My opinion: the bb battle host decides the deadline. So it is hosts fault of delaying the end date. yup. Personally i never made it on date, but also never said “can you move the deadline” but said that when i post my track it will not be accounted into voting because i know i am late. And then the deadline moved. I feel a bit faulty myselfs for this to happen allthrough.
Delaying the date is ok when there is only one submission for example, but it would also be ok if the only submission won. Of course what is the point of winning when there is no competition? There is almost none, except that the only person who managed it was the only person that managed it.
The idea of getting more people involved- great. I will post the new beat battle around various idm / electronic music groups on facebook, lots of them and maybe i can get 3 or 4(0) people in lol. Reddit? Good, just maybe it could be synced to this idmf page so the content stays here… And that people visit the page.
Can we set a deadline for this battle? Monday maybe, because 7asid and makeuswhole are doing something…and me
Or, we can just go on to voting until monday and other people share their submissions here not for voting?
I mean i really do not want to be unfair to Tsachi, deadlines should be same for all
Who did that lol? This is a scenario that could happen if the Bb continue in a lax pace as it currently is.
Some people just do not have the time they wish to have because of jobs and stuff
Lol I was not expecting so much discussion about this
Honestly people don’t follow the deadline because they don’t care about winning anymore, which is fine and has been discussed at length before in the beat battle discussion thread:
No benefit to winning unless you’re trying to prove yourself …to yourself (definitely how I used the BB’s). You get the satisfaction of winning, then the small chore of making the next battle which starts to become annoying if you start winning more often.
The hippy motivation of getting to make a track and share it with others in a big music circle kinda thing loses its appeal when/if you’re actually working on other projects you care more about i.e. an ep, lp, remix work, blah blah
And yeah some people just can’t find the time to do it really, no shame in having priorities.
Hm maybe to incentivize participation, the winner gets their track pinned as an announcement at the top of the forum, underneath any official releases of course.
The deadlines are meant for all BB’s to follow, the host doesn’t choose the end date, it’s set to one standard, which makes the BB’s a more regular and periodic thing, same as IDMf used to have the Quarterly Album Writing Month, which takes every quarter i.e. every three months. Regularity and consistency is key, as to what I was saying about people not following the dates, and keeping a regular flow and rhythm of production. You don’t get better making tracks whenever you feel like it, you get better by committing to a schedule.
The BB’s stick to a set schedule, and I feel two weeks is plenty of time, and it’s not intended to be a loose, variable windowed thing, also because that way the host could extend the battle indefinitely, and at the very least will step on the next host’s window of time for the next BB.
This is exactly the problem we’re talking about. The BB’s should run according to a set schedule, the idea behind postponing deadlines in specific battles has been to get more people, but doing so breaks the schedule which for one, is disappointing to people who met the deadline (now they have to wait after after meeting the deadline while a bunch of tardy entries may or may not get submitted), and two, it breaks the regularity of the beat battles which causes potential confusion to people looking to get into the battles because the deadlines keep changing.
The problem we’re having with keeping deadlines recently, is we’re not getting many entries (if any at all), so little that as you said, it’s not much of a contest. It’s two people against one another, or sometimes just one person. In any case, it’s not much fun when there’s not many people participating.
The problem with keeping it here is IDMf is largely gone. There is no real content here, there’s no useful guides really, the site gets hardly any traffic. Last I checked, the IDMf netlabel page had been locked out of and was overrun with spam. There’s no reason for anyone to come here. This is your neighbor’s hobby site they made for you and his other friend. That’s all this place is.
I think bring this somewhere else where it could actually get traffic and views on a site that hasn’t looked exactly the same since 2006 might be advantageous. There’s nothing happening here.
This is exactly the problem. I understand it’s your OPINION that these are decided by the host, but your OPINION and how things ARE are two different things.
The deadline has passed. It’s history. This is where we are. We have people who SAY they’re going to submit, and maybe you or the others will, or maybe you won’t. That’s not the point tho, getting upset because we’re past due date and wanting to know when to submit the track, frankly, the tracks should’ve been in already. This is where we are right now. I’m considering the battles to be on hold while we are discussing how we want to move forward. We can call a new due date for this battle, but the next battle will be the same thing… People won’t submit tracks, deadline will extended, no one will submit anything new, and we’ll be in the same place.
We need to figure out what we’re doing NOW. Cuz the way these are going, they’re not getting any more participation, and they’re not getting any bigger.
It’s not a specific event, just a general thing that happens over and over. I don’t when you started on the BB’s, but I’ve been following them on and off since BB45. I’ve participated in many battles, at least 20-30, so I know how they work.
And that’s the excuse everyone has. So while you can’t take a position on whether or not you want extensions, you’re still arguing that you want more time, and we just can’t do it that way.
