Just gestational rambling:
I like "the music" as well, and the delineation of art, community, technology is perfect.
It's hard to predict the utility of the other sub-sections. I'm still somewhat attracted to the idea of an "information" area being seperate from the area where artists would be offering samples of their wares or whatnot...
The idea of a test forum is probably really irrelevant, in light of the policy of not embedding automatic audio in the posts, which I think is a good policy. This points up another consideration though - how to actually bring music to the forum. Artists will have to link to other sites ...or attatch files. (?) Now I am 56 modem (hopefully not much longer) - I have an mp3.com site (128k downloads or lesser quality streaming) - I have some private sites and we all know the memory capacity of free private sites etc... can the size of attatched files be feasibly increased? Can mp3s actually be attatched? (say, only in this 'promotional' section?) I don't know but you see what I'm getting at. Whatever convention is adopted, as far as actually offering methods of getting music to the forum, will determine the character of what we'd be dealing with in a sub section, if we opt for one.
So let's talk about these parameters specifically, if it comes down to just linking to other sites, we do end up with a lot of "hey check it my music @ mp3.com it kicks ass! - [link]" in which case we may as well just allow for it, and let it fall into a general mix. On the other hand, if we can 'afford' artists a sizable space, (I'm thinking even like perhaps one large file which an artist could attatch, allowing for downloads, comments, and whatnot, which the artist could periodically update, or exchange for new files) - then it might warrant a seperate area, and as Gary said, even an 'application process' and possibly even 'user moderation' to some degree, as seems to be suggested by the "mini-forums" idea. (user control of content)
What are the real possibilities/costs/memory constraints here? What can we actually 'offer' as things currently stand? (and please treat me as virtually ignorant here, describe what can happen) If the final possibility is simply talking about and offering ways to find or link to music, that's great, but it probably wouldn't warrant a subsection at all, we could just let things evolve.
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