Exposure for non-album remixes

[Rozovian]

It got brought up on the

. While not the point of the comment, it struck me as a valid complaint/concern. With so many more albums being done these days, how are non-album tracks gonna get a fair chance?

Not only do the album tracks get attention through the album getting attention, but a mixflood of album tracks can easily bury a non-album track posted right before. Even if it's still visible, it might not stand out enough, and it is of course pushed further down the page. With every album track posted, the album gets attention. And them albums keep getting bigger. What's worse is when a non-album track from the same game is posted around the time of the album. Just imagine if one of the mmx tournament tracks would get posted around the time Maverick Rising is released. A casual listener will easily just assume everything mmx is from the album and just get the album instead. This was the case with DKC2, and while there's a few dozen tracks in between, Ross Kmet's Brambles track was easily assumed to be part of the dkc2 album, as was Blue Magic's DKC track at a cursory glance at the list. I'm sure djp avoids putting album and non-album tracks of the same game too close to each other, but it's worth bringing up.

As whether a remix is on an album or not is part of the database, it should be possible to exclude album tracks from the russian remix roulette.

Showcasing x non-album tracks per month somewhere... Tho with 50 tracks a month it'd still take years to through them all, and the number is constantly being added to. Not a feasible idea.

Once December's "Save OCR" thingy is over, we could do a "non-album track exposure month" where we promote non-album tracks on blogs, share them on facebook and youtube and wherever, review them more, etc. I mean, it's not like ppl don't do it already, we'd just encourage those who don't to try it, and suggest those who do stick to non-album tracks for a month.

Initial mixflood aside, subsequent tracks from an album could be posted with non-album tracks, as is done some of the time - always so the most recent track is a non-album track or part of the day 1 album mixflood.

Adding icons to the front page list: a subtle blue disc for album tracks and a more prominent, maybe red thing for non-album tracks. That should draw the eye to the non-album tracks when on the front page. Cluttered? Maybe. How about different background colors to the boxes they're in? Too messy? Probably.

Staff picks in a post somewhere? A trailer of staff picks per year? While unfair to the countless tracks not getting attention, staff could pick whatever tracks they wanna highlight - their favorites, tracks they think are underappreciated or otherwise mostly undiscovered, reminders of ocr's old days, whatever. Just limit that to non-album tracks and it'd work for this purpose. it could also be done with "classic" remixers, ie those that were posted ten years ago or something.

I'm not sure how serious I am about any of these suggestions, but maybe they'll lead to something worth doing. Idunno. Got any better ideas?

Discuss.

[Brandon Strader]

Solution: add an EXP system to accounts, award EXP for reviewing or rating a song after listening to it ^o^

But anyone who is a regular on OCR doesn't really skip songs, I wouldn't think

[Skummel Maske]

I think the album tracks already get all the exposure they need with the album releases, which are much more advertised than mixposts anyways. I must admit I completely ignore mixposts for a while whenever an album is released.

[andrew_berge]

I usually go for the albums because they're often available in FLAC. I don't know why it bothers me so much that the regular remixes aren't available in lossless but it does.

Mp3 v0 would be fine, i guess, but for some reason the rules say bitrate is limited to 192kbps.

[Level 99]

Solution: add an EXP system to accounts, award EXP for reviewing or rating a song after listening to it ^o^

But anyone who is a regular on OCR doesn't really skip songs, I wouldn't think

VGMix 2 much?

I understand people's complaints that regular mixposts might seems fewer this year considering the amount of albums released. Let's just look at the sheer statistics of it:

Albums released in 2011 (so far): 9

Albums released in 2010: 4

Albums released in 2009: 4

and it just kinda goes downhill from there.

As it has been for a while now, anyone who makes an album that is release through OCR, and is approved and QC'd by us through that, has the right to have some of the songs from the album as part of the OCR database proper. This is the nature of mixfloods. OCR Albums are not by-default consisting of all OC ReMixes. The best thing to think about is that an album is a separate entity from regular mixposts. This is why people submit album tracks to be posted on the site proper: just because you're on an OCR Album doesn't make you an OC ReMixer.

Unfortunately I can see no way to get around the issue without playing some kind of favoritism. We release albums as we get them and have them ready to roll. It just so happens that this past year a lot of albums have wrapped up and we've been trying to release them as fast as possible so that we don't end up with an album queue years backlogged. There's also no way to remove the initial mixflood from the process without it being unfair to anyone who stars or releases an album after that time.

