in what feels like ages, however I've still been working on things. One of which I'd like to announce here. I've been developing a retro arcade game called Hive Bomber. It's a one-man project so it involved a lot more than music writing from me. It will be my 2nd released game (whether it makes it through Steam Greenlight or not) and I'm hoping it will appeal to the people who fondly remember the early 80s arcade games as I do.
A brief description:
The gameplay is simple. You control the Hive Bomber and assault enemy bee hives. Each hive has 4 randomly placed honey "cores". If you get all four, the hive self destructs. However, even numbered hives contain a randomly hidden queen which must be destroyed as well. Queens possess an impervious energy shield which is powered by the honey cores, so optimal gameplay will involve getting the honey before releasing the queen. Other bees work together to defend the hive from it's attacker. Workers repair the damaged hex cells. Defenders protect the hive and allies with their rechargeable bubble shield. Others fend off the Hive Bomber utilizing various attack behaviors.
The Hive Bomber has a rainbow of forms it can take, each one represented as a powerup. You can have up to 2 forms that you can switch from at any one time. Each one has it's own weapon attributes and unique special ability. All forms can teleport to the opposite side of the hive if they have at least 1 teleport energy unit.
The Steam Greenlight link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=742007760
Checkout the trailer and screen shots, and if it looks like something you'd like to play, be sure to vote.
The game's not 100% complete yet so any feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.
 
 

Have to include some new stuff from Brandon that continues to assume the worst about how OCR is run, including the belief that mixes from popular games were posted in order to maximize YouTube revenue (ignoring all the less popular games we posted mixes from). I want to be sure people can see these accusations. My responses below:
Sagnewshreds, on 15 Aug 2016 - 01:46 AM, said:
Need to be clear that Brandon wasn't blamed for "misrepresenting" the situation, as if it were just a difference of opinion. Despite pages of discussion and details, he's continued with over-the-top conspiracy theories, fake claims of evidence, and conclusions in bad faith that were literally libel. We believe the Content Policy gives OCR the permission to republish the mixes on other sites and present advertising in the context of the submitted materials, that fair use allows us to do this without licensing the music, with the revenue going to OC ReMix as an organization and that all revenue is disallowed from being used for profit. He doesn't agree with that point of view, and that should have been the focus of his issues. But negative concerns weren't brushed aside as he claims, and Brandon wasn't the only person who shared them. He also claims there were no apologies and that no commitment was made to transparency and legality. People can read through this thread and see all of the back-and-forth. Everything brought up was addressed. I will say that Brandon is very good at projection, since demonizing people, being disrespectful, and displaying a lack of trust & goodwill are things he was great at in this discussion.
One thing not mentioned before is that enabling YouTube ads increases the search ranking of the content, the same way that enabling ratings does. Back when we started the YT channel, we actually disabled ratings for everything to match how we didn't do polling or ratings of the mixes. It turned out that disabling ratings made YouTube reduce the visibility of the videos. But enabling those things makes YouTube increase their visibility, so we're trying to get the mixes heard by more people. That may explain why the SM64 mix, which was the first one with monetization turned on, received greater views; YouTube actually gives more weight in discoverability to content that's monetized and allows ratings.
That said, I'm the sole person that decides mixpost order these days (because I'm tagging them up and staging them), and claiming that we were just posting popular mixes to maximize YouTube revenue is silly and needlessly overthinking things. Sagnewshreds called your suspicions "tinfoilly," and he's right. For posting your Chrono Cross mix out of cycle, sometimes I do that. I just noticed you hadn't had a mix posted in about a month and didn't know you had anything else waiting besides some tracks on the FF9 project that were going to be posted on 9/9.

We can't state enough how we're not actually motivated by money and don't profit, but in any case, in the 2 month period where ads were enabled on 43 out of 3,000+ videos, we also had mixes from Gradius Gaiden, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Yoshi Touch & Go, Skylanders, ilomilo, To the Moon (yours), Global Gladiators, Lufia II, Rollerball, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Tyrian, Vectorman, After Burner, and R-Type for the C64.

