promoting albums by SPAM

Hello,

today I got a recommendation for an album - from the artist himself who I do not know at all. He did not even care to change the standard text or use a language I understand (well). I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who got this - this is SPAM and nothing else! It is wasting people's time and it is unfair against other artists.

What do you think would be the reaction to this? I was thinking about giving the promoted album a zero star rating, together with a comment explaining why I rated it like that. While this may seem like an abuse of the rating system, I will certainly help to scare off other spammers. Plus, getting listeners by SPAM can be seen as an abuse of the rating system as well.

rumpel

Jamendo = community & promotion.

is a mail so offensive? Just ignore it (you must get a few from mr viagra too and they are really spam). This is just a musician using a music site to promote their art.

it is surely more offensive to badly rate their album that they may have worked very hard on.

phonicboom wrote: is a mail so offensive?

Yes.

phonicboom wrote: This is just a musician abusing a music site to promote their art.

There, corrected that for you.

Rumpel's idea of rating the music of spammers to zero is excellent.

The reason why spam succeeds and grows is because it costs the spammers nothing. When it costs them ratings, this will apply negative feedback.

it will work, probably, but jamendo is a music sharing place, we consent to freindship.

maybe not accepting the freindship or removing a badly chosen one would be less extreme and less damaging to artists who may not know your reaction.

i feel it is an extreme attitude where a middle ground exists.

Music popularization entails social interaction, requiring not only performance but also appreciation by an audience. This is true even with recordings.

A musician may be a supreme craftsman and make wonderful music, but if she wants her music to be known and respected for its excellence by others, then she needs to respect those others in turn, her prospective audience.

Spamming shows a fundamental lack of respect towards your prospective fans.

As a concrete example of this happening in the commercial music industry too, the RIAA sues the fans of the artists their represent, with disastrous results for all, including widespread alienation of fans.

Morgaine wrote: Spamming shows a fundamental lack of respect towards your prospective fans.

spam is unsolicited mail, you befriend someone, accept their request for friendship, then you are to deal with their email too, it is not spam, if it offends, tell them, or remove them from your friends.

badly reviewing the album is a dark tactic and is also confusing to the artist who may not know, or ever know why it happened.

One unsolicited mail is not a problem, but when one person succeeds in their spam then everyones does it and it becomes an epidemic, and then it *is* a problem.

If artists are "confused" by getting ratings of zero after spamming, then they don't have enough understanding of how society works to create a fan base.

many users are young/foreign: while i get the point, i feel the solution was harsh where more middle ground solutions were available :)

Fair enough. :-) I don't believe in always being immediately harsh either, so perhaps a return mail of "Don't spam" first might be in order. Spamming music links hasn't yet reached epidemic stage after all.

But I know people. The "friendly approach" won't work, and it can even encourage spammers by showing that people have seen their link.

phonicboom wrote: many users are young/foreign

The young only learn by negative reinforcement, there is no other way. And being foreign is no excuse for anything. We are all foreign somewhere.

Hi,

to put it clear - the member I received the recommendation from is not one of my friends - neither on jamendo nor in real life. You can send recommendations to anyone on jamendo, not just to your friends.

I share Morgaine's opinion - on normally favoring less harsh reactions as well as on being pessimistic about this working in this context.

The album in discussion has so far gotten four ratings - all positive - in the last two days while getting about one rating per month before. I take this as a proof that spamming pays on jamendo - at least at the moment.

I think a note on the "share/recommend" page saying that you are only to send recommendations to people you know and that anything else is discouraged and regarded as spam would not cost anything and probably make some potential spammer think twice before sending spam, thus avoiding spam, which is what we all want.

rumpel

Now Morgaine, falsely reviewing albums is just as wrong as the problem your trying to correct. Think about it you know I am right.

Your pretty smart and articulate come up with a better solution. That ones almost on the verge of evil. Ok well, at least abuse of the review system. lol

You are commanding quite a large audience here now.

With that comes responsibilities you know.... just saying.

Geo

BTW when you publish an album on Jamendo now you get an email that says it was published.
In the email there is also a link saying invite your friends and fans to discover this and share it with the jamendo community. (paraphrasing, as I dont have it in front of me)
just so you know... and yes the share button does allow you to enter any users name into it, friend or not.

Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with doing that in general.

And rumpel, did you like the album or not? If so then he did you a favor, if not then rate it what its worth.
The comment can contain any message you like to make your point.

I dont push the reccomend button personally but mostly cause, well reviews....meh, careful what you wish for...lol.

Togeo_Music wrote: And rumpel, did you like the album or not? If so then he did you a favor, if not then rate it what its worth.

I didn't even listen to it - there is enough other stuff on Jamendo I could spend my time listening to. And in no cause would the spammer have done me a favour - at least none I couldn't have done me myself by clicking an any random album on Jamendo.

there is a report as spam option on the mails now, just go easy as I like artists writing to me, i have no problem with mail. If artists get scared of promotion then it's an issue, especially on a music sharing site. many artists are "artists" not marketing people so the whole fact they send a mail is nice.

