10-27-08: The debate seems to be slowing down, so I'm going to make a new news post on top of this one in the near future sometime. I've taken a few steps back on the Instrumental #4 remix, I plan to make it TONS better. ;D The project file messed itself up somehow, but in the process of fixing it I got a few good ideas.
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10-14-08: You'll notice that with the new personalizing feature, I moved my favorite tracks to the top of my page. I plan to showcase my current favorites, hopefully I can set up a system that people will come by to see month by month. :P
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Yeah guys, me too. :(
I'll still be just as present as I was before, and I'll even post links to finished tracks uploaded to other websites. I'm simply no longer submitting to the Audio Portal.
The reason why I'm leaving is simply that the exposure offered here (be it through Weekly Best, All-Time Best, the Front Page, or the MACs) is completely worthless to me now. I'm not interested in the support of an audience that votes tracks like this into the Weekly Best over far better works - why is it that this was submitted in the same week, yet received nothing while the other track takes 5th? Why is it that Guitar vs. Piano 1.2 - using FL samples, FL Keys, and Slayer, as raw as you could possibly use them - has become a regular in the All-Time Top 30, and nearly has 300,000 listens, instead of the hundreds, or possibly thousands, of better tracks on this site?
What really pushed it over was the September MAC. We have judges, hand-selecting tracks to win a fair amount of money, but this track is worth $150 and a Newgrounds shirt? How did it get first place? How did this get third place while tracks like this or this (which while not flawless, were produced far, far better and more originally) fail to place at all? I seriously doubt the idea of "Madness" could skew results this much. I'm curious to know how the judging worked for this MAC, and who judged... :I
Of course, now and then good tracks do make it, but the fact that these generic or downright horrible tracks get anywhere at all makes the exposure here, as I said before, worthless to me. So why bother competing with them at all? And in any case, I can't support a system, nor an audience, that favors generic music over groundbreaking tracks.
If Newgrounds changes its system to one that will almost always bring out the true best of the week, and the truly deserving contest winners, then I'll consider putting more things up here - but I consider the former of the two impossible and the latter quite difficult to pull off.
I've got no idea where I'm going to put my music, but there's no chance I'm going to be finishing anything anytime soon anyway. Hopefully I'll know by the time I do.
(Last thing: Collabs, the preview set, and the Instrumental #4 and Air Release remixes, if I finish them, will probably be submitted, but that will be it.)
Psychophan7
:(
While I'm pretty much oblivious to the workings of the BBS, you do make a good point. Guitar vs Piano is absolutely terrible. But I do agree that it's strange, obscene even, that people like generic crap than something more emotionally driven.
Karco
Right - though good songs do make it now and then, at times more often than the bad tracks. But if people will praise both the same way, then their words are meaningless to me. :I