Have to say this over and over again: we don't care what game something is from. At all. It doesn't change how we evaluate anything. If the submission is creative and interpretive enough with the arrangement, and produced well enough, we'll post it. We don't post stuff from certain games to boost ad revenue or social media metrics or whatever. Also, all ads were off since the 14th, including when that Chrono Trigger album trailer went up (plus we had already decided not to monetize trailers (which is why you yourself noticed the Esther's Dreams trailer wasn't monetized). Brandon's also saying that even BEFORE YouTube monetization, we were ALREADY strategically weighting mixposts to heavily popular games. This is despite publishing an album from him for the super-obscure game Teen Agent.

As I've said many times, we don't pick what games are mixed, the ReMixers do. And it almost goes without saying that Chrono Trigger or Mega Man 2 or Final Fantasy VII is more of a nostalgia and popularity draw among the ReMixers themselves, which is why they arrange those games more than others. We don't control that or try to steer anything in that direction. If OCR could have 1,000+ more Tim Follin arrangements, that would be awesome.
The last thing I'd say is that I don't know why Brandon put up a poll on keeping his mixes up on OCR. It's very obvious that he assumes the worst about the staff, thinks we're pocketing the ad revenue, maybe buying cars or comics or anything & everything non-OCR related with it, that it's some money-making cabal, that all the staff are complicit in said cabal, and that we'd love to illegally and unethically generate YouTube revenue in the shadows and willingly anger hordes of artists. Since he's convinced it's run like that and unethical like he claims, why would a poll convince him to keep his ReMixes up?

Like I said before, no amount of transparency or actions can make Brandon believe that OCR is run honestly, ethically, above board, and without a profit motive. Weighing that, I can't imagine why or how he'd convince himself not to request removal of his mixes. Due to his overly suspicious, paranoid, and imaginative nature about all of this, I think that's inevitable.

A-OK with me.

Of course... one hundred fifty percent.

newt and brandon's posts demonstrate why this topic should likely be discussed behind closed doors

I'm going to close this thread up. A spirited discussion to be sure, but @djpretzel indicated what the next steps are going to be for OCR with regards to shifting ads over to YouTube.
I don't think it's healthy for us to sit around and do a post-mortem of the arguments/discussion. Let's get back to talking about video games, music, and video game music.

I have to call this out.  What total bullshit this statement is.  You started this, which ultimately I think was a good thing because it got the ball rolling on some good things, but you set the angry and accusatory tone right from post #1 and maintained it for 14 pages of thread.  We are all getting too old for this.
 
Are you even serious?  Dave began providing solid, undeniable answers right from the start.  You continued screaming.
 
They are pissed at you because you made incredibly insulting and darn-near libel-worthy accusations claiming you had actual evidence.  You dragged OCR and Dave specifically through the mud, and not just here.
 
Whatever.  You need to clean up your act in a very big way.  You had Dave on the border of insanity yesterday and I'm REALLY not ok with that.  I'm sorry but this just needs to be said.

So even as you admit that you went overboard, you're still trying to shame djp for pointing it out? 
You're contradicting yourself in a single post here. Careless is clearly an understatement. I can't even...

- Fact: I'm on staff and I'm not getting paid for any of this crap.
- I'm completely okay with OCR making a bit of a return on the great service they provide to me as an artist. If that shows up in the form of a slight financial benefit from ads run on or near my submitted material, no matter what form those ads take, that sounds great to me. Viva OCR!

Aww I thought you turned into a werewolf when you got irked. Image = ruined.
Seriously though that all sounds great djp.

The purpose of this thread is to give people a clear idea of how OCR operates, how revenue is generated (and where that revenue goes), and the relationship between OCR, its operations, and the people that contribute to it.

Is content on OCR licensed?

No. We do not license the ReMixes distributed on our site (and through channels like YouTube). (There is one exception, which is described below.)

Why aren't the remixes licensed?

It's simply impossible to do this for several reasons.

1. Mechanical licensing via the compulsory licensing permission (the one that does not require publisher permission) requires that the source material be published commercially in the United States prior to licensing. Many remixes on the site are of source material never released in soundtrack form in the US, therefore they cannot be licensed.

2. Even if the music could be licensed, since OCR is founded on the concept of distributing music for free, it would be impossible to support the massive licensing costs necessary for all remixes on the site. To use some napkin math: assume 3400 remixes are each downloaded 100 times per month, which is a gross under-estimate. At 9.1 cents per copy downloaded, this would require licensing fees of over $30,000 a month - for downloads alone.
3. No established license mechanism could cover free downloads of MP3s and ad-supported streaming. Compulsory mechanical licensing only covers downloadable copies; as a result, custom licensing agreements would need to be made with every publisher (which they could simply reject, unlike a compulsory license.)