@Tsachi, it’s a mix of “winning” being a dubious award, combined with IDMf just not having traffic. It doesn’t matter what the rules are, whether there’s a prize, we need a better platform. There’s nothing bringing people to IDMf.
Like, look at the home page. There’s no indication as to what this place is, whether it’s a music site, a production site, a gardening site. It looks like one of those random redirect sites you find when you type in a website’s name slightly off, like, apples.com. You can KINDA tell it’s SOMETHING to do with music, but as far who is IDMf? What do they do? Why am I here? There’s a NetLabel, that’s neat, if I happen to know the IDMf Netlabel and want to hear the music, and honestly the Netlabel has no advertising that I know of beyond the Facebook group, which gets a handful of likes on each post.
There’s no reason anyone would want to come to this site, perhaps that’s also to do with how forum type sites have also lost popularity to Facebook and Twitter or what have you. Like, there’s no real common denominator for why someone would come here, unless they knew of IDMf in the past, or they’re just morbidly anxious to log on to some sketchy forum that looks like a haven for spam and ads for sexy singles in your area.
I agree. and at the same time, I feel like this place is a sort of haven for me, it feel’s like a community for the alternative and underground of electronic music. It’s full of people who (generally) like the same sorts of things as I do, and that’s pretty rare where I live as far as I can tell.
I remember how excited I was years ago when I first signed up and was asked “Who is Richard D. James?” as a sort of right of passage (I assume). I knew the answer, and thought to myself “Yes! Thats so cool! This is for people like me, this is a community for people who love the same sort of shit, a place for artists!”
Soundcloud is full of bots shitposting, and dudes that comment “HUUUUGGGEEEEE” on every fucking thing imaginable, youtube is for “Beat makers” looking for tutorials on how to make a “Sick Bass Bruh” and reddit… well… it’s ok, it’s just that it’s reddit.
I believe in what this place is, and I want to support it, however I fully acknowledge that this place doesn’t have a means of promoting and supporting itself.
Agreed, the site is not geared towards people who may stumble upon it not knowing what it is. Marketing is not really the kind of luxury a small community like this can afford, we just don’t bring in enough money to be able to afford to give ourselves that kind of exposure. We could of course, set up a system for users to donate to the site and label to help us to afford those kinds of things, but I don’t think that is sustainable, and certainly
is not something we could expect a significant number of our users to participate in.
I will say that I think that this site could be and deserves to be more, we could implement better design, have better promotion and add other features that would significantly improve a users (especially new users) experience of the site.
I’ve been reading all of the posts as of the last few days on this thread, and It seems to me that there is a lot of frustration with the lack of participation. I would agree that it’s a bummer, and I would like to seriously discuss way’s we might be able to improve everyones experience, not just with beat battles, but with the site in general. Would anyone like to participate in a conversation in a new thread on site feedback about these kinds of issues? I would love to start / and or participate in a discussion on this with anyone willing to do so. I think if we want things to change that is the best way to start. This has always struck me as a community and although we have a group of admins and a netlabel team behind the scenes making this all work, it’s the rest of us who really make this place what it is, with the support of the admins and netlabel team.
So… let’s have a talk about these issues. I have to run, but when I get back on, if one of you hasn’t started the thread I will go ahead and start it.
It’s not a community tho, there’s hardly anyone who uses the site! There’s like 50 people who pop in here and there.
If you look at “The Studio” section, most of the sections haven’t touched in days, and before the last interactions, hadn’t been touched in weeks or months in some cases. There’s no real discussions happening.
The Off Topic Thread in the Side Room, is usually one of the busier threads, it currently hasn’t had a reply in two days. It’s only getting a few replies every few days.
Community projects, besides the beat battles, has had nothing new since June 15. It’s August 7th!!
Nothing has been discussed on the Netlabel area in a week, and there’s no barrier for anyone who wants to submit something on the Netlabel, there’s no requirements, anyone who submits a track gets included, and I mean, I don’t mean any ill will towards the Netlabel, if people want to put something out on the IDMf netlabel, go for it, it just doesn’t take much effort.
I don’t know what “community” you mean, because hardly anyone is here using the site! There’s plenty of online communities that are WAYYYY more active than here, and actually draw some real peeps. You’re not in a community, you’re on some near-dead site where a very specific small handful of people continue logging on. That’s fine and all, but I don’t associate that with IDMf, I associate that with the people being musicians or producers, and there’s MANY ways to get in touch with them beyond IDMf. A lot of us have Facebooks, Soundclouds, Mixclouds, there’s plenty of places to communicate. This site tho is just slowly but surely vanishing from the world. One day, you’re gonna type in www.idmforums.com, and it’s gonna say, “site not found”. It happened once, it’s happened a few times. One day, it will be for good.