I agree

Hello Rumpel, enjoy the music from Jamendo, and was happy.
Thanks to Google translator

I have thought a little on the subject, so here's my grain of sand (hope it helps someone):

It seems to me that most "underground" (i mean: not mainstream) artists WANT the publicity, WANT to be mainstream, so, they make that kind of moves (sendings tons of messages, automating things: SPAM).
Nowadays, mail and such things are useful, and therefore, important things, so... we are bothered if our Inbox has a lot of "noise" (spam)

An important point in jamendo is that you can "REVERSE" the charts, e.g.: hearing albums that are in need for reviews, or reverse the popularity order, so...
If each and every one of us in Jamendo would listen in the "reverse" order (mainly to the least popular music), making that kind of spam could be rendered useless AND counter-productive.
If AT LEAST the majority of us hears the unpopular mostly, most people will be heard, and in the utopian limit, every album would have the same amount of attention paid to it, which I personally think it's the best way.

I mean: The ONLY logical reason for hearing the most popular music over the least popular is to be more prone to like the same artists as other people do. We all KNOW that the popularity doesn't make the music sound different, so, ¿why follow the pop's?. There's no "good" nor "bad" music, so the popularity doesn't matter if we want to listen and appreciate music.
Personally, I think that each person in the world has something to say. You, me, Brad Sucks, Mozart and William Hung. Hearing the most heard music just narrows the bandwidth of emotions and thoughts that can reach you through music...

And, the best of that is... unpopular music tends to surprise you - a lot!
Hearing unpopular music makes your brain work different (it's exercising itself on interpreting the music - that's the reason why most new music sounds "bad" at the beginning), and you can be amazed to how you react with certain music.

Since Jamendo is a site about actually NON-popular music, it's pretty useless to hear what most people hear. E.g.: I really doubt I will ever cross somebody in the street with a t-shirt of some band I know from here.
Well, I assume 99% of us heard Brad Sucks, but hey... once you see there's 10000 albums more...
... Can you avoid thinking "Wow! That's a lot of music I am missing!"?

Very true, pifie.

I'm continually amazed at the quality and originality of some albums that don't have a single review. Reviewing albums that are already popular on Jamendo doesn't add anything particularly useful, although of course the artist concerned will love you for it. Reviewing unreviewed ones is hugely useful to everyone.

Since zero-rating albums that have been advertised by spam is a bit harsh, perhaps a better approach is to add them to a review "frownlist", making them the last thing you review instead of giving in to the spammer and giving him an advantage.

At least a couple of Jamendo-aware external players are currently being developed. A frownlist might be a useful feature, especially if automated.

I think so too. As I have said before I dont really listen to mainstream music at all anymore, so Jamendo is perfect for me.
I am not into reviews that much, because they are so subjective anyway, so I usually star the albums I like just so I have a reference back to them later.
I do listen to the most popular stuff sometimes but like you and pifie I really like the whole discovery thing more.
I guess I always was like that even when I bought albums I looked for more non-mainstream music also, sometimes a really interesting album cover would get me to try it.
Not that that always worked but I had a really diverse collection, that most of my friends liked too.
But then I always was an experimental, path not taken kind of guy.

And a lot of albums become popular for the right reasons as well so I do still check them all out anyway.

Geo

First, thanks to google translator, if something is not understood, is their fault.

The quality of the music on Jamendo is very high. Every day there are more and better music.
Jamendo users can make friends if they wish. This is completely free and to me personally, I love to have many.
Many of my friends sent me their recommendations for your favorite music. True, some artists send the messages.
When someone bothers me, what can I remove from my friends list.
I believe that within the options can be selected from Jamendo "Do not receive mail," and if not there, put it.
Regardless of this, Jamendo is a site for lovers of music and artists, is also a site to promote free music, inside and outside Jamendo.
When a person decides to participate in the experience of Jamendo, you should accept what is good and less good.

In addition to all this pain, I have to say that nobody is a bitter sweet.

For an album that more than a week at the top, has to be good, it is also true that other, even better, are at the tail of the lists.
Therefore the promotion within Jamendo is important for artists.
Sure we all want their music gets the widest circulation and recognition by the public.

Greetings and thank you, I hope you will understand what I mean, even in Spanish I Would better.

Palangana, if you wish, I could try to translate that for you: I don't know if what you wanted to say got lost in translation, got a different meaning in translation, or it is just your opinion.

Either way, you just made a wrong conclusion:
You said that promotion in Jamendo is important BECAUSE "better" music is at the "bottom" of the charts. Wrong! If "better" music is at the bottom of the charts, THEN promotion is NOT important (and even counter-productive).
We all want to hear "better" music. So, as you said, we SHOULD look at the least popular music (just as you said -or google said-) : therefore PROMOTION IS IRRELEVANT TO THE PURPOSE OF THE LISTENER... and can even bother the listener (we don't come to Jamendo to read stuff and watch promotion images, we want to hear the music!).

For example, I DON'T want my music get the widest circulation. I want everybody's music to have the same circulation (so, it could only be true if all albums have the same "circulation" and "recognition").
I'm no god. I'm no profet. I'm no super-natural-musician-that-can-save-the-world. I'm just another man that tries to make music and communicate through that. There are lots of people like me : all the people here. Nobody is better nor worse than anybody, so we all deserve the same. If I wouldn't think that way, I wouldn't make any music at all. Because if I only pay attention to popular music, I wouldn't hear my own music!

