k-wix

eh

frankly, shoehorning "success" (as a function of any external metric) into why anyone does anything is part of why new artists are often so utterly confused when trying to find their own voice and why so many promising musicians end up boring cookie cutter clones. whether anyone listens to your remixes or thinks you're good at it or if it "propels" your "career" as a "musician" are ultimately very arbitrary points. furthermore, i'd wager that if the audience isn't appreciating that it's you making the music, then you're probably either doing something wrong or that was your intent all along. in other words, it isn't intrinsic that your arrangement won't be deliciously unique; it's either a choice or a failure.

as for other measures of "success"... it's great that it works out for some people to where music gets to be their actual livelihood... but more often than not, i've found that particular life to be difficult to attain and, once it is, quite stressful... unless of course you're stupidly talented at it (which i am not), in which case, it's blissful... but in the majority of cases, the sheer saturation of the field drowns out even the fairly talented ones and that life just isn't very easy... unless you really do love hustling and grinding gigs and contracts as much as you love creating. right on but no thanks. and look if it's really about doing what you love... well, i do what i love and, shit, i feel i'm pretty damn successful at it too lol seeing as how i very rarely do not achieve what i set out to do (stupid fucking uber-shitty CEO track that sucks pokeballs is an example of a time i didn't haha)... and from where i'm standing, that's the best measure of "success." 
furthermore... i think part of why there has been such a mixed reaction to the OP is because of the second point that was made. ie: "A remix can never really be your own. It's like fanart or cosplay: You're ultimately (where OCR is concerned) just giving free promotion to what is, at the end of the day, a consumer product."

LOL SHOTS FIRED - dude, that is abysmally pessimistic. it's your truth, perhaps... but it's hardly anything beyond that. as i cheekily alluded to in my previous (shit)post, nearly every remix i've ever made pretty much cannot be confused with anyone or anything else and certainly neither its source nor its creator lolllll perhaps that's because my originality, even in a remix context, is entirely my own and is my truth; that the original notes of any given remix of mine were first conceived by someone else does not mean my vision was, nor my interpretation nor my performance of it... and thus neither was the resulting "remix." at risk of sounding like a dick, the alternative is a very limited way of looking at art seeing as how a vast majority of contemporary music is fundamentally derived (a very long conversation topic for another thread no doubt) making this whole notion of "originality" something that ought to be measured OFF the sheet and not on it.
ie. nakamura-sama may have composed "oil ocean" from sonic 2... but zyko wrote "the long war" and it's kinda hard to confuse the two
another example: "Strange Island Eggplant" off the Bad Dudes' "Jingle All the Way" EP takes a short 15 or so second ditty from Adventure Island 2 and turns it into a fully fleshed out song fitted with lyrics. how is that not my song? :shrug:
=====
tl;dr (because #zykorants)
any artform, derived or not, can absolutely be "yours" (since nothing in existence actually is) if you seek it to be and learning how to do that is the real trick

IMMA BOUT TO GET BBQ'D

Just landed a new job, also very recently had a kid, so over the last 2 years i've been out of the picture pretty much entirely. That being said, over the last 2 or 3 months, I've started working on a Mario Odyssey Remix Album.
You can find a preview of the first track here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DOGSue11MIU8zOX4nNVpEDMj9sdouTt3
It's the first thing I've written in at least a few years.

Just landed a new job, also very recently had a kid, so over the last 2 years i've been out of the picture pretty much entirely. That being said, over the last 2 or 3 months, I've started working on a Mario Odyssey Remix Album.
You can find a preview of the first track here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DOGSue11MIU8zOX4nNVpEDMj9sdouTt3
It's the first thing I've written in at least a few years.

The hidden final fantasy boss in Super Mario RPG. Culex? Dude was very hard. Thunder Hopping in FFX Antichamber got difficult about halfway-ish through, gave up. Punch Club was a huge pain - the grinding was not fun. 3rd Strike Boss - Infuriatingly difficult. Gave in many times. Puzzles in Lufia 2 - got stuck and quit many times.

