The Entrance

[TankGirl]

There are so many facets and possibilities related to the idea of Music Forum that we need not only to discuss it thoroughly but also to experiment and play a lot with it to get the best out of these possibilities. This is just a brief first comment on the forum entrance, the 'outside view' to the Music Forum among the other forums. How about this top-level layout:

The Underground (Napsterites)
The Music (find a subtitle here)
Peer to Peer (The 3rd millennium technology!)
Napsterites News (News/Events archives)
Test Forum (Napsterites graphics test forum)

Somehow I like the generality of 'The Music'. That includes many of the aspects that Ramona mentioned: making music, promoting it, finding it etc. Behind the same main door one would find both the music and the musicians, which sounds healthy to me. The characteristic energy of the Music Forum could be art whereas The Underground resonates dominantly around the vibe of community and P2P around the vibe of technology.

Any comments?

- tg

[gazdet]

Originally posted by TankGirl
There are so many facets and possibilities related to the idea of Music Forum that we need not only to discuss it thoroughly but also to experiment and play a lot with it to get the best out of these possibilities. This is just a brief first comment on the forum entrance, the 'outside view' to the Music Forum among the other forums. How about this top-level layout:

The Underground (Napsterites)
The Music (find a subtitle here)
Peer to Peer (The 3rd millennium technology!)
Napsterites News (News/Events archives)
Test Forum (Napsterites graphics test forum)

I see what you are saying and it's a good alternative... If we make "The Music" as a subforum similar to Peer to Peer it becomes ajoined as a subdirectory under the Napsterites theme... just like Peer to Peer is an offspring from the Underground but which is intended for more focused discussion.

The current layout you see for "The Music" type forum areas is a completely new "structure" and separate identity from the Underground...

It has it's own entrance similar to the Underground and is in essence, a totally new separate forum area that can be developed technicaly in it's own rite, in that it can have it's own forum subdirectories and areas as we choose.

It's a technical thing really.....the way it's set up now allows us to do more with the Music Forum.

However....if you wish to incoperate The Music forum and consequently only have limited subforums, into the general Napsterites Underground area... we can do that too.

Be aware of future expansion limitations should the concept evolve.

Somehow I like the generality of 'The Music'. That includes many of the aspects that Ramona mentioned: making music, promoting it, finding it etc. Behind the same main door one would find both the music and the musicians, which sounds healthy to me. The characteristic energy of the Music Forum could be art whereas The Underground resonates dominantly around the vibe of community and P2P around the vibe of technology.

- tg

I like the Name too....as I said in my post quoting Ramona , the structures currently set up for The Music Forum are as a guide only...we can limit the areas within The Music forum to just general discussion as you have suggested, if you feel it should be a part of Napsterites as a combined unit.

My intent was to allow for potential future possibilities and thus apply the different options and subcategories open to us in regards to the forum layout and functions available for The Music area....that's why I set up a totally new category...

Again..if you feel it isn't warranted... we can contain it...

[Ramona_A_Stone]

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.

[TankGirl]

More rambling...

In my view the best place to have the artist's audio material available would be the p2p networks themselves. A homepage or a featured forum space serves well as an information and promotion place but the p2p mesh is where we want the songs to end up anyway. We want them spread wide and far and also stay actively present on people's HD's and shared libraries. The earlier we get them over to the p2p zone the better - that will put much less strain on the precious centralized server capacity.

If an artist has a 24/7 broadband at his/her disposal, it would be easiest for him/her just to tell people on which network and by which filenames they can find his/her stuff to get it injected into the p2p mesh. In present circumstances this should work at least in Morpheus-like networks with full visibility over the peer space (WPNP is not that reliable). Not to make the thresold of using external p2p software too high, this method could be complemented with one or more sample songs available directly from the forum.

There is room for a lot of technical sophistication in here. One possibility would be to utilize specific tags to create 'hot links' on the forum that could directly activate searches on p2p clients. Not an option on today's p2p clients but nothing too far-fetched technically, could be achieved either with browser plugins or even easier with an in-built browser in a p2p client. Authentic hash (identification) codes for artist's original rips could also be given as part of tagged information, providing a mechanism for the artist to publicly identify his own work.

But what about artists with a dialup or a machine not robust enough to run Morpheus? Reflecting on this I came up with the idea of mesenates. Think of them as dedicated fans with a 24/7 (or often active) broadband connection. E.g. somebody digging Ramona's music could post on Ramona's own forum area that he/she shares this-and-this album on Morpheus or on a private FTP server and give instructions how to get it. People are doing something like this already now but not really in co-operation with the artists. With a forum acting as a public meeting place between the artist and his/her mesenates the whole thing would become much more rewarding and interesting for both parties.

