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Genre Spamming

teledyn	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 4:02 PM at the very first spam messages. Now, maybe, just maybe, these people really do have some reason to call their house-music electronica rave-feed "Bluegrass" and I'm way off base and old-fashioned, and maybe if I heard their argument I'd take a shot of Jack Daniels and reluctantly agree --- I don't want to paint myself as a dogmatic elitist, my only real concern is that the genre spam, especially when it dominates the listing, obscures the artists that the people cruising such channels were expecting to find, and it discourages the genre fans from using the streams. the same could be said for post-spammers, the (ahem) prolific artists who dump 10-20 items into the input streams in one go, then come back a few days later and do it all over again --- The glut hides their own work as much as those they overshadow. Anyway, what can we do about both these over-enthusiastic groups? post-spammers may be as easy as what I see on InterConnected: Posting is limited to one file in every 24hr period -- that may be too restrictive, but it's nonetheless a thought and I think would clean up a lot of our input queues and ensure some variety to the lists. For the genre spams, I think the solution may need to be more social and more technical. How about a democratic decision? We could, for example, allow the artist to rate their own submissions by whatever genre, and give that choice a score, say 50 points. We might also score the track 10 points in the chosen genre of the artist, so, for example, our old 1995 acoustic-folk tunes would still have an ever so slight leaning to the more americana sound of our more recent material. Now comes the democratic part: In addition to an up/down rating on a tune, maybe in the comments form, allow listeners to change (or accept) the genre rating and weight each of these at 10 points each. This way, if bluegrass fans wanted to maintain some purity in their list, it would only take 5 of them to override a misplaced hip-hop track (providing they all agree it's hip-hop and not electronica) and if we wanted to get really fancy, we might even summarize the genre-ness of any given tune by saying "it's 80% bluegrass, 15% hip-hip, 10% alternative and 5% classical" ..." id="90257">Tune into the Bluegrass stream ... out of the top 10 tunes, be honest now, how much of it would you expect to find at a Bluegrass Festival? I fear DMusic is falling prey to genre spam, to bands who fear they won't be heard in their own overcrowded genre, so they post to something with low traffic just to get the hits. It's not just Bluegrass (although that's one of the worse) but you see the same thing happening in Americana and World Music and I expect in others too. I was in a crabby mood today and left some comments on a few decidedly un-Bluegrass top-10 holders; I hope the artists don't retaliate, but I'm a bit peeved at members pissing in the pool, it spoils the site for everyone (which is exactly what we said wayback now 10 years ago at the very first spam messages. Now, maybe, just maybe, these people really do have some reason to call their house-music electronica rave-feed "Bluegrass" and I'm way off base and old-fashioned, and maybe if I heard their argument I'd take a shot of Jack Daniels and reluctantly agree --- I don't want to paint myself as a dogmatic elitist, my only real concern is that the genre spam, especially when it dominates the listing, obscures the artists that the people cruising such channels were expecting to find, and it discourages the genre fans from using the streams. the same could be said for post-spammers, the (ahem) prolific artists who dump 10-20 items into the input streams in one go, then come back a few days later and do it all over again --- The glut hides their own work as much as those they overshadow. Anyway, what can we do about both these over-enthusiastic groups? post-spammers may be as easy as what I see on InterConnected: Posting is limited to one file in every 24hr period -- that may be too restrictive, but it's nonetheless a thought and I think would clean up a lot of our input queues and ensure some variety to the lists. For the genre spams, I think the solution may need to be more social and more technical. How about a democratic decision? We could, for example, allow the artist to rate their own submissions by whatever genre, and give that choice a score, say 50 points. We might also score the track 10 points in the chosen genre of the artist, so, for example, our old 1995 acoustic-folk tunes would still have an ever so slight leaning to the more americana sound of our more recent material. Now comes the democratic part: In addition to an up/down rating on a tune, maybe in the comments form, allow listeners to change (or accept) the genre rating and weight each of these at 10 points each. This way, if bluegrass fans wanted to maintain some purity in their list, it would only take 5 of them to override a misplaced hip-hop track (providing they all agree it's hip-hop and not electronica) and if we wanted to get really fancy, we might even summarize the genre-ness of any given tune by saying "it's 80% bluegrass, 15% hip-hip, 10% alternative and 5% classical" ...