I have no interest in putting any energy into keeping IDMf afloat. I like doing the Beat Battles because I like the concept and challenge, and messing with samples. But IDMf is on a slow glide towards death. I like the few musicians and producers I’ve met here, but there’s avenues outside of IDMf, and there’s also plenty of other people in the world into weird music. I can still keep tabs on them through other avenues.
The site is dead tho, and I honestly just don’t support IDMf. IDMf is primarily the label, the forum is really just an add on, and both of falling quickly. If we want to have any remote chance of having something like the BB’s become more than a page an on an abandoned site, it needs to move. That’s all there is to it.
So it is practically my fault for not being strict as fuck about keeping bb to date even if the host does not declare voting start, a winner and tells him to prepare a sample pack, so as everybody else that they did not tell the people not giving a fuck to fuck off or to declare a winner instead of the host or telling the host to declare voting start, winner etc.
I agree. But in cases when date was delayed it was asked if “everyone agree” and there was no disagreement, in the end the person on date won anyway.
Ok thank you i see ill just fuck off.
Ok. May i declare @Tsachi the winner?
. New beat battle can be up in a few days right? The voting is over. ( IO_Madness is not counted into voting because of being a host)
The BB rules do not specify who should do the announcment, and this is a mistake!
Not the host and not other people are responsible for delaying dates. Please, can we repair that so it is only hosts job to announce?!
We are doing nothing. Traffic will not just flow itself in from nowhere.
metapop is a great community! I have 142 plays on a song I posted a day ago, while here, I have 2 people who have bothered to check it out!
https://audiu.net/home is yet another thriving community of supportive artist, you occasionally run across some pricks, but not as many entitled arsholes as on idmf.
if you’re into modular stuff muffwiggler is a very active community
watmm.com they have it setup to be a paid support system, but very active group of people…
https://hearthis.at/ has come along ways, with groups, and so pn… always been less of a clique type place…
I think @IO_Madness has the right idea in general. Listen to him lol.
A lot to digest here, but I will say this:
The 2 week intervals that the original bb’s occurred at existed for a reason. It kept things moving along nicely.
There needs to be a bit of urgency in order for it to really work IMO. Everyone works harder and has to actually make decisions instead of procrastinating. The only problem with the deadlines is when the forum activity isn’t high enough to support it, which seems to be the case now.
And I do want to respond to @Tsachi on one thing. I don’t think that everyone’s motivation was just to win. It does make it more exciting to know you might win, and that can be motivating for sure. But for me, it’s a way to stay sharp and I also get to enjoy seeing such vastly different outcomes form roughly the same starting point.
It also helps me form habits which avoid some of the biggest pitfalls a producer can fall into. Such as, falling in love with your little ideas and not fleshing them out, or forgetting how many different directions you can take and just doing things the same way over and over. Seeing people be creative is just something that keeps me going.
I gave this (and you’re whole post) some good thought last night, I didn’t want to reply without thinking about it. I think I still have a somewhat romanticized idea about what this place is, and I guess it’s just a bummer that it doesn’t seem to be the way I remember it, but I think I agree with what you said, and about the current state of this site.
I think what @IO_Madness is trying to say is that there are already lots of places where BB’s are likely to get more entries and participation in general, and that if we want to do those kinds of things in the way they were originally intended to work we should be taking advantage of these other resources. (If this misses the ball, please correct me)
@TvMcC. Thanks for that list! I didn’t know about a lot of these places, I’m going to check them out for sure.
You’re correct, but there has yet to be any proposition as to how to fix the traffic issue. Really, if were being honest, having more traffic to this site would require an almost complete redesign and a good amount of funding. It’s really not realistic. I like this site, and i will continue to be active here, but we should be honest about its flaws.
If you have some ideas about how to makes this happen, I’m all ears, but I will be honest, I don’t really have high hopes.
I’m not sure what this was all about, but if you’re trying to sarcastically strengthen the argument that the state of beat battles is due to the host(s) not doing there jobs, that’s wrong, and I for one never found that to be true. The whole job of the host(s) is to facilitate the BB and provide users with the materials needed. What are they supposed to do if no one participates? It’s not any one persons fault, its a combined failing, but we can see that the hosts DID do their job. They created the post and sample packs, set the theme, clarified the “intended” deadlines, start date, informed us of when voting was to begin (very specifically) and (In my case), were helpful when there were issues with things like sample packs etc. I don’t think there is much else we can reasonably ask, the rest is up to us participants, and we’re the ones that have failed, not the host.
On a (somewhat) side note…
I love this callout! These are great examples of creative stagnation, and something I have found myself guilty of many times. This is something we should keep in mind if we desire growth.