For total emphasis, there is no conceivable way that the content on OCR could be licensed, and especially not while remaining compatible with the site goal of distributing free music.

Does that mean OCR is illegal or infringing copyright?

By default, any use of copyrighted material without express permission of the copyright holder is considered infringement. However, US copyright law makes provisions for "fair use" of copyrighted material as a defense to infringement in a court of law. Fair use is the legal principle that allows for things like educational usage, commentary, parody, and satire, among other uses. While fair use cannot be established except in a court of law, and there are no strict guidelines allowing anyone to decide whether a use is fair or not outside of the court system, it's possible to make an educated guess as to whether a use is fair or not.

This educated guess is based on an evaluation of the factors evaluated for determining fair use, and precedent. The biggest of these factors are whether a work is transformative, and whether it is 'commercial'. These are both loose and nebulous terms, but that being said, our strongly-held belief (reinforced by the belief of consulted legal counsel) is that OCR's distribution of fan-created arrangements for non-commercial educational purposes is fair use. This has been discussed at length in other posts but suffice it to say that when analyzing all these factors, we've made a very strong case for this if a court case were ever to happen.
Isn't it worse to upload music to YouTube, especially if it's monetized?
No. If fair use applies to OCR's activities, it would certainly extend to YouTube. If it doesn't apply, then the site's current activities (on and off YouTube) would be considered infringement, in which case it's a moot point.
YouTube is actually a better place to address issues of infringement than elsewhere, because Google provides content creators with several tools: the ability to claim a video (which grants the publisher/claimaint all further revenue from the video) or issue a takedown. Both of these would not entangle either party in the court system, as Google/YouTube mediates any disputes, avoiding a costly legal battle. In short, we'd much rather defend ourselves to YouTube, ON YouTube, with the assistance of YouTube specialists who have extensive experience in copyright disputes.
Also, keep in mind that on YouTube (and off), a creator can claim infringement regardless of whether someone is generating revenue from a work or not. My own personal experience with YouTube claims and takedowns has exclusively been with un-monetized videos. In short, if a publisher took issue with OCR, not running YouTube ads would not protect us in any way.
Does OCR generate revenue from its content?

Yes. Since the early 2000s, ocremix.org has run ads throughout the site. Other revenue is generated from sales of OCR merchandise (not music; music on the site is not sold commercially) such as t-shirts and hoodies. Within the last few years, OCR launched a Patreon page which also generates revenue. Ads were also enabled on <1% of videos on OCR's YouTube channel from June-August 2016 for testing purposes, which has also generated a small amount of revenue. Until OCR officially becomes a registered non-profit organization, and YouTube ads are discussed further with the community, YouTube ads will only be served on the videos of ReMixers who have given OCR their explicit permission.

Why does OCR need to generate revenue?

OCR as a website has technical costs, such as the cost of a dedicated server, mirrors, and bandwidth. These expenses are necessary for the basic operation of the site. Revenue is also needed to create promotional materials for the site: that includes merchandise like t-shirts and hoodies, as well as strictly-promotional physical copies of album projects. (These promotional physical albums are not sold, and the content on them is available for free on ocremix.org. They are given away at conventions). OCR has also been attending conventions such as Otakon, MAGFest, and PAX (among any others) to evangelize video game music, promote recent album releases, and give away free stuff. Expenses directly related to OCR panels at these conventions (such as technical equipment needed for panels) are sometimes covered by OCR as an organization.

There are also many plans for the organization that require revenue to achieve. For example, the OCR YouTube video template has not been updated in many years and looks dated. We're in the process of commissioning custom visualization software to produce better-looking videos strictly for the enjoyment of viewers and fans. Also, we're looking to obtain true non-profit organization status, which we believe will take a substantial amount of money to file and maintain properly.

Where does surplus revenue go?

For a long time, there was no surplus revenue. Expenses were often paid out of pocket by Dave and other staff. Now that revenue is exceeding expenses, the revenue... isn't going anywhere. It's staying in OCR's accounts until it is used for purposes like those described above. The aforementioned non-profit filing process will likely take most if not all saved money.