- tg

[gazdet]

My thoughts so far

Tg......
The Underground (Napsterites)
The Music (find a subtitle here)
Peer to Peer (The 3rd millennium technology!)
Napsterites News (News/Events archives)
Test Forum (Napsterites graphics test forum)

Ok this option is fast to establish....non intrusive and requires no real consideration of specific forum levels and areas but would not technically support sub areas in bulk...we can only go 2 levels down as in the "Trash can" that Tg can see now (there is another private forum area shawn, it is for Mods only and has a subcategory called the Trashcan where "deleted" posts are stored...it is invisible to members).

This proposal will give us the same format as the P2P, News and Test forums are now and would be used simply for the general discussion and sharing of music/techniques/charts etc etc , the whole mix all in one bag with no real means for us to add specific subforums later without making the whole page look weird with a bunch of categories on it..

Ramona.......
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.

I agree...I would be reluctant to allow embeded sounds.

Ramona.......
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.

Yes we can attach/upload and/or store mp3's....at a price.

Ramona......
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.

If we were to make napsterites.net the storage/host area as a complete package I would envisage we would need to go to the top level of the hosting package in order to have no storage restrictions.

Currently we are running the base business option of 50 megs storage capacity....we are currently using using around 33% max of the current 50meg allowance running this and the backup forum and I dont expect it to increase anymore now that we are set up.

Napsterites is hosted on a business type server...this was deliberate policy so as to resolve the issue of being kicked off for non compliance with the usual force fed advertising that we experienced at our other freebie hosts and also because the service and support is the best and fastest I could find... (everyone has "glitsches" tho) but all in all I think this host is fast, helpfull and totally supportive of our needs.

The costings for an unlimited host arrangement that would allow us to do pretty much anything we wish as far as uploads and a lot more are as follows.

Disk Storage 1000+ meg
Hits / Traffic Allowance Unlimited*
Pop Accounts 100+
FTP Accounts 100+
Telnet Accounts 100+
True Domain www.napsterites.net YES
Web Based Site Control Panel YES
Unlimited Email Forwarding YES
Unlimited Email Aliases YES
Unlimited FTP Updates YES
15 Pre-Installed Scripts YES
Personal CGI-Bin YES
Autoresponders YES
Full Site Statistics YES
FREE Access to Secure Server YES
Server Side Includes YES
Subscribable Mailing Lists/Majordomo YES
FrontPage 2000 Extentions YES
Setup Charge FREE
Monthly Fee $29.95

There are also two other prior levels at 250meg ($14.95) and 500meg ($19.95) respectively with similar features provided as above.

Uploads would have to be done via a secure FTP transfer provided to the Specific forum owners or through myself etc, hence the probability of a shared "donation fee" to access the service. the more users...the cheaper it would be etc.

Tg........
In my view the best place to have the artist's audio material available would be the p2p networks themselves. A homepage or a featured forum space serves well as an information and promotion place but the p2p mesh is where we want the songs to end up anyway. We want them spread wide and far and also stay actively present on people's HD's and shared libraries. The earlier we get them over to the p2p zone the better - that will put much less strain on the precious centralized server capacity.

If an artist has a 24/7 broadband at his/her disposal, it would be easiest for him/her just to tell people on which network and by which filenames they can find his/her stuff to get it injected into the p2p mesh. In present circumstances this should work at least in Morpheus-like networks with full visibility over the peer space (WPNP is not that reliable). Not to make the thresold of using external p2p software too high, this method could be complemented with one or more sample songs available directly from the forum.

But what about artists with a dialup or a machine not robust enough to run Morpheus? Reflecting on this I came up with the idea of mesenates. Think of them as dedicated fans with a 24/7 (or often active) broadband connection. E.g. somebody digging Ramona's music could post on Ramona's own forum area that he/she shares this-and-this album on Morpheus or on a private FTP server and give instructions how to get it. People are doing something like this already now but not really in co-operation with the artists. With a forum acting as a public meeting place between the artist and his/her mesenates the whole thing would become much more rewarding and interesting for both parties.

I agree, the P2P technology you would need to develop would negate the ultimate need for us to establish a file sharing platform within the forum....and make things considerably simpler I would imagine.

What you are saying here fits in well with us just have a sub forum as you have described that is basically a General Music area that we can use for the combined sharing of all forms of music and P2P issues.

It will also encourage member to share their own "Music Lockers" (as they do now) and be a general area for the advertising of those lockers.

On reflection, I would be prepared to allow the use of external commercial sites such as mp3.com within the Music forum area for the sake of members having their music shared.



I will add more as I think more about

[gazdet]

I have also added some other forum and or locker possibilities to give you some idea of the flexibility that having this separate forum format (as you see it on the front page of the main forum now) can do.

As opposed to having "The Music" linked in the Napsterites area under Peer to Peer for example.

This method basically keeps the front page clean...with hidden subdirectories within its own structure..

*more ramblings