That's why promotion is trying to get an advantage over other people.
Think a little about this scenario: suppose every band in Jamendo makes the same "amount" of promotion. In that case, would promotion be fruitful? It seems that it wouldn't, because to promote is to catch the attention of the public. If all bands grab the same amount of attention from everybody, it would have the same effect as NOT PROMOTING ANYTHING AT ALL.
And not promoting is profoundly EASIER that doing so... Even more, promoting would turn out to be unfruitful. People would spend a lot of time promoting their music... instead of making music!!

So, I think that two things lead to only one conclusion: we have to avoid promotion as much as we can, .


An album that is popular (more than a week or so) doesn't have to be good. First, because popularity doesn't make a sound in the music you hear (so, is irrelevant), and MOSTLY because there is no "better" nor "worse" in music. It's just music. You can like listening to some music or not, but it doesn't make it "better".


P.S.: A little large... sorry. I'll try to be writing shorter stuff later.

I think you're right, pifie, that promotion is bad.

The commercial music scene is ample prooof of it. The massive promotion by the Big 4 labels and their control over the media does nothing but harm, ensuring that only simple music becomes popular and turning youngsters into 1-genre addicts, always eager for their next fix because the last one is so forgettable.

Promotion in CC music isn't quite as bad as that, but it still tips the playing field.

Your music does not exist unless someone listens.
We are social beings. We need other people to fill them.
For that we are in Jamendo? To get out of the darkness of our room and show the world our work.

The music by itself neither good nor bad to us. simply does not exist, if nobody listens.

Gracias por vuestra comprension, espero que alguien me entienda aunque sea a medias.
Saludos

Te entiendo completamente.

Indeed it's true that music created but not heard is music wasted, but that's an argument for waking up the rest of the world to Creative Commons music in general, so that more of it is heard and appreciated.

But promotion of individual albums or authors achieves the opposite of getting more music heard. It makes only particular works be heard, to the exclusion of other works.

And the worst aspect of tipping the playing field is that it's not even based on music merit, but on the amount of time/money spent on promotion.

Thats ridiculous, I could listen to music every minute of every day for the rest of my life and not even make a dent in the sum total of music (or art for that matter) that is available today.
But I guess since you dont actually make music available yourself, that point of view makes sense. But for those that do, they have to do something.
Just putting the music on Jamendo, or MySpace or Internet Archive is a form of promotion. Otherwise it would just be sitting on your harddrive.
You put music out there to be heard.

Why do you review albums then, isnt that promotion of an album or an artist. You dont write it to read it yourself.
Or is only your opinion of music merit important.

Whatever but sometimes you just dont make sense.

That's true that we all will never "make a dent in the sum total of music". But all tracks in Jamendo are listened, at least by their authors. We are a lot of people, that's why it doesn't make anything "ridiculous".

Togeo, I don't know who are you aiming at. If it's me... well, I don't know if I said it earlier, I really am sorry but I don't have a full album to post yet. When I finish it I will... don't you hate those 1-song albums right here? me too. Most probably, it will suck, but I'll try to make my best attempt at that.

Reviews DON'T have only that three possible purposes: 1) reading it to yourself; 2)promotion of an album; or 3) thinking oneself's opinion is the only important one (?).
There are lots of reasons to review, and those you said are a little set of the possible reasons for someone to review, which, for example, aren't mine. Hopefully, they aren't the reasons for anybody to review.
I review albums, as I said, ordering albums from the least heard or least reviewed... I'm not promoting anyone in Jamendo -at least, not on purpose-. Reviewing is important for the artist, to appreciate their own music and pick details they just didn't spot because they were just aiming at something else. You can even get them little tips that help a lot in certain aspects (particularly, mixing-related ones).
Reviewing is useful for the people looking for albums too, to take a peek about how you will feel about the album after several times listening that album (that's not something you just can achieve at the first glance).
Moreover, reviewing the least reviewed balances the popularity order in favor of the least heard and reviewed.
I review as I wish to be reviewed. Not just saying "Perfect!. Excellent!" and no more detail than that. Listening several times, paying attention, trying to grasp the little details, taking the pros and cons into consideration, and telling them honestly to the artist.

Uploading tracks to Jamendo is self-promotion, but it's fair as it is the same promotion as the rest of the people here (and it's the least promotion possible, because it's the only way somebody around here could listen to them).
You don't have to do more than that. Out of Jamendo you probably need more, here you don't.
If nobody self-promotes, anybody that just uploads an album is at the same ground as somebody whose music would be around here for some time. Looks VERY fair to me, and very fruitful to the purpose of the listeners.


Self-promoting in an environment of people with the same abilities is trying to stand out for reasons not linked to the feelings people have towards your music... and if someone doesn't care more about that than about the number of times listened or reviewed or promoted... I suppose something is deeply wrong with him/herself.


P.S.:Music exists since the time it sounds inside the head of the author. In a one-person universe, music would still exist, so an audience of more than the author is not really necesary (If you only assume authors are non-deaf humans).
P.S.2: Didn't work out trying to write smaller comments. It will be my last comment in this topic, to leave place to others to comment about how wrong I am!