Hey guys! In my spare time I've been working on an electronic/orchestral remix album based on UN Squadron. At this point I am ready to release the album!!  Going to release one track per day for the next 10 days, then throw the whole album up on bandcamp for pay-what-you-want. This is a link to the playlist which will eventually contain the full album. (First song was released today!)
The album was a passion project. I am a massive fan of this game and wanted to cover the music forever. Originally, I wanted to get the communities help, but had trouble recruiting help because so few were familiar with the games soundtrack. I was personally baffled by this - maybe the game just isn't as well known as I thought? Eventually I just decided to just do the album by myself.

Comments & criticism are always welcome! Hope you dig it!

I dont think the game is that well known; it was semi-niche when it came out, and it was released around 25 years ago. I do think the music is great, and I am really excited about your versions of the songs. 
The first track sounds great!

Hey guys! In my spare time I've been working on an electronic/orchestral remix album based on UN Squadron. At this point I am ready to release the album!!  Going to release one track per day for the next 10 days, then throw the whole album up on bandcamp for pay-what-you-want. This is a link to the playlist which will eventually contain the full album. (First song was released today!)
The album was a passion project. I am a massive fan of this game and wanted to cover the music forever. Originally, I wanted to get the communities help, but had trouble recruiting help because so few were familiar with the games soundtrack. I was personally baffled by this - maybe the game just isn't as well known as I thought? Eventually I just decided to just do the album by myself.

Comments & criticism are always welcome! Hope you dig it!

It happens in your 30s. You just keep looking around local and online as best you can and fill it up where you can. Get outside the box and try things you probably wouldn't have tried before.
Pretty hard to be more specific as to what things those are from there, but with the will to move can inevitably reveal the path to get there.

Looks pretty awesome. When can I try it ?

I'm alright with it, provided the advertisements are going specifically to keep the site functioning, and if you are getting more than that, what's the plan for dealing with the rest of the revenue? As for how its different...
1.) It inherently feels more personal. The ads on the website are simply that, they aren't really attached to the music, but the website as a whole. Youtube ads on the otherhand....

2.) The perception of Youtube Ad Revenue is one of pure profit. People think banner ads help sites function, people think youtube ads are for making money.

- 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!

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...

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.

I don't see why they should be different.  All posted ReMixes should be handled the same.
No one likes youtube ads, it's clear.  Some people though have expressed that they don't mind too much, or at all.  I think we will know more when we have the non-profit filing process underway, and we have done some budgeting to see if youtube ads are even a viable income stream for the site when balanced against the repercussions, real or perceived.  I think we should brainstorm some other ideas for revenue too, hopefully we will come up with some ideas that are more lucrative than youtube ads with a whole lot lower pissing-people-off factor.

So because you are not willing/able to contact everyone, of course their opinions probably fall in line with yours!
I'm glad I don't have any songs on your albums, I'd have to become paranoid and constantly make sure my remix was still on the site.
(Regarding the topic on-hand, this is the only strong opinion I've had since the thread started.)

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?

Why doesn't it matter? I think it matters more than anything. If literally nobody involved with OCR makes any money whatsoever, that is entirely different than if we did. 

Again maybe we just feel very different on this. Let's say two charities want to use your music. One charity is staffed by all volunteers. Every single cent they earn goes to operations. 0% to administration. The other charity spends 30% on administration, 70% on operations. To me that is two completely different things and I feel entirely different about each one. 

