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Out dot com page

Rodrica	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 5:24 AM Not a complaint. Just a suggestion. Songs appear on our main dot com pages in the order of the most recent upload first. Most of us prefer songs to appear in the order of our choice and under selected folders. However our own ordering of our songs is only available for others to see on a secondary music page. (I have to say, this idea was the main cause of complain when Vitaminic were in operation). My feeling is that the dot com page is the first page a visitor will see. So can't we swap this idea around and have "the most recently uploaded songs" on a secondary page or in a small box rather than in the prominent main page position - and our own choice/order of songs as before, on the main page? At present the emphasis is on the most recent uploads, which may not be what the artist wants. For instance, an archive song may be one that the artist wants to promote the most, but this way it will get less prominence and less streams. Any thoughts?
Rodrica	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 5:26 AM And sorry that should read "our" dot com page. The preview button didn't show up when I originally did this!
Opossum	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 5:30 AM I agree 100%.
Rodrica	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 5:41 AM If I beg and plead with the admins maybe they'll reconsider
zedsalt	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 10:55 AM Having all of the songs available right at first glance was one of the things that made this site more appealing to artists and easier to navigate than Soundclick. The "Favorite Sites" feature was also a huge plus. It was a great way of expanding listener's horizons by providing a look into the artist as listener and making worthwhile, relevant suggestions as to other music his/her/their fans might enjoy. The uselessly, annoyingly arbitrary "You Might Also Like"...um...feature? isn't much of a replacement. Or is the "My Favorite Sites" just buried somewhere I've yet to poke around? I can't imagine doing away with the artists' ability to "trade" links, which is, of course, one of the most important functions any independent musicians site can serve. Adding an extra step to searching for an artist or song wouldn't be quite so aggravating, if all of these great features and easy access to content hadn't been replaced by a couple of gray bars. The only purpose they seem to serve is to jam all of the remaining content into a difficult to decipher jumble running down the middle of the page. If they were full of advertising, at least I could see some purpose to them.
Distilled1	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 11:25 AM yeah Zed, it looks like that is gone that will be disapointing as I really liked that feature, the you may also like is ok but it dosent give "our" fav's. I went thru every page not there
Distilled1	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 11:26 AM oh And I agree 100% Rodrica
jack	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 12:47 PM It hasn't "gone", it was just overlooked. This was partially the reason why we had a subscriber test period so we could be told about missing things like this.
Distilled1	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 1:53 PM And I should have noticed it
Fraser	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 2:24 PM So, the subscribers were the guinea pigs?! Hahaha! Sucka's.
Snoogans775	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 6:27 PM riiiiight, so WE were the cool ones, but we have no swank...
Distilled1	Date: September 28, 2006 @ 6:46 PM I have swank
Rodrica	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 4:14 AM I think the admins and coders have done a great job. It must have been a massive task. So I don't want it to appear that we are criticising, rather that we are trying to help iron out some problems. I'm sure the "favourite sites" links will be sorted soon. I have also noticed that there is a very limited list of new uploads on the main page now - disappointing for anyone who's not a subscriber and wants to check the uploads over the past few days - we don't want songs to get buried before they are discovered! There are bound to be a load of minor peculiarities too which I'm sure will be resolved. However going back to the original point, the way artists present their music is quite a major issue - our main page is our advertisement. Also page control is what attracted me to subscribe in the first place. I fear that we will lose one of our most important assets if we are not allowed to categorise and select what/how music appears on our front page. For example, nobody would want to see a work-in-progress remain at the top of the list on their main page just because it was the last track they uploaded. They would surely want to promote their better finalised tracks I'm very surprised that this point wasn't raised during the subscriber test period.
vzeye	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 7:59 AM All the songs should be on the first page and the artist should be able to order the songs as they wish to. Missing seems to be an easy way to order the songs and the stats are gone except deep inside the artist's folders (I did not add the \\\, I typed artist apostrophe s... but your system added the \) and the links currently do not work. It also creates a negative feel in the song comments section to see at the very top of everything else, "Report Song as a Policy Violation." It creates a cold feeling where there are normally warm comments.
ChillinBuzz	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 7:59 AM Well, the songs showing being in order of most recently uploaded does have that advantage in that those that are not on someone's watchlist... yadda yadda. But yes, a thought in my head is that maybe that section could show the first x number of songs from a folder of the artist's choice or even "featured tracks" that the artist can select... hmm?
ChillinBuzz	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 8:01 AM Vzeye, I have that piece of code for the song violation reporting on my task list, I just haven't worked out where to put it yet
ChillinBuzz	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 8:04 AM And... ('cos today I feel like being a comment wh0re) who would prefer the artist song lists as the first page? then what about the artist main page? suggestions... As for the "constructive" (sic) comments on the tabs... would you rather we placed all the links back down the sides again and clutter the pages even more?
jess1561	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 8:41 AM One thing that made the pages look more cluttered is the fact that the font is now bigger.. Also, do we need to have search, DMusic radio, and the events showing on the artist pages? I dunno, It will look better once wide mode is working... But then only you will see it, am I correct? Perhaps even moving the "recent uploads" down below the picture and moving the links as in add to watchlist, e-mail this artist, ect. to where the recent uploads are now, it wouldn't look so cluttered then. But then again, the artist journal should probably be above the recent uploads... If you guys were to move the recent uploads to there you wouldn't need to move the search and whatnot, it would look less cluttered already. And I agree with Rodrica. How about Having our featured song above the recent uploads even? I know this isn't really the place for all these suggestions, but then again... There isn't one right now so I guess that's allright
vzeye	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 9:17 AM Thanks ChillinBuzz, Yes only constructive ideas should be the rule. The goal of course it to make this site feel like home for current users and also attract many new users and subscribers. My idea about tabs is that it is rough on the eyes to have to make so many choices with so many tabs on the top. Some on the side would break it up. Maybe just the most important tabs on top and the more minor ones on the side. As far as the artist page, I think the music is the most important thing so I would rather see all the artist's songs on the very first band page and look for the other things afterwards. I think the recent uploads thing is a good idea, but it should not dominate so much and could be on a sidebar. One big question, how does the artist change the song order on their main music page now? I have not figured that out yet.