So is OCR a non-profit organization?
From our submission agreement: OCR legally cannot distribute submitted materials for for-profit endeavors. Furthermore, OCR is legally bound to spend any revenue on costs directly associated with operation and promotion of OverClocked ReMix.
However, OCR as an entity does not have true non-profit status - 501(c)(3) - which is why achieving that official status is a major goal.
Are any ReMixers or site staff paid for their work?

No. Nobody has been paid for their work contributing to the site either as a remixer, staff member, or administrator, djp included.
(Fine print: OCR has released one commercial album, For Everlasting Peace: 25 Years of Mega Man, as an officially licensed release in partnership with Capcom, with Capcom retaining ownership of the music. ReMixers were paid for this release, which was licensed directly with the publisher. This music is not available on the site and was not submitted through the normal channels, so it's an outlier.)
Will ReMixers ever be paid?
Not for regular submissions to the site, which are distributed for free. Not only would the logistical overhead be unmanageable, but it would invalidate our fair use case, as it would be impossible to justify those payments as necessary to the direct operation of the site as a non-profit entity. However, we'll continue to explore separate licensed projects like MM25, or officially licensed commercial albums through our sister site OverClocked Records. We view these as separate from the core work that OCR does: distributing and evangelizing free music.
Will site staff ever be paid?
There is absolutely no plan to do this, nor has it been seriously discussed among site staff in all years of operation. It's conceivable that it could happen someday, after 501(c)(3) status is achieved and we're complying with all regulations for transparency, corporate bylaws, etc. djpretzel wants there to be a plan for the site should anything ever happen to him, and operating a 501(c)(3) will require more administrative duties for things like bookkeeping and accounting. Again, if it were to ever happen, it would be executed properly to the letter as per federal guidelines for non-profit organizations and in full compliance with our own legally binding submission agreement.
Is there anything to prevent revenue from being distributed as profit to staff now?!

Of course. Just because OCR is not a 501(c)(3) yet does not mean our submission agreement isn't legally binding: it is. And that agreement, which applies to OCR as an organization, strictly limits how revenue can be used. Again, site staff have never been paid nor are there any plans to do so.

First things first, I'd like to thank everyone who's come forward with their support for the site & staff, in spite of the toxic way this has been introduced by non-staff and the accusations that have accompanied it. It means a lot.
As the father of two amazing daughters, the only way I can justify spending time on OCR and not with them is when I'm doing work that speaks to me, releasing kick-ass mixes & albums, and making the site & community stronger behind the scenes. This isn't that... this is dealing with a small contingent spreading bad faith accusations, paranoia, misunderstandings, and in some cases belligerence. As an adult, I realize that leadership DOES involve dealing with those types of things as well, but as a father of young children it is VERY hard to use my limited free time for this...
If you've been reading closely, you'll recall that our limited "trial run" of video ads was an experiment to see how intrusive the ads were and whether they would noticeably impact the user experience. We have indicated that our intention was to contact artists and hash this out once we had gotten the ball rolling on 501c3 status, and now it also seems like a revision to the content policy makes sense as well.
It's been a long, unnecessarily stressful conversation, but ultimately tomorrow we're going to post a mix & continue operations...
So what will that look like?
Our experiment is now effectively ended as we can no longer observe the impact of ads in a neutral setting. We will not be enabling ads on additional videos UNTIL we can: Submit a filing for 501c3 status AND obtain this status, or reorganize into something more appropriate than a sole-proprietorship LLC. Modify the content policy with agreeably clear language. Present this change to artists and solicit feedback in a more civil setting, without toxic misinformation and accusations disrupting that dialogue. We will proceed with removing ads from videos posted since June 13th. Exceptions will include any videos from artists who explicitly indicate they're cool with the ads staying, even prior to the above steps being taken. We would like to continue gathering analytics/metrics and seeing how everything works as we proceed with 501c3, etc., so this WILL be helpful to us. This removal will take a bit because to our knowledge, there's no batch mechanism for changing these settings, it has to be done one-by-one. Not awful, just a little monotonous. (UPDATED: Done!!) If you wanna help us get some more data in the meantime & have ads enabled on your videos, please let us know... as I said, we could use the additional insight. So yes, this is still a thing & it's still happening - assuming the three steps outlined above can be completed and that artist feedback points us in this direction - but for now, thank goodness, we can take a break and wait until our ducks are in a row, we've made an historic step towards 501c3 status, we've updated the content policy to make things clearer, and we've had a more informed & productive conversation.