@pifie
Actually no, I was not aiming at all.

Good luck with your album, yes I hate 3min "albums" or 30 sec preview songs and I do agree with you in principle.
But promotion and over-promotion, reviews for the right reasons and reviews for the wrong reasons, ratings, comments, spam, trolls, bugs and features etc etc are just a part of the internet social scene.
Its not a utopian world and life is not an even playing field..

Simply uploading a new album on here and doing nothing else would not make it any fairer. Because an album that has been on longer would always have an advantage simply because of time and exposure, more listens, more reviews more page loads, more downloads and so on. Therefore it would be seen first, continue to get more attention and lets face it people are lazy and dont want to search and just get instant gratification. Gimme, gimme click here.

I guess you could have albums just show up randomly on the front page, but people would probably complain and you could get rid of play counts and other stats but artists would complain.....

People like to complain.

Just to be clear, I dont send emails to check out my new album, I add friends if I like their music, or not sometimes, I dont care about reviews, and oh they are definately promotion or love or critic or hate or mean and revenge, but they are something. And they
will be read and seen in just as many ways.

Why is promotion so bad anyway, it may have been handled badly by big labels and those ringtone, punch the monkey and win ads, spam sucks, but generally we promote things all the time, events partys, a wedding whatever and it doesnt have to be a bad thing.
You cant just throw a blanket opinion over all things commercial or promotion or anything and label it bad. That would be stereotyping.

I make or listen to music first of all because I like it and would like it to be heard thats all. I know not everybody will like it and thats ok too. I dont like all art or music either.
But if you like something and you tell somebody else or you offer somebody something for free, whats so wrong with that.
I mean they dont have to accept it or like it thats their choice. Nobody here at least is forcing anything on anyone.

Jamendo is offering a free service here, I like it and its not perfect, but like everything else it will change for better or for worse and some will like it and some not.

PS I got to go back to just reading comments and not replying so much too...lol. Its all cool though, we just all see things a little different and thats a good thing too.

Togeo, I feel you are trying to be reasonable, so I'm going to take the trouble of showing you where your logic breaks down point by point, because currently your arguments don't stand up.

Togeo_Music wrote: Thats ridiculous, I could listen to music every minute of every day for the rest of my life and not even make a dent in the sum total of music (or art for that matter) that is available today.

Indeed that is true for yourself alone, but it's not true for the community as a whole, which is many times larger than the community of artists alone. The eyeballs and eardrums of this collosal audience are spead out across all genres, and while there is probably a greater density of listeners in the popular/chart genres, in general you can expect a statistical distribution of albums played right across the whole catalogue, encompassing either all or virtually all.

But I guess since you dont actually make music available yourself, that point of view makes sense.

That's a non sequitur; the amount of music we hear each day is unrelated to whether we upload our own music or not. In any case, I will upload some day, it's certainly the intention, and I have the equipment, so I'm no different from a demographic point of view.

But for those that do, they have to do something.

Assuming that you meant "they have to do promotion", you give no justification for such a claim, and one could just as easily say that "they have to do nothing", since they'll still get listened to and maybe reviewed. Indeed, the vast majority of artists "do nothing" after uploading, or at least nothing that is blatant promotion.

Just putting the music on Jamendo, or MySpace or Internet Archive is a form of promotion. Otherwise it would just be sitting on your harddrive. You put music out there to be heard.

Very true, but uploading music to Jamendo places it on a level playing field, and therefore within Jamendo it is no promotion at all since all artists who upload get exactly the same treatment. Promotion (as it's normally defined) seeks to make people listen to one particular work more than the rest, so it seeks to create an imbalance. Your point is valid only for the case of promoting the Jamendo service as a whole, rather than a specific album or artist.

Why do you review albums then, isnt that promotion of an album or an artist. You dont write it to read it yourself. Or is only your opinion of music merit important.

Ignoring the last sentence which is just a personal attack (tut, tut ), I review albums to help other listeners find music that they might want to hear. I even supply user tags to help them with that. There is no other reason. And no, I don't select particular artists or albums to review in order to promote them, as the selection is almost entirely random --- usually it's just an album cover that catches my eye, or I've clicked on a tag, or someone mentions a band in passing and I search for it, etc etc etc. My selection is close enough to random to call it random, and when umpteen thousands of people are doing the same as me every day, I'm pretty sure that the entirety of Jamendo's catalogue gets a listen every now and then, and a small subset of them (the better ones) get reviews as well.

So, to quote a famous Vulcan, "That's not logical, Togeo."

Morgaine wrote: But promotion of individual albums or authors achieves the opposite of getting more music heard. It makes only particular works be heard, to the exclusion of other works

ok but then...

Morgaine wrote: Indeed that is true for yourself alone, but it's not true for the community as a whole, which is many times larger than the community of artists alone. The eyeballs and eardrums of this collosal audience are spead out across all genres, and while there is probably a greater density of listeners in the popular/chart genres, in general you can expect a statistical distribution of albums played right across the whole catalogue, encompassing either all or virtually all

Your own words... So therefore promotion does not lead to excluding some music from being heard.