Rodrica	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 11:02 AM That's the problem vzeye - we can't at present. So my suggestion is...just have a list of ALL our songs with link buttons only (no info etc) on the front page, which we can put in the order of our choice. Then at the bottom put a "more info" button which links to page 2. On page 2 we can have the folders, info and all the other stuff. We don't really need the "most recent song" thing because if we choose to promote our latest it can already easily be done via our "notes" section (which is what I have done at present). Personally I'd prefer to have all our folders with songs in order of choice on the front page, but I don't think there's room now - especially for those who have a lot of songs currently available. So an ordered list of choice (up to "X" number of songs) seems like the only option. I know from being on other sites that ppl often don't visit page 2 - and that worries me a bit. If it isn't easy for visitors to access a song they won't hang around or search through a load of info. That's why I feel we must get our main page right
zedsalt	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 11:03 AM The sides of the page are, naturally, where the eye goes for links, and in addition to making for a more intuitive interface, it gets rid of the visual tension of verticalness with little or no vertical linearity. Piles of things rarely look as "clean" as rows of things. It takes a lot of effort to find anything in a mondrianesque texture of boxes. The main goal, obviously, is immediacy. Everyone expects the most important content to be presented first. What should go before the song list (in an order chosen by the artist)? Only that which is much more important than the music.
Saint	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 11:10 AM Options would be nice, i like the new design...but i thought it was going to give us more freedom over our pages and how they looked.It would be cool to have a simple edit feature in which we can move things around like band picture,bio,songs... My only complaint is that our pages are "static" in that we have no control over how they look.Even the pictures are all one size now,which is relatively small.We had more control over that on the previous design. 3 key things about Musician's. 1.We like to be different (all of our pages look the same) 2.Most of us have a vision (it would be cool to share that in more ways than just music, alot of us spend alot of time on artwork and creating a type of image and it's kind of hard to reflect that on here) 3.Like our emotions, we are constantly in change "lol" (but at the moment, theres nothing to really change besides our current mood status) These are just my opinions, i love dmusic and i always will...i just feel a little caged at the moment.
Apertome	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 12:43 PM For what it's worth, I agree with everyone who's saying that the artistnname.dmusic.com page should show all the artist's music. As it is now, it seems like the music is a low priority. That's not how it should be! Music isn't even the second tab right now. It should be front and center. I doubt my opinion will change anything. I've been saying this since the first artist page mockup. But obviously others share my view, so maybe something will change That and other issues aside -- the people who finished the redesign have done a great job! This is a huge improvement over the old site, and hopefully I'll have time to mess around with it soon.
GeneHilbert	Date: September 29, 2006 @ 1:27 PM I can wait for most of this to be ironed out over however long it takes to get the coding and site perfected....... It tough time consuming work…. And speaking for myself – I am very appreciative all of the efforts. I just want to be able to replace a song file with a newer version. If I could do this....... I'd be a happy, happy guy.....
dsindel	Date: September 30, 2006 @ 2:00 AM I for one do agree that our music is the main attraction... I do not know if anyone else feels this way but I have always been a bit stumped that to get to an artists songs you have to find the ubiquitous "Member of:" link which then reveals the music... now that we have tabbed browsing it certainly seems a logical maneuver to shuffle the order and make the "Music tab" one of the first things available in the hierarchy... (somehow I think that was discussed a month or so ago during beta testing???) oh well, just my 2 cents worth... kudos once again to all involved in the upgrade DM v.2
zedsalt	Date: September 30, 2006 @ 11:05 AM A friend of mine is a website designer/builder/maintenance dude and former employee of one of the largest site development firms that folded during the DotCom Bust. He was calling to ask why so many of my songs had been deleted. He didn't click on the smaller, lower "Music" tab, because he assumed it was another redundancy in the redesign.
GTOriginal	Date: October 1, 2006 @ 4:50 PM My opinion - This is DMusic, access to the songs should be the most obvious thing and we should absolutely control the sequence under which they appear. All in all I like the change, which came as a bit of a suprise, and I am almost amazed to see it working so well, all things considered.
HenriRoger	Date: October 1, 2006 @ 5:19 PM I think like Rodrica and some others about the recent songs list , we should be able to manage it on our page . I realy like the look of the music pages ,it's clear and very nice looking
Engine11RDenny	Date: October 13, 2006 @ 4:35 AM I'd like the band page to be the full list of available songs like before. The expanded page would be nice as an archive page to put songs that have been on DM for a while - at least the for subscribers with the space to archive.
ShadowMom	Date: October 13, 2006 @ 10:05 AM The music page does display all your songs. What's missing, Denny? Even the recent uploads are included in that list. And you still have folders. Why not an archive folder?

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