Whether or not this is ethical as far as OCR's relationship with the artists who have submitted this music, to me, is secondary to the concern that this is kind of damaging the good case we had for Fair Use as far as arranging copyrighted material and releasing it publicly unlicensed.
It seems silly to me to equate website ads to YouTube ads. Website ads are driven by traffic to the OCR website/forums, and the mix write-ups. On YouTube, the ad revenue is generated directly from the content that users are consuming. The ad is tied to consumption; when a user consumes the content on YT by hitting play, ad revenue is generated. It's monetizing the content itself. To me this isn't really subjective, if you look at it in terms of the actions the user takes that lead to these systems logging the transactions. (Of course there is an extent to which the evaluation of whether something is subjective/objective is in and of itself subjective)
Besides personally feeling like an outdated submission policy has kind of been invoked on us artists, dormant patent troll style, to make it "okay" for OCR to do this because they're "covered" (I personally don't mind for my music because I'm invested in this community), I'm not sure why this isn't considered downright illegal. This music is not licensed, and should not be generating revenue; site revenue should come completely from donations, because OCR is (or at least approaches in spirit) a non-profit organization.
Submission policy notwithstanding, I also feel artists should get appropriate portion of revenue. My music is creating money, why aren't I getting that money? Is it because paying me makes it legally inconvenient? Well, that, but also, it's because OCR doesn't have the technical infrastructure to organize the payouts to artists like that. And so that makes for two reasons why it shouldn't be done; it's monetizing unlicensed music and it's ethically "wrong" to not give people a piece of the pie for their hard work (and OCR literally can't do so even if they decided to because of resources).
And because the policy protects OCR to not have to pay artists at all, I think the policy is too ambiguous and needs revision to match the climate of today's internet musical consumption models (streaming and such).
On the other Spotify thread, I proudly said that OCR isn't trying to "fly under the radar" with anything we do, but I feel there's a strong case for this monetization being illegal, and now it's starting to look like we *are* flying under the radar, especially because DJP had stated one of the main points of the experiment was to see if anyone noticed it was being done.
 
As far as Brandon Strader's opening sentiment, I think it's baseless, and insults the intelligence and collective intentions of the staff, as much as similar opinions were shared when Super Audio Cart was released or when the FF6 Kickstarter went up.

I'm alright with it, provided the advertisements are going specifically to keep the site functioning, and if you are getting more than that, what's the plan for dealing with the rest of the revenue? As for how its different...
1.) It inherently feels more personal. The ads on the website are simply that, they aren't really attached to the music, but the website as a whole. Youtube ads on the otherhand....

2.) The perception of Youtube Ad Revenue is one of pure profit. People think banner ads help sites function, people think youtube ads are for making money.

OverClocked University: Spring Break DJ Set
GET IT HERE, CHUMS! https://t.co/UStHNTaeop 
 
The sun is shining, the waves are crashing, and there is an umbrella in your drink. It’s gotta be spring break! Get down with the latest OCU release, “OverClocked University: Spring Break DJ Set”. It’s sunny, it’s synthy, and every track is completely crossfaded to have a continuous playing time, so the party never stops. 
Featuring fully-licensed music from:
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Bravely Default Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Final Fantasy V Mario Kart Wii NiGHTS… into Dreams Pokemon Black/White The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Street Fighter 2 Tales of Innocence Undertale Xenogears
Available soon from OverClocked Records!

Maybe it's because I main grapplers, but I feel like I have better precision with a pad. The whole 360' motion. I will say, shoulder buttons can be a bit annoying.
Adjusting to Ziefs air SPD has been a bit rough though.The move gives him so many new options and ways to deal with air pressure.

I'm using a Fighting Commander 4 Pro.


 
Dude no. Use x360ce.

Hey there! I'd be happy to post some thoughts! For the record, I'm listening to the most recent version, and I have not heard the previous one.
 - The piano sounds alright, pretty and bright - I'd like to hear the mids and lows brought out a bit more - it feels light and soft and when the flute comes in, they tend to occupy the same space, and the mix comes out feeling like a bit much on the high end.
 - The passage that starts @ 1:09 is very pretty - it's one of the highlights of the track for me. Again, I feel like the mids and lows need to be tweaked a bit.
 - A few off/sloppy notes, but generally a good listen all around, the song has a lot of heart and is really pretty, but the mixing can be pretty rough in certain areas, at some points the flute is so loud and bright that it gets a bit painful for me on headphones, that's saying a lot because I'm usually the guy that makes that very mistake! Try toning the flute down through some of the louder areas of the track.
Hope it helps!
 - Dusty

I have to comment on this now that I got namedropped. THANKS WILL. WHY ARE WE YELLING?
 
I think it's all about pace. Back when I was active here, there were more of the big names around. When they posed, whether on a wip, on a posted remix, or in the community overall, people saw that these big names weren't celebrities in their ivory towers, but regular forum folks like us lowly unposted wannabes. And it inspired us.
 