I'm glad you think they're "nice" - but your statements were not speculations, they were false statements about "evidence". If you continue to make such statements, you will be permanently banned from this community, once and for all. Artists contributing to your projects can choose whether to contribute to them elsewhere, or under new management here. It's not my first choice for how this all should pan out, but you're making this site toxic for me to even interact with, you're disrespecting me and my staff, and that's a problem.

I think responding to Brandon at this point is not productive.  We're repeating the same things over and over, and he's unwilling to listen or thinks any explanation is not enough.  Fails to provide a list of point by point questions and is just ego ranting and trying to leverage his status as a prolific remixer and album director to get his views on what's right to be implemented regardless of reason or logic.
This:
Is something that has been stated as the next steps to be taking going forward.  As reiterated before, people who have a point of view in disagreement are welcomed to join the discussion and drop their two cents, as well as people providing ideas.  I don't like to dismiss people but I think the discussion with Brandon is turning out to be exhausting and pointless for everyone.

He said it's always been infringement, not it's always been illegal. He said if website ads were ruled illegal, than so would YT ads. And he also said if website ads were ruled legal, than so would YT ads.
Fair Use and copyright infringement are not mutually exclusive. Fair Use is a defense for a category of copyright infringement that has been cleared by a court of law; in other words, it's infringement, but the judge says it's okay if he thinks it's Fair Use. OCR has always operated in this manner. Your own arrangements operate in this manner whether or not you make a single cent on them for ANY reason. 
All of your video game arrangements are copyright infringement, and always have been, and will continue to be even if OCR shut down Patreon, turned off the donation service, and took down all ads everywhere. Nothing you say can get you out of it. It doesn't matter if you release the music for free and non-profit outside of OCR, it's still infringement. Even if it's Fair Use, it's still infringement.
There is nothing inconsistent between what Larry and Zircon said.

I don't think you have. I don't think you've done your best to present "the facts as stated"...
Here's why:
"I think the major problem here is that the trust of the site is so far beyond gone that nobody has a legitimate reason to believe any staff or owner of OCR is not profiting from this." - this is not a fact, this is a thought that starts off personal, but then you assert that NOBODY has reason to believe anything we're saying w/ regard to profit... which is not only NOT a fact, but is in the proximity of libel... "Disregarding the unethical and potentially illegal aspect of them profiting off of the music itself" - right, as stated, we aren't profiting. The funds are earmarked solely for site purposes. Continuing to call this profit is synonymous with claiming that ANY money OCR *ever* takes in would be profit as well, in which case... no more OCR. So not a presentation of fact... "I'm going to assume from now on that each staff member is making a fair amount of income from the site." - this is you doing your best to present facts? "Your content policy doesn't stretch to youtube usage." - not a statement of fact; your opinion. Hinges on the word "context" which I happen to think most people would have a pretty good idea of... "Your own policy prohibits you from doing what you did" - not a statement of fact, ditto as above. "Were sales of Super Cart not too good? That's unfortunate." - not a statement of fact, just kinda douchey. It's sold pretty well, FYI... this is you doing your best to present facts? "We need an audit, we need someone to go over the financials, and the horrors within need to be disclosed." - which horrors? The ones you have absolutely no evidence of? So that's doing your best to present "facts"? "I have more reason to believe the site will be dead in a year because the financials weren't properly held and OCR falls into legal hell, than anything else. There's more evidence of that." - now you're talking about "evidence" that we'll fall into "legal hell" because financials weren't "properly held." This is actually libel, FYI. I have no intent to act on it, but I believe it would qualify. You're literally claiming that evidence exists of fiscal wrongdoing. This is not only not presenting "facts as stated", it's a statement for which you could be legally held accountable. "since it was hidden from us for 2 months, there is no way I will ever support this regardless of an audit." - this isn't a statement of fact, it's just you doing a full reversal of your above call for an audit. You literally said "we need an audit!" and then "I won't support this regardless of an audit!" - this isn't presentation of fact, it's schizophrenic. "And probably the reason I didn't find it sooner is because I was banned for over a month due to questioning OTHER shady stuff that occurred and staff behavior from the past." - this is misleading. You were informed why you were banned. If you want us making all of that public on this thread, we can. It wasn't related to "shady stuff"... "You say nobody but OCR should worry about legal issues, but the content policy clearly pushes liability onto the remixer." - this is not a statement of fact, and is again misleading. We CANNOT indemnify the submitting artist because our license is non-exclusive - they could post it elsewhere, they could sell it for $10,000, who knows. We can't indemnify that, and we're making that clear. "This really isn't about me in any way though" - sure... So... just to be clear... all of that was you... doing your best... to present the facts as stated?
Anyone wanna defend that claim, or is it as egregiously false as it seems to me, based on the above?