I never attack personally.... to explain...
You said we should go by music merit, but thats subjective. Like beauty its in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. Mayans tie a board to the heads of there young to form a longer sloping forehead, the african tribe with the rings to stretch there necks.
For instance you said in another thread about a trance album... that it was hurting your head from the noise so.... trance is out meritwise then. (Funny because you were talking about it I went to see what it was about... I liked the album...even if he didnt make the music. So in a way you promoted it to me...lol) I dont like country so countrys out. Does that mean that trance and country are without merit. Of course not so who decides what music merits being listened to.
You with me Spock?
So to keep things fair and level...reviews have to go too
Random reviews thats silly, review what you like. Why review music you dont like, it doesnt help the artist and it may unfairly prejudice some one who might like the album.
But If I read your reviews and like the albums then you are promoting them to me. But If you write a bad review of a type music you dont like or maybe a negative comment on a european bossa nova (hehe) then maybe I skip a good album (negative promotion)

But 12000 albums is still too many for me to hear, so some sort of filtering is necessary. So when someone guides me in the direction of an album its promotion but not deferential to the probably 10000 albums I would never hear anyway.

Now on a personal note... you have been on here about a month, you have written more posts than I have ion my lifetime (ok maybe I am exagerating) but you probably have a knock on some aspect of Jamendo in like 50% of them (not exagerating).
Just wondering because when all is said and done there is no other site that comes close to Jam and sure there are growing pains but its still the best free CC music site online as it stands. Seems counterproductive to me.
But like I said its developing and it has changed a lot, I will leave you with a quote I once heard from a very wise person...

The control freaks just don't understand the benefit of emergent systems, and that freedom has a price. Sure, we suffer a few annoyances and some real crimes, but it's still infinitely better than everybody living in a police state.

they could be refering to Jamendo

Super! You're being logical now.

Togeo_Music wrote: Morgaine wrote: But promotion of individual albums or authors achieves the opposite of getting more music heard. It makes only particular works be heard, to the exclusion of other works

ok but then...

Morgaine wrote: Indeed that is true for yourself alone, but it's not true for the community as a whole, which is many times larger than the community of artists alone. The eyeballs and eardrums of this collosal audience are spead out across all genres, and while there is probably a greater density of listeners in the popular/chart genres, in general you can expect a statistical distribution of albums played right across the whole catalogue, encompassing either all or virtually all

Your own words... So therefore promotion does not lead to excluding some music from being heard.

Fair enough! But that (good) logic only worked because I wasn't being specific about the exclusion effect, and hence you could validly claim that because of the long tail of statistical distributions, someone will still be listening to each album, despite lack of promotion. You really got in by a technicality though, because having an audience of 1 is not the same thing as having an audience of thousands.

You're forcing me to cross the t's and dot the i's, so let's examine this thing we've been calling "tipping the playing field". What's really happening is that music audiences fall into fuzzy statistical buckets. Listeners are loosely grouped by music genre, by music community (eg. remixers), by immediate appeal versus requiring listening attention, by peer-group or fandom pressure concerning what is "cool" and what isn't, by danceability, and by many other things that provide either a music classification or a social focus for music listeners. What promotion does is to affect the populations of those buckets, in two different ways: (i) within any one population bucket, it focuses attention on one album or author and therefore reduces the statistical attention received by other albums or authors, based not on merit but on degree of promotion; and (ii) across the whole set of buckets, it attracts eyeballs and eardrums away from their current buckets and into a new one, based not on listener bucket preferences but on the specific interests of the promoted author or the promoter.

Neither of the above effects are good. As you pointed out yourself, merit in music is (largely) a subjective thing, yet what the promoter is trying to do is to replace the broad statistical distribution of subjective tastes within a given population bucket by a new distribution in which the promoted item is given preferential treatment, ie. distort the subjective spread and thus make other authors or music less popular than they would be normally.

And the second effect is even worse: by distorting the normal subjective spread of listeners across the whole spectrum of population buckets, promotion makes entire classes of music drop out of popular appeal, which is exactly the reason why we have only tightly focused crap in the charts these days. People are a hell of a lot more varied than the charts would suggest, but promotion has created a music environment in which naturally broad subjective tastes are completely disregarded and almost entirely replaced by a single massively promoted bucket. There is little else one can blame: while the causes of this cultural disaster are many, the instrument that has delivered the disaster is just one, promotion.

You said we should go by music merit, but thats subjective. Like beauty its in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. Mayans tie a board to the heads of there young to form a longer sloping forehead, the african tribe with the rings to stretch there necks.
For instance you said in another thread about a trance album... that it was hurting your head from the noise so.... trance is out meritwise then. (Funny because you were talking about it I went to see what it was about... I liked the album...even if he didnt make the music. So in a way you promoted it to me...lol) I dont like country so countrys out. Does that mean that trance and country are without merit. Of course not so who decides what music merits being listened to.
You with me Spock?
So to keep things fair and level...reviews have to go too

Absolutely not! You've made a fatal mistake in your last sentence: reviews would have to go only if they pretended to be objective assessments of merit and hence sought to undermine the subjectiveness of music. Well this may come as a shock to you (), but nobody in even their most insane moments has ever said that reviews are objective. Quite the opposite, they're every bit as subjective as music appreciation itself, and that's no surprise since they merely reflect the reviewer's own music appreciation. As a result, reviews are simply more subjective input for a music surfer to consider before she listens to the music herself, ie. the review is fulfilling its purpose of helping users to find material they might like, in the same way that tags help. (Indeed, in another thread I described reviews as an extended form of user tags).