There has been discussion of interspersing regular mixposts more between mixflood posts, potentially having it all spread out over a few days. It's been on the backburner simply because there are other things we've had to focus on for most of this year.

Rozo's suggestion of always having a regular mixpost last kinda seems unfair to an album mixpost if that artist didn't have it as part of the mixflood. Same thing with excluding them from russian roulette or the database. That's basically like saying "your song is either part of an album, or a normal mix on OCR. you can't have both"

Also the suggestion of having staff pick favorites as representatives of OCR is a bad idea. When blogs are implemented, yes that is fine, because then its their person opinion. A trailer of staff picks wouldn't work though, nor would anything over the "official" channels for the same reason we don't allow favorites lists in the forums.

I'll make sure to bring this up at the next staff meeting though. As I said, it has been discussed before so there's no harm in bringing it up again.

[WillRock]

VGMix 2 much?

I understand people's complaints that regular mixposts might seems fewer this year considering the amount of albums released. Let's just look at the sheer statistics of it:

Albums released in 2011 (so far): 9

Albums released in 2010: 4

Albums released in 2009: 4

and it just kinda goes downhill from there.

As it has been for a while now, anyone who makes an album that is release through OCR, and is approved and QC'd by us through that, has the right to have some of the songs from the album as part of the OCR database proper. This is the nature of mixfloods. OCR Albums are not by-default consisting of all OC ReMixes. The best thing to think about is that an album is a separate entity from regular mixposts. This is why people submit album tracks to be posted on the site proper: just because you're on an OCR Album doesn't make you an OC ReMixer.

Unfortunately I can see no way to get around the issue without playing some kind of favoritism. We release albums as we get them and have them ready to roll. It just so happens that this past year a lot of albums have wrapped up and we've been trying to release them as fast as possible so that we don't end up with an album queue years backlogged. There's also no way to remove the initial mixflood from the process without it being unfair to anyone who stars or releases an album after that time.

There has been discussion of interspersing regular mixposts more between mixflood posts, potentially having it all spread out over a few days. It's been on the backburner simply because there are other things we've had to focus on for most of this year.

Rozo's suggestion of always having a regular mixpost last kinda seems unfair to an album mixpost if that artist didn't have it as part of the mixflood. Same thing with excluding them from russian roulette or the database. That's basically like saying "your song is either part of an album, or a normal mix on OCR. you can't have both"

Also the suggestion of having staff pick favorites as representatives of OCR is a bad idea. When blogs are implemented, yes that is fine, because then its their person opinion. A trailer of staff picks wouldn't work though, nor would anything over the "official" channels for the same reason we don't allow favorites lists in the forums.

I'll make sure to bring this up at the next staff meeting though. As I said, it has been discussed before so there's no harm in bringing it up again.

I'm kinda seeing both sides of the argument here, but it is certianly true that albums do distract from regular mixposts, if they're from the album or not, thats a fact as far as i'm concerned. While I do agree with Level 99 that we shouldn't show a bias for regular mixposts on the site, the fact that the albums get 10X the promotion from regular mixposts makes the regulars get pushed aside at that point. It works fine when there are very little album mixposts per year, but with nine released, its having a knock on effect because 1: album tracks don't get as much attention from both downloads and reviews as regular mixposts from what I can gather, and 2: the regular mixposts are getting pushed aside by the public because of the albums. As a result, anything thats posted as a mixpost on OCR this year is getting ignored either because people have too much to listen to Album wise, or they've already got it.

For sure, its a problem that will be resolved once the album backlog is cleared, but if the album backlog starts growing quicker than we can release the albums, (which seems to be an issue with mixposts right now as well) then we need to either try to A: promote mixposts more to give them more spotlight (Yes I know you don't want bias level 99, but atm, there is obvious bias for anything album related as it is so this would probably even it out) or try and decrease the album flow by introducing stricter deadlines or having a limit on how many albums OCR can take on at time.

[Rexy]

While I do see where people are coming from, I do tend to see something equally as problematic if a track originally from an album is released onto the site in a revised form. I've noticed this on OCR's Facebook on one occasion, which they were all "past mixposts from the past month either didn't interest (them) or were already from an album", not even taking the revision to account. That to me makes me feel equally distraught over what appears to be this review draft forming on the site.