starseven	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 4:21 PM wow, you;ve actually got a really good point ther.e. i never bothered to check the bluegrass section before... and i am sure very few people do.. no offense to the genere... it;s just not very popular...it would seem pretty dumb for someone to intentionally put their music there.. no one care abotu the charts... and if it;s under bluegrass it would probably prevent peopple from listenting to their music that might normally enjoy it.... so i am guessing it;s either peopel who marked the wrong genre by mistake.. or peopel are really dumb enough to think it will get them more hits.. who knows S7
robbydadrummer	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 4:29 PM I like the idea of other listeners voting a song out of a genre if it really isn't that genre. This happens way too often...
smooka	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 4:38 PM I would like to buy this man a drink, great idea.
starseven	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 4:48 PM Great idea then again.. where woudl that put me?... i am in an Electronic rock band.... would i get voted out of electronic, and thrown in with the all those dirty rock guys?...=)
djfacemachine	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 7:00 PM yeah, i was looking at the bluegrass the other day and all i heard was a bunch of RnB slowjams. i was SO confused!!
TameasDust	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 7:11 PM I wonder where the real bluegrass went to?
robbydadrummer	Date: March 7, 2004 @ 8:40 PM The bluegrassers are probably hiding in the back woods of Kentucky next to their stills where they won't be found by the hip-hoppers... damn, some REAL Kentucky whiskey sounds good about now!
Vickxxx	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 2:40 AM are they that hard up to be heard and are they really satisfied to know that the numbers they tally up is bulls..t?? Are you people that insecure about the material you're posting? this street attitude is aint slick; its rude.........starseven is right on...I really don't care about the charts...If you really do care about charting, promote your stuff in the real world..that's where it matters..I doubt you'd get away with promoting in the bluegrass section at Virgin Records..............grow up
pog	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 3:11 AM A system is only as effective as the operator/s. This site deals with a lot of people, so it's only natural that a few lamers who can't read things properly, or have no respect for the rules, often because their to arrogant for their own lunchboxes, are gonna screw stuff up. I know this sounds a bit bruital, but.... try to be patient with them as they may buy your albums in the future.
mikekennedy	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 3:32 AM ... and Bluegrass music must be changing a bit after 60 years anyway
Vickxxx	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 4:10 AM thanx Pog....I feel better ...............
geetarman	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 10:01 AM I privately contacted some of the Folk artists on this site as to why they were posting in the Country section. A couple of times actually. No comments yet... But that's ok. You've hit it on the head with this post. Although, I still left positive comments about their tunes. I hope it get's them where they need to go! A round of Kentucky Bourbon for y'all!
mrfatboy	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 1:39 PM Eat more fish.
sinai	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 3:39 PM i dig the idea and fish will give you mercury problems
robbydadrummer	Date: March 8, 2004 @ 4:43 PM Thanks for the round, geetarman! I think this all boils down to the fact that there are people who are going to put music wherever they feel like it, right or wrong. It still doesn't do them any good if they aren't willing to seriously promote it. I think the real issue of this thread is the fact that when we are being listeners wanting to check out something new, too many times the wrong music style starts playing. It is discouraging, to say the least.
teledyn	Date: March 9, 2004 @ 7:56 PM For the record, bluegrass is changing; keep in mind that the innovations of Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs goes a lot deeper than the Theme for the Beverly Hillbillies ... I ponder whether the post WWII brought the southerners in contact with the northern pre-bop jazz as they shared barracks in the Service, and returning home, both musics changed, but that's not the point really the point is there are some country artists posting in country and bluegrass artists posting in bluegrass, but when they see the RnB-jam house stuff way ahead of theirs in the list, I think it discourages them from taking dmusic seriously, and thus we enter a self-reinforcing spiral that continues to exclude them. RnB/HipHop likely have more friends who are into online stuff (by virtue of being a pop music among urban youth) and thus get rated high because of traffic perhaps driven directly to the artists page by word of mouth, but when they rate the thumbs, the low-traffic world-music or bluegrass can't compete. So it's a problem for the effective use of these promotion tools within DMusic. As for the fiddler's drams of e-bourbons, much appreciated
ncmando	Date: March 14, 2004 @ 4:38 AM Well, we have a link to dmusic on our website, and I send folks here all the time, being one of the few bluegrass/oldtime/mountain music folks that is computer savvy I have had several folks comment in a negative fashion after visiting here about the other stuff that is cluttering up the bluegrass category. Most likely they wont bother coming back....this is a BAD thing. This is the first site we have put our tunes on where this situation has existed to the extent I see here. We will stick around, and I will keep sending folks here, but it would be nice if folks would show a little honesty when posting thier tunes. Surely ya have enough faith in yer own music to post it in the right genre?

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