There is no "monetization plan" - there is just the enabling of ads on YouTube. That's it. That's the "plan".
As for projects, at present, we don't post every project mix to YouTube. We used to, but we don't anymore. That could change, but right now from albums what we DO post is submitted & approved ReMixes. Anything that gets submitted is subject to the same content policy that albums are. The project consent agreement references the exact same policy. Your concern about "monetization" would be just as valid back in 2013, with regard to banner ads on the website, as it is in 2016 relative to YouTube ads. If it's the same exact policy that's being agreed to, I think you know the answer - the policy would be applied the same, across the board. Albums would not have a special exception to the content policy, compared to individually submitted mixes.
Why are you suggesting that contributing to an album should grant you special/different privileges than contributing a mix to the site? Why would artists in one context be treated preferentially? We've never done that in the past, and I'm confused as to why anyone would think that would be a good, or clear/intuitive, approach...
Does anyone other than @Brandon Strader want to chime in and support the idea that album contributions should have a different content policy / agreement than individual submissions?

Okay, still no list of unanswered questions - for a while there you were repeatedly ragging on us for not answering ("dancing around") your questions, I've asked two times in a row for a numbered list that I can respond to in detail, and you've elected not to do that... why?
But since you keep mentioning an "audit" I'm just curious as to what you mean. By a third-party? We're paying Price Waterhouse-Coopers or Accenture to come in? Any idea how expensive that would be? How extensive is said audit? Who performs it? How much would it have to cost for it to be a prohibitively bad idea?
Here's what we're going to do in terms of an "audit" - we're going to apply for 501c3 status. Talk to @Chimpazilla if you want. Part of that process DOES involve a review of budget and expenses that could be likened to an audit. Since you haven't been at all specific, and you keep using the word "audit" as if everyone understands what that would be, who would do it, how much it would cost, etc., I'd like you to indicate whether you think the 501c3 application process is an acceptable form of this. If you're not willing to do the research on what an "audit" would look like OR what's involved with 501c3 status, you're basically just beating an empty drum and casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt on OCR without a genuine interest in its betterment. The ball is in your court on this issue; failure to respond directly to this question to me is, at this point, an admission of disinterest in legitimate progress. We *believe* you're wrong about YT revenue and that the back catalog will end up generating more than newer mixes; even though you are correct in that newer mixes get more views, we're talking about 3000+ videos... we've already disclosed the net sum generated since June 13th, and it has been negligible compared to Patreon. If you were genuinely concerned about corruption & how money is being spent, you would be far MORE concerned about Patreon, because at present - prior to enabling ads on the back catalog, at least - Patreon is far more critical to the site in terms of support. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too, rhetorically - you're the one "dancing" between the MEANS of revenue generation being the main problem, and how the revenue is being USED being the main problem. No one has yet chimed in who you claim is as gravely concerned as you are, from the projects you are directing. If you can get them to participate, it would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps this will be helpful:
Things we ARE committed to thus far, moving forward, based on this conversation:
Filing for 501c3 status in this calendar year. Updating the content policy with clarifying language surrounding "advertisements in the context of submitted material" meaning more than just banner ads, with YouTube as a specific example. Reaching out to artists via forum email addresses, social media, etc. for additional feedback on this topic prior to enabling ads on the back catalog of 3000+ videos. As @Liontamer said, I don't think there's a single thing or list of things we could do to make you happy. I feel like you've festered deep resentment towards the OCR staff, and I think at least some of that surrounds personal issues that aren't related to policy whatsoever. I feel like you've been intentionally misrepresenting our statements, ignoring our responses, casting doubt on our character, and attempting to stir up as much drama as humanly possible, and I think you're frustrated that many contributing to this thread and on Facebook are seeing that for what it is. Nevertheless, in spite of all that, in spite of your ignoring our at-length responses, I still want to this thread to result in a positive outcome. It probably won't be an outcome that satisfies you - I'm not convinced that's possible - but I'm very interested in what others have to say, including those who you've mentioned you've spoken to.