But I can understand that some album tracks as mixposts aren't getting their dues because people are just going to grab the albums as a whole rather than singling out various tracks. Then again, mixposts in general don't seem to be getting their dues either for what I assumed was simply a change in listener climate (i.e. more and more people seem to comment on the mixes through Youtube these days). We can do all we want to try and remedy this, and I remember VGMix being in a similar boat in regards to track feedback while it was running, but I'm pretty sure it's all down to the changing Internet climate and can be seen more as a question of how to adapt to it.

[SuperiorX]

Is having too many quality VGM mixes really a problem? I can't really think of a fair way to promote album vs. non-album mixes, but if the goal is to merely differentiate non-album mixposts from album mixposts, you could do something where you just shade the background box a different color. I know Rozo suggested adding a little icon or something to the post in the "latest remixes" column, but if we want to avoid making it look too busy, we could just shade the box a different color. They are all gray boxes right now, but we could do something like album posts have a light blue color and non-album posts have a light red (or just stick with the light gray). Something like that would be subtle and help differentiate the mixposts. Like this:

[djpretzel]

I appreciate the analysis, I really do, but I sorta question the conclusion that album mixes get more promotion. Entire albums get more promotion, sure, and mixposts from albums are in a sense "doubly" promoted, but consider the following:

• Mixes posted in a flood actually get less individual attention than they would posted individually
  
• Unlike regular mixposts, they don't usually get individual tweets/facebook posts
  
• If they're not posted as part of a debut flood, but later on, our tendency is double-post and feature (in social media) the regular mixpost and not the album cut
  

I feel like those factors mitigate the double-promotion to a certain extent. Also, we need to be fair to the artists who work on albums - I think it's a given that any mix made for an album needs to remain eligible for submission or direct flood posting, otherwise there'd actually be a disincentive of sorts. With that in mind, I feel like we're doing a decent job of handling the promotional considerations.

From an information visualization perspective:

• An indicator that a mix is from an album is available on the mix page itself
  
• In V6 the main remix list will have an album icon indicating it was released/featured as part of an album - including non-official albums
  
• I haven't thought about the featured lists, i.e. the homepage & artist pages... colorization alone to me wouldn't convey much of anything, i.e. wouldn't be intuitive. An album icon might, but I need to see if there's a good place to put it.
  

I'm also pondering ways of featuring "related" mixes on mix detail pages, below writeup & before comments... might end up being random, might end up being other mixes from the same game, or by the same remixer, or some combination of those, or randomized between those, I don't know yet, but it should help to better promote OLDER mixes, which I think needs to be done.

In addition to that, it was planned for 2011 but we ran out of time, I still really want to do an incentivized (i.e. PRIZES) competition to mix unmixed games, the winners of which would be posted out of cycle, to reward spreading the love a bit more & covering some less popular but still awesome game soundtracks.

Lots to consider!

[NegimaSonic]

I just kind of listen to whatever I want lol. I will admit that if a track is posted on the site that was already on the album, I won't download it and probably won't review, but that's because I already have it. But if I am interested in the song, I still check the download page just in case that song was different somehow or it wasn't a part of an album and it just looked like it was.

And some stats are misleading anyway. I listen to a lot of previews on youtube. If I like it on youtube, it also gets autoposted to my facebook. But often at school, when I do that I often forget to download when I'm at home.

And in general, I try not to leave a lot of reviews just because a lot of them would amount to "omg this song is cool!" If I help with December reviews month, I'll try to figure out ways to write that differently but I can never actually leave helpful reviews that say stuff like "the percussion was a little off at 1:24 and the choir was unrealistic".

[Phonetic Hero]

Mixes posted in a flood actually get less individual attention than they would posted individually

I suppose the mixes DO receive less attention simply because they're being posted alongside other mixes from the album, but at the same time (as an offender myself), the regular mixes often get skipped entirely because of the album posts; you see "HEY, NEW ALBUM!!" everywhere and then a string of album posts, it really takes away from the regular posts.

I'm also pondering ways of featuring "related" mixes on mix detail pages, below writeup & before comments... might end up being random, might end up being other mixes from the same game, or by the same remixer, or some combination of those, or randomized between those, I don't know yet, but it should help to better promote OLDER mixes, which I think needs to be done.

I like this idea a lot. I completely, 100% agree that older mixes need more attention

In addition to that, it was planned for 2011 but we ran out of time, I still really want to do an incentivized (i.e. PRIZES) competition to mix unmixed games, the winners of which would be posted out of cycle, to reward spreading the love a bit more & covering some less popular but still awesome game soundtracks.