The wip board specifically became a place for me to help others get past the hurdles I had gotten past, and in the process develop a more critical ear and improve my own work. So the place became important to me. Still is, but running the sd3 project has eaten a lot of the enthusiasm over the years, so I've had less energy for the wip board, and now just do my duties as a workshop mod, and not much else there. I'm hoping I can make a comeback and fill a couple of pages with predominantly "last post by Rozovian".
 
I think the wip board's current slow pace is because it's become less of a community. There's not the wip crew of the old days. There's evktalo and timaeus222 and others who are active and do a great job at giving people feedback. There's the whole mod review thing. But I think we're missing the community we had back then. Everyone has their own circles now, whether Facebook or YouTube or SoundCloud or something else, so the comments are spread all over the place, and they don't show on the forum, so forumites don't engage with them, Facebook folks don't engage with Soundcloud comments, and the whole thing gets spread too thin. I like Soundcloud. But I don't like their comments system, specifically because it draws the comments away from the thread on the wip board.
 
On that note, back to reviews. pu_freak's completely right about how remixes appear on social media and get a lot of their responses from there instead of in reviews. That's a big part of it. I think the ability to drop a brief "nice work" comment on Facebook gives people a reason to not bother giving something more in-depth, no matter where that comment would end up.
 
We can encourage reviews. OA and DA had a reviews month back when, and gave out a little badge to everyone who made it to 500 reviews. And there's been those initiatives to get every remix at least one page of reviews (we need a new one, with the new forum having more posts per page). Maybe it's a bandaid. Or maybe it'd create a feedback loop, where people can piggy-back on other people's reviews.
 
Will had questions for us.
 
1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?
 
Back when, it was that I spent so much time posting on wips. Then it was that I didn't have time or energy for it. Now it's that it's not a habit for me to hang out here. I drop by to check for new things to mod review, but that's about it. I don't think I was ever the one reviewing the new mixposts. Rather, I'd make playlists, listen, and comment on the ones I really liked. Which reminds me, I need to review April Rain, if I haven't already, because it's spectacular.
 
What just happened to the formatting?
 
2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?
 
Just start reviewing. Find someone to agree or disagree with, and create a discussion about the mix. Make a list of your favorite tracks and review them. Just get more activity going overall. I think there'll be a feedback effect from this.
 
I would also like to be able to read all comments an artist has received on their posted mixes. It's a convenient way for the remixer to find comments on their most recent works, which might lead them to reply, thus posting more in reviews and getting the activity up.
 
I'd also like to see the design of the forum posts get a trim so there's less whitespace, making threads easier to read when there's not row after row of whitespace. I posted about this somewhere before. I think it's detrimental to forum activity that you often can't see more than one post at a time on a laptop screen. That would make it feel more like a conversation than disparate posts.
 
I think the no-favorites policy could be revised to allow for "here are my favorite collabs from the past 3 years, check them out, give them a review; what are your favorite collabs?"-type threads, probably monthly themes and very specifically crafted by staff so as to not flood the community with various favorite threads. "Remixers having made their debut here over the past year", "remixes of games released in the past 5 years", anything that reminds listeners to drop a line on any remix is good, and once there's more of a culture of reviewing, I think we'd see more reviews on new mixposts as well.
 
We could do a monthly podcast, talking about the remixes posted that month. We could make awesome music videos to get more YouTube presence and maybe draw people here. We could raise ocr's profile on reddit. We could do lots of things. But I think it all comes down to a few people leading the charge, and building a community out of the people who follow.
 
...which makes me wonder what actually happened back in whenever I allegedly single-handedly kicked the wip board into high gear.
 
Now that I'm staff, I feel I have to get permission to do stuff, so that dampens my initiative. Not maybe for reviews or posting on the wip board, but for doing more overall. Speaking of which, I'm apparently not a workshop mod, just a music boards mod. Is that intentional?

Include the Facebook comments and Twitter replies too, in that case. Effectively you'd centralize the discussion on the site. Technically feasible because all these platforms have APIs, but if it's a desirable functionality is debatable.