IDMf State of the Union
If you are still in the dark about what happened, basically the server HDDs died and along with the back-ups. But we are back in action with modern forum software!
One item that has been brought up a lot recently is netlabel activity/how much we are releasing. RFJ did some math with the release dates (posted publicly somewhere on the forum) and it turns out that the current team (Auto, Roo, RFJ and myself) have released more music per month/year than the netlabel has in quite a while. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially RFJ’s math was: if you compare the release dates of the newest 6 releases verses the 6 before those, our release rate has been quite high comparatively speaking.
We’ve really concentrated on making the netlabel more accessible by accepting shorter EP length releases and I think we’ve had a lot of success with those types of releases. We will continue to provide occasional VA Compilation release opportunities. If the team is being honest though, those are way harder to put together and make a successful release out of.
Additionally, we need you all to send us material. End of story. We really don’t get that many submissions and, ideally, they should come from the community. Personally, I don’t have much interest in releasing music from internet randos. In as few words as possible: sack up and send us an EP. This is supposedly a community of musicians.
I’d really love to see some collaboration EPs and LPs from community members. I understand that even coming up with a short EP’s worth of material seems daunting (it does to me, anyway). The new admin team is really open to doing stuff we haven’t done before, so don’t be afraid to ask.
The four of us agree that there needs to be quality control. That being said, our ratio of received material to released material is pretty high at the moment. And for us that only means that it turns out you all are sending us great stuff when you are sending it.
As far as the community and the forum goes, tweaking the software is just going to be slow. Sorry ya’ll. None of the four of us are web people and we have very limited free time.
As far as the forum and community goes, we have a new opportunity to make it anything we want it to be. We are in a weird transition period right now. All the old content that made us an internet resource is gone and Off-Topic is probably the most active part of the forum.
The "Feedback and Help From the Community Thread" has been great as a place to collect all the little things that, over time, we would like to change about the forum software. There were some larger ideas brought up there as well. Ideas about podcasts, newsletters, wikis, some kind of Listening Booth monthly top 10 (something like Roo’s “Roo Recommends”).
I’m going to be 100% honest for a moment and say there was a day when I was catching up on the “Feedback…” thread and was simultaneously giddy at all the big ideas and also saying “screw you guys, jesus christ, do you know how much effort any one of those ideas would take on the part of the admin team?”
Let us say without any doubts, the admin team fully supports the community in its efforts to take on a big project like bringing back the interview series, doing some kind of podcast, a Listening Booth top ten chart, whatever. But you all are going to have to take up the reigns and make it happen and if there is something mechanical you need we can help with that.
Community Projects is my favorite part of the forum and the admin team would like to see it be more active, more front and center. Look at what the beat battle crew has done. They are nearing Beat Battle 100 and they’ve needed very little from the admin team to maintain their success. Likewise, the Album Writing Month project has kept on kicking.
My personal ideal for the forum would be that IDMf be a place where electronic musicians who actually make music come to participate in making music.
We can also just be a weird forum that is supposedly about music but is mostly off-topic shit posting.
But the fact of the matter is the community has far more cognitive surplus than the four-person admin team. As far as resources go we only have the community’s free time and creativity and what we can accomplish with those resources we have is all up to you, we are only in control of our own free time and creativity.
Sincerely,
Auto, Roo, RFJ and Relic