And I thought I liked the previous idea a lot.. personally, I'd be ALL OVER this. I've already been compiling a list of mixes I want to do from a LOT of unmixed games. And I suppose we are out of time in 2011, but that's fine with me, I've been busy with the WCRG anyway There's always 2012!!

Hope all this gets ironed out before I get posted, and lost amongst an album mixflood

pH

[Cash]

Personally, I check out every new remix and review it if I enjoyed it, whether in an album or not. Even during flood periods. It seems I might be in the minority, but I can't say for sure. I think an icon on the home page would be nice, if it can fit without being too cluttered.

[Brandon Strader]

I would be hella-up for mixing unmixed games, getting posted sooner as a prize would be great too I already have a to-be-submitted list that stretches to March 2012

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

Would it be possible to rework the front page somehow to dedicate a portion of the sidebar to specific tracks that are on the latest featured album? Sort of like what SuperiorX is suggesting, except just separating those particular album mixes from other remixes altogether. In doing so, both types of posts can get featured appropriately.

Just a thought. This just seems like a simple aesthetic issue with the front page layout more than anything.

[Bahamut]

There has been a complete redesign of OCR in the works for a while - the new version looks pretty hot.

[Brandon Strader]

There has been a complete redesign of OCR in the works for a while - the new version looks pretty hot.

I want it so bad.

[Mustin]

I'd rather have an individual posted than an album mix.

I think this thread is a bit ridiculous. As of late. ...my opinion.

[ectogemia]

Providing incentives for remixing virgin games is awesome. That kinda precludes my plans to create a competitive compo that was intended to meet that particular need, too. So hooray for you for sparing me the effort!!!

[SuperiorX]

There has been a complete redesign of OCR in the works for a while - the new version looks pretty hot.

I know this is off-topic, but is there a timeline for said site redesign? Or pictures of it's supposed hotness, or is that only for the privileged?

[Dj Mokram]

That kinda precludes my plans to create a competitive compo that was intended to meet that particular need, too.

You might be interested to know that the People's Remixing Competition is exactly what you're describing (minus of course the incentive part).

This compo could really use some love, so if you have time and wanna bring under-appreciated VGM to light, please consider entering.

Now, this thread confuses me because, last time I checked, VG-remixing was still the act of paying tribute to other people's work for the fun of it.

Seeking extra recognition within the very community for that exact reason comes off as overtly selfish if not a bit hypocritical.

Especially considering the powerful social tools available today and the fact that OCR is doing everyone's promotion for them, free of charge.

If you really want more exposure, making an original album and spreading the word about it (like many remixers did) would be more productive.

Also, I like how tons of requests have been left unanswered for years, yet a mixpost incentive suddenly made everyone wanna remix obscure vgm.

Apparently, the good ole love of game music wasn't motivating enough for some.

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

The complaint does not seem to be "I want my remixes to have more exposure." The complaint is "I want encourage more remixes that are not necessarily part of an album." This is not necessarily an unfair or selfish request, seeing as albums occupy a lot of talented artists in the VGM community, and they often (not always) cover music from games that have already received a lot of attention. It sounds perfectly healthy to want to come up with ways of encouraging some diversity, however it's done.

[Dj Mokram]

albums often cover music from games that have already received a lot of attention. It sounds perfectly healthy to want to come up with ways of encouraging some diversity

Sure. Now if only there was a way for album directors to cover lesser known games... Wait a minute, there is! It's called taking a risk.

[Pavos]

Teen Agent, NiGHTs, Super Dodgeball, Radical Dreamers... those are not the best known games and still have their own album

[AkumajoBelmont]

Sure. Now if only there was a way for album directors to cover lesser known games... Wait a minute, there is! It's called taking a risk.

Well, we're well on the way to doing so with VROOM - there's some pretty obscure tracks in there

[Level 99]

Teen Agent, NiGHTs, Super Dodgeball, Radical Dreamers... those are not the best known games and still have their own album

Well, we're well on the way to doing so with VROOM - there's some pretty obscure tracks in there

Don't forget about Unsung Heroes. That's basically a description of the entire project is underrepresented RPG game musics.

So there's two separate issues then: regular mixposts vs. album mixposts, and not having enough mixposts from obscure games. The latter is always an issue but people will inevitably remix what they want. There will always be more folks remixing Mega Man 2 and FFVII than there will be DarXide, Rad Racer II, or Stunt Race FX. AND we have PRC for that stuff as well, which I fully support because it challenges people to work with things they might not have heard otherwise. DJP's idea is a good one as well.