So no, you got your assessment of reviews entirely wrong.

Random reviews thats silly, review what you like. Why review music you dont like, it doesnt help the artist and it may unfairly prejudice some one who might like the album.

Aww, come on, that's terrible logic. You can't know whether you like something before listening to it, and the process of selecting items to listen to is quite close to random in its likelihood of delivering music that you like, regardless of the mechanism that you use. Therefore even if you only review music that you like, it is effectively chosen at random from among unheard music --- I wish it weren't so, but it is! If you've found a mechanism that does a lot better than pure random (eg. perhaps Pandora's system would qualify) then you're set to make $millions pretty soon.

But If I read your reviews and like the albums then you are promoting them to me. But If you write a bad review of a type music you dont like or maybe a negative comment on a european bossa nova (hehe) then maybe I skip a good album (negative promotion)

You're stretching the meaning of "promotion" here. I don't mind the language evolving, but the above is not what most people call promotion. Indeed, even if someone's review says with great enthusiasm "You MUST listen to this!", that's not promotion but simply normal subjective reviewing going a bit over the top.

The reason why reviews are not promotion is pretty simple: quite apart from being very obviously nothing more than a subjective assessment and hence carrying an implicit "This is my subjective reaction to this album and probably will not match yours", reviews are presented ONCE ONLY. That makes a colossal difference. If a person presented the exact same review in multiple places, or wrote multiple reviews of the same album, or featured links to the album or to her review in her email signature, or spammed the link to other people, or name-dropped the musician's name or album in conversation or in blogs or in web articles, then that becomes promotion.

In contrast, a reviewer targets a different album in each review, so by definition there is no promotion of one since it gets the same degree of attention and of public presentation as the next album. Promoting all is equivalent to promoting none, since it doesn't tip the balance.

But 12000 albums is still too many for me to hear, so some sort of filtering is necessary. So when someone guides me in the direction of an album its promotion but not deferential to the probably 10000 albums I would never hear anyway.

Sure, but that's not promotion, that's trying to match music to your preferences, whereas promotion very often seeks to do the opposite (my item (ii) above).

Now on a personal note... you have been on here about a month, you have written more posts than I have ion my lifetime (ok maybe I am exagerating) but you probably have a knock on some aspect of Jamendo in like 50% of them (not exagerating).
Just wondering because when all is said and done there is no other site that comes close to Jam and sure there are growing pains but its still the best free CC music site online as it stands. Seems counterproductive to me.

That's simply because my worldview is that of a progressive futurist, rather than that of a regressive fanboy. I never ever say that the status quo is good enough (like fanboys always do), if it's clear that we can do better. I love Creative Commons music and Jamendo does a good job of popularizing it, which is why I'm here. But the site has many failings too, especially in denying listeners the original lossless works and in not providing an effective tagging and search system. Being a software developer myself, lots of solutions come to mind, so I'm frequently commenting on what could be done better. If you knew me you wouldn't expect any less.

And no, pushing people to do better is never counterproductive. If they absolutely refuse to do better then maybe the hints will be taken on board by some other reader and results in a competing company providing better solutions. Who knows what the future holds. A progressive persons always strives for a better world, and isn't easily dissuaded by being ignored.

But like I said its developing and it has changed a lot, I will leave you with a quote I once heard from a very wise person...

The control freaks just don't understand the benefit of emergent systems, and that freedom has a price. Sure, we suffer a few annoyances and some real crimes, but it's still infinitely better than everybody living in a police state.

they could be refering to Jamendo

Indeed, I must find out who wrote that, because it's the height of wisdom.

But seriously, in the context of the community being allowed to help Jamendo out of its manpower resourcing crisis by making the front-end of the Jamendo service community-developed (just a hypothetical possibility), this quote is directly in line with what I've been saying about progressive worldviews. Don't just accept things as they are, always try to do better, and try to help others by coming up with solutions that allow them to do better. But you can't be progressive and promote () change without annoying the sleepy bees a little, and sometimes it can get quite buzzy in places where the rate of change is unfortunately a bit slow.

But at least no died-in-the-wool fanboys have appeared here, or there would be fireworks.

Morgaine you write so much
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1


btw: did u receive my recommendation?

ljmudit wrote: Morgaine you write so much

This always happens when two people are using logic and trying to be precise. It takes a lot of words to be precise.

The good news is, logical discussions always end up in mutual agreement with both sides understanding each other. It's entirely different to debate-type discussions, where people only talk past each other without addressing points raised and with no intention of achieving common understanding.

ljmudit wrote: btw: did u receive my recommendation?

Yes, and heard it once through. It didn't really hit the spot, but perhaps I'll give it another chance. Thanks for the attempt though.