I never said it was your fault. I said the BB’s run according to a set schedule that is the same everytime (in theory), and is posted in the BB description. Anyone can read it, it’s right there. And when the date passes, you can vote. That’s how the BB’s have always worked. Right now tho, we only have a handful of people participating, so when there’s only two people, oddly it seems trite to announce to the one participant that it is now time for them to vote… for the only other participant.
But those times haven’t really brought in THAT many extra submissions.
BB107 was delayed three weeks, and garnered one extra submission, for a total of two
BB106 was delayed a month and garnered one extra submission, for a total of three
BB105 was delayed two weeks which garnered two extra submissions, for a total of five.
In times where the deadline was extended due to low participation, participation wasn’t significantly increased. It doesn’t make sense to extend deadlines when it delays new BB’s from starting, and is only bringing in one or two people. It’s better just to start a new one, have the people that already participated make new tracks, and the people who missed the last one can just participate in the new one.
I appreciate your input, but you’re focused only on this one battle, and you’re missing the overlying problem, that not just this BB, but overall the BB’s have low turnout, which is detrimental to the long term. You’re not seeing the long term problem, and you attacking us the hosts and thinking we have to do what you want isn’t helpful.
Take a chill pill, or better yet, start making a sample pack so we’ll have the next BB ready. THAT would be something that WOULD be helpful.
It’s the understanding that the host does the announcements, however, the dates are always listed in the beat battle description for everyone to see. The knowledge is there, so doesn’t strictly speaking need to be anyone there to announce anything. I imagine it’s mostly because we’ve been slow recently that people aren’t keeping at it as much we should.
We should keep the Beat Battles going, and we will post another battle, but we’re at a point where we should think long term. Moving the Beat Battles to a new platform could bring new life and blood into the BB’s. Mind you, the BB’s have always been independent of IDMf. No one from the IDMf netlabel has anything to do with the BB’s. It’s just a handful of users that think it’s cool enough to keep coming back. I keep the sample packs backed up to an archive, and people keep coming together to put together sample packs. It’s a cool thing, but if it stays here, it’s not gonna get any bigger.
Which is EXACTLY THE REASON why we are having this discussion. Just continuing on this slow trudge on a site that is basically defunct will not change one god damn thing. We can start another battle, but then what? This BB was the 112th BB, there have been 111 before this one. I think we have tried the route where we “keep on trucking”, we’ve literally had 112 beat battles where we did that, and gee, we only have a few participants! Huh, I wonder why that is? Maybe just starting a new battle ISN’T the solution!! OMG!!! What a concept! Could it be because sometimes due dates get pushed back to the point that no one takes the BB’s seriously? Or is it the fact that the site is defunct anyhow and no new people are rushing in to become members of IDMforums.com.
All of the ones @TvMcC mentioned, as well as Facebook groups (synth groups, local DIY music groups, abnormal music groups), Discord chats, Reddit, shoot, even your local scene maybe? You know how much stuff is going on in Denver, Portland, Chicago, Houston? Lots of places beyond some small barely exisitng site on some random guy’s server in his basement that’s been all but forgotten by most of the people that even were using it when it was “kind of” a thing 10 years ago.
I think the BB’s are a cool idea, and I would like to see this become an actual thing with lots of talented musicians and cool samples put together and getting 30-50 people participating every battle. Not that we don’t have talented members here, we do, absolutely we do, but there’s so talent out there beyond IDMf, limiting us to this site is guaranteeing that they are forgotten.
We can keep it here for the time being, but I think moving to a new platform would be very advantageous.
@IO_Madness The last quote in you post is weird…I think we broke the site, haha!! it has my username in it, but I didn’t participate in that part of the conversation… If you expand it it has one of my posts instead of what is displayed in the quote box. Am I missing something or is that not how that should worK? lol
And I’m not even coming after IDMf, I mean, if people like coming on here, and feel they get something from the site, I’m not telling you to not come here. Do what you do. I’ve known and currently know lots of like minded individuals that are also talented producers/musicians from this site.
It’s clear though that this site is slowly but surely becoming a ghost site (if not already), so I think moving the BB’s to a new platform would help them grow into something bigger.
Unfortunately, I wont have time tomorrow to continue exploring this track and it’s idea. I feel like there was a lot more to explore, but that’s ok. It’s messy, and I would certainly never choose to put a track of this quality on any or my releases, but I feel like that’s the point, It’s not supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to push you
That being said, This was my first BB and I really enjoyed myself! I feel like I was challenged, learned a lot, and am actually a bit humbled by the experience. This really was a fun and interesting exercise, and I want to continue to try and work within limitations that I did not set.
So anyway, as promised. I hope this track is at least somewhat interesting to listen to. Cheers everyone!
If you expand it it has one of my posts instead of what is displayed in the quote box. Am I missing something or is that not how that should worK? lol