Ok I type with one finger and it will take me a day to absorb all that...lol
So I give, but a couple of small points first.

Morgaine wrote: Aww, come on, that's terrible logic. You can't know whether you like something before listening to it,

I said random reviews were silly, not randomly listening to music, two different things, review the music that you do listen to and like is what i said.

I guess what i am wondering is are you against the "My album has been published check it out" email as bad or is it just the guys who as an example send you an email every few days for the same album. Because if its just the latter and not any form of self promotion then I am totally in agreement. BTW to the few people who do that.....STOP ...please...damn.lol

But as a few others have said recomendations dont normally hurt, you can just ignore them if you want, but hardcore shove it in your face promotion like on Myspace sucks. I think its funny they come on to MY SPACE (get it) dont even mention my music and start in with a page long list of where you can hear them on Beatport or Itunes or whatever and half a page of flash video showing me there entire bio and event history. Ok that was before I turned off html, now I get much more normal "Hey nice songs...bla bla check out my new tune". Much better and doesnt bother me.

I will let it go at that, but I do think Jamendo is trying, and like I said I dont personaly push our music so for me it wasnt an issue. Its free and I publish it all over but thats about all the time I have for it. Just saying I understand why some beginning artists are impatient to wait for trickle down appreciation.

I thought you might like the quote. I cant remember the name something with an "M". Overall I am in agreement with you. Dont mind me I just have a tendancy to air my opinion, but I am working on that. Lol, I just never get in text what I really want to say.

Togeo_Music wrote: I said random reviews were silly, not randomly listening to music, two different things, review the music that you do listen to and like is what i said.

You're not looking at the overall process though. Since selecting music that you like is essentially a random process even if you try hard to do better (because musical tastes are so subjective), your album reviews are chosen out of a random population, not the whole set.

Another way of putting it: for each album you review because you like it, there are N other albums out there which are as good or even better, which sadly you may never find. Because selection for listening is essentially random, the reviews are a random scattergun into the whole album set. We review only the best albums out of the subset we hear, but it's a random subset ... although of course promotion attempts to colour the selection to make it less random, and hence less fair.

I think the promotion issue really boils down to the question: "Is it annoying?" The problem with this apparently reasonable question is that spammers will always answer "No", and then merrily proceed to destroy the usefulness of the world's email for everyone except themselves. What is "reasonable" gets distorted when there is money involved, and hence annoying 999 people out of 1000 just because 1 person might buy something is deemed "reasonable".

It's easy to see how CC spammers could bring the same nightmare to our area, and everyone except the promoters would suffer from it: the listeners would suffer through being spammed with random links that don't reflect their tastes, and non-spamming musicians would suffer through fewer people hearing their material because the selection process gets distorted. It's better that we don't reach that situation, nip it in the bud before it germinates and grows out of control.

You mention MySpace. Funnily enough, despite it becoming more and more commercial, it doesn't have the annoyance of real promotion because it's in one spot only, so you have to choose to go and see a specific band's page. It's less annoying than advertising posters on the side of the road, which you can't avoid passing and registering at least partially.

To a large extent it's the push vs pull argument: if you have to pull promotional materials then you are expressing your choice, whereas if it's pushed at you then you have no say in the matter (even if you try and ignore it) and so it's an intrusion.

Sure and I agree with that. Look I am a huge supporter of open source, CC and the entire movement towards media freedoms on and off the internet, especially as far as music and the arts goes. It is pretty much inevitable at this point anyway, but you are absolutely right. Well I think that communication is the greatest freedom we have and the solution to almost, maybe even all problems. Information has always been the currency of power and, at the moment any way, the people are prospering, mainly because of the internet but also socialy. I just hope it stays that way but there are a lot of people who would like to see their control over things restored. Its always harder to stop the flow of information than it is to never let it out in the first place. All in all the next few years should be very interesting and I am usually an optimist but not naive enough not to be cautious.

Anyway we will see...

Geo

Alright Morgaine, I get it.

You want the community to do all the promotion and not hear from the artists themselves, because that's "spam." I maintain it's not spam. If it were then Jamendo would not be pushing for everyone to do it like they do.

You don't administrate any artists so you never see this aspect of Jamendo. That would say to me that your logic goes completely down the drain on *all* of it because you don't see what's provided by Jamendo for the purpose of getting the word out -- you don't see the tips and tricks, nor the umpteen articles on how to get the word out. One of those tricks *is* the friends tool. The people at Jamendo understand that there's a business side to making music (whether that's to make money or not).

Now if it worked I'd be all for sitting back and letting everyone do it for me, but it doesn't. You have to get out there and get the message out. Some will ignore it and some won't. And some will complain. And some will troll because they have nothing better to do.

BTW -- the friends list and the way it's used? You have no right to complain, because you OPTED INTO IT.

It IS spamming to me. As you see, there are many people that are not interested in receiving that kind of publicity. You should have respect also for these people. I am one of them. If I get a message from someone, I have to open it and read it, because it could be something really interesting or important, and that means they are using MY own time for something I'm not interested about. I have my own sources of recommandation that I trust. For promotion there is already a forum made on purpose.

keefycub wrote: One of those tricks *is* the friends tool.

At the beginning I was so naif to think that people asked to be your friend because they liked your music, or because they agreed with the comments you leave on the forums a.s.o.
May I ask you what the word FRIENDSHIP means to you? "Selling" your friends something?

We can opt out short of deleting my account? I like jamendo for the purposes of passive music discovery. Not spam. I'd like to jamendo focus its powers on creating better search/tagging functionality, empowering the listener to find what matters to them. This site has become a battle of the squeakiest wheel. Its become tool to "empower" artists through means of unmitigated self promotion. Unfortunately spam works. If you promote yourself to 1,000 of your "friends", you may have turned 100 people onto your music and annoyed 900 people in the process.

Jamendo encourages spam. Just because Jamendo says its OK doesn't change the definition of the word. Its hardly something I enjoy being a part of.

Annoying. No?

the 100% of the music i like and love on jamendo, is from artists i have never sent or recieved an email.
Bradsucks never sent me a mail, but i still listen to his fucking great music !! IF YOUR GOOD, PEOPLE WILL HEAR FROM YOU, IF YOUR NOT GOOD EVEN IF YOU SEND A BILLION MAILS AND LETTERS, YOU WILL BE IGNORED 1!!!!

Jesse Spillane wrote: Its hardly something I enjoy being a part of.

Annoying. No?

This is called surgical promotion. A new phenomenon..hahaha....

Simple solution would be for every registered member to have a checkbox "Disable recommendations", which would solve the problem in 99% of the cases. Those who do not want to receive recommendations, wouldn't receive them, artists could send recommendations to anyone and they wouldn't feel bad about it because they know all the people who are annoyed by such messages wouldn't receive them.

This probably sounds extreme but I tend to think that if by some means you can reach even only one person who actually gets enjoyable and insightful moments from the material "spammed" to the Jamendo users, it weighs more in the scale than the possible annoyance caused to other users.

There are also quite a bit of steps between the random, offensive and totally pointless spam where the artists is shouting about himself to everyone regardless of the quality, style and taste and the selective, delicate promotion where the artist actually hand picks the targets based on their public profile and taste, which is pretty easily found in the way Jamendo promotes users and their choices. I am ready to judge the former, but not the latter. I personally find the whole point of the communication Jamendo allows to be exactly that - you mention what you like and hope that maybe somebody gives you a gentle nudge "hey, as you like this, you probably could like this also".

It's very clear to me. Anyone can be my friend if he accepted my request but not all realationship turning into real friendship.
By the way, when I offer my friendship to someone and it's accepted then I got a right to send a promotion message too.
If someone dislike my messages or my productions or any other artist or album offers what I sending then just reject the friendship without problem.

So if you get messages you dont want to get in the future just reject the friendship without problem!

keefycub wrote: Alright Morgaine, I get it.

You want the community to do all the promotion and not hear from the artists themselves, because that's "spam." I maintain it's not spam. If it were then Jamendo would not be pushing for everyone to do it like they do.

You don't administrate any artists so you never see this aspect of Jamendo. That would say to me that your logic goes completely down the drain on *all* of it because you don't see what's provided by Jamendo for the purpose of getting the word out -- you don't see the tips and tricks, nor the umpteen articles on how to get the word out. One of those tricks *is* the friends tool. The people at Jamendo understand that there's a business side to making music (whether that's to make money or not).

Now if it worked I'd be all for sitting back and letting everyone do it for me, but it doesn't. You have to get out there and get the message out. Some will ignore it and some won't. And some will complain. And some will troll because they have nothing better to do.

BTW -- the friends list and the way it's used? You have no right to complain, because you OPTED INTO IT.

QFT.

BTW WTF is QFT lol

...really I dont know

I am guessin on the F though

also... if i request a friend add its because I like their music, period. Not because I am looking for 50 emails a day. If i get a friend request I expect it to have to do with they like my music, and I will check out the friends music as a matter of courtesy (before accepting) so there is no need for you to send me recommendations everyday. If you do, I will revoke the "friendship". Sorry but thats how I feel.

i think it's funny how so many people on here - a music sharing site - are so apprehensive about being exposed to music.

ninja edit:

Togeo_Music wrote: BTW WTF is QFT lol

"quoted for truth"

come on narc let me in on the QFT...pweeeze


Sheez you were answering while i wrote...lol

i edit my words
like a black cat, stealthfully
a winter madness

I'm apprehensive over the fact that the "friend feature" is being used as a mailing list for artists. I opted in to the friendship, not the mailing list. I was originally under the impression that music recommendations was a feature that should be used by fans, not artists (of course artists recommend themselves...no shit). I'd be much happier if this feature blocked artists from recommending themselves. I'd even be happier if, they removed the recommendations feature altogether. If I have a friend I want to hear someone's work, I can send the link myself via email, instant message, or personal message. The feature is redundant and annoying. Jamendo developers should work on some useful features like multi-tag support rather than trying to imitate noisy social networking sites.

Open my email
10 new messages, all spam
Screw you jamendo!

you have too many friends and they are crap ones

how to not promote by spam an article by Tela Fibb

lacking in rhythm
how i question your post, phon
stick to haiku scheme