New font is cool: now how 'bout smaller?

August 29, 2007 6:19 PM

Hey, I see there's suddenly a new font in use for song titles (and linking directly to threads!) at MeFi Music. Looks good to me: the page is more unified. Might I be so bold as to make a further suggestion? Make the song titles a little smaller. I don't think they need to be so big, really, and it'd make more space, so more MeFier's songs could bask a little longer in those bright MeFiMu front page stage lights. Whaddaya think?
posted by flapjax at midnite to MetaFilter Music at 6:19 PM (43 comments total)

The font size didn't change. Force-refresh your browser to get a non-bold font there that looks just like the old one (usually shift-refresh, but safari may need to reload the CSS file directly).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:28 PM on August 29, 2007

This is a good time to point out that we added a "featured song" dealie [example] that will show a little musical note and a link to the podcast if your song was featured in one. That said flap, the number of posts on the front page isn't determined by column inch so I'm not sure if your scheme would work. I sort of like the biggish font, but maybe it's just a personal preference thing. Also: greasemonkey.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:29 PM on August 29, 2007

Thanks, matt and jess, for your answers!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:31 PM on August 29, 2007

Oh, and I likey the featured song dealie!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:32 PM on August 29, 2007

There's a list of recently featured songs on the front page of music as well.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:53 PM on August 29, 2007

Yeah, I'd seen that, Matt: also a good addition, I think.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:58 PM on August 29, 2007

I was expecting somebody to mention Comic Sans by now.
posted by ardgedee at 7:12 PM on August 29, 2007

well you just did.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:23 PM on August 29, 2007

NO! I'm sorry did I stumble into the right thread or not just now?

If I did I would like to mention that T-Model Ford is a soothing balm for your broken soul. Look him up on Possum Records. That , and enjoy Jogging in a Jug bringing you the last hour of the Grand Ole Opry . Next up Roy Acuff and Dotty West with . . .
posted by nola at 7:49 PM on August 29, 2007

nola, have you been drinking?

Well, just save some for me, man, OK?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:16 PM on August 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

*Hides the bottle*
posted by nola at 8:39 PM on August 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

You're a bold one flapjax.
posted by gomichild at 9:54 PM on August 29, 2007

*pushes 'frontal lobotomy' lower down on Netflix queue*
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:14 PM on August 29, 2007

so, just so i understand, 10+ days is not enough time for a song to be on the front page of mefi music?
posted by shmegegge at 10:26 PM on August 29, 2007

You're a bold one flapjax.

Nah, honey, it was just the font that was bold!

so, just so i understand, 10+ days is not enough time for a song to be on the front page of mefi music?

Actually, shmegegge, I was under the mistaken impression (which jessamyn corrected for me) that column inch would have something to do with how long songs stay on the Music FP, and going on that earlier mistaken assumption, I figured, if songs can stay up longer by reducing the font size of text, then all the better. Tell the truth, I hadn't actually even paid attention to how many days a song stays up. Anyway, if you'd read my question carefully, and jessamyn's answer, that should've been apparent.

I must say, though, I'm a wee bit surprised that you would find this of any concern whatsoever, seeing as how out of 3848 total comments to MetaFilter, your comments to MeFi Music have so far reached a grand total of one.

And, hey, even that one... I mean, cortex already knows he's awesome...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:54 PM on August 29, 2007

yeah but I didn't know if shmegegge knew so I actually appreciated that a lot so don't go scaring him off
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:12 AM on August 30, 2007

Speaking of Music, Matt, remember that time you said perhaps you could make lyrics an optional feature when uploading songs? You think that's still possible? That'd be a little detail that would be really cool to have (though I don't know if it's so "little" in terms of programming).
posted by micayetoca at 7:46 AM on August 30, 2007

I think lyrics would be less of an "on upload" feature and more of an optional field that could be filled in on upload or any other time by the OP. I still think that's a great idea.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:50 AM on August 30, 2007

bring in your claws, flapjax. I wasn't snarking, I just didn't understand why you felt like 10 days wasn't enough time. Now I understand that the number of days wasn't what you were getting at.

also, history digging is lame.
posted by shmegegge at 8:04 AM on August 30, 2007

Agreed on the lyrics thing. There're a couple other optional data fields I was thinking about a while back, too, but I can't remember what.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:06 AM on August 30, 2007

"History digging" is the best way to get to know people's contributions, personalities, interests, troubles, likes, dislikes, and confusions, shmegegge. Cherry-picking from people's comment history is lame, and making accusations based on cherry-picked history-digging is lame, but digging through history is itself unimpeachably sweet and neat and keen, in my view.
posted by cgc373 at 9:56 AM on August 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

I hear ya, cortex. I guess it depends on how geeky we wanna make it, lyrics is good, but if i had my druthers I'd have a lot of little fields like "Recorded with
and then have free forms for mic and
computer/studio and that sort of detail, but might that be a bit much.

I remember seeing the thing you did for your RPM songs, and I loved that you had the mp3 of the demo, then the actual song, lyrics, and the anecdote. That would be sweet to have (at least the space for an extra mp3, the anecdote could go in the comments).

And shmegegge, don't take it wrong, I don't think he meant to throw something in your face, I think this might be a case that those of us who upload songs at Music sometimes suffer: when we see the commenting history of other users we often realize people almost never comment in Music, and we would love to be receiving hundreds of comments, from anyone, not just musicians. There is some sort of barrier (and it's certainly not the quality of the music) that keeps people from commenting on the songs.
posted by micayetoca at 9:59 AM on August 30, 2007

There's been some back room discussion on this—we may go with an extra "liner notes" field aside from the lyrics field, which would be one good way to provide a contained free-form space for some of those details if folks want to include them.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:02 AM on August 30, 2007

That would rock! hopefully it will be retroactive and we can fill that with the songs we've already uploaded. I'll be looking forward to that.
posted by micayetoca at 10:26 AM on August 30, 2007

Yeah, that's really the trickiest part, but I have heard it from the grapevine that pb is a pretty smart guy, and I bet if we just smile real big at him with puppydog eyes he'll be able to pull it off.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:40 AM on August 30, 2007

micayetoca: I think this might be a case that those of us who upload songs at Music sometimes suffer: when we see the commenting history of other users we often realize people almost never comment in Music, and we would love to be receiving hundreds of comments, from anyone, not just musicians. There is some sort of barrier (and it's certainly not the quality of the music) that keeps people from commenting on the songs.


So, so, so true. More comments, more music, more anything over at MefiMusic would be great. Sometimes it feels like that open mic where there are five people listening, all of whom are on the list to play too.

Not that I dont love the rest of you contributors, you guys rock!
posted by lazaruslong at 10:52 AM on August 30, 2007

for my part, I check mefi primarily at work, which is not a place that would appreciate me listening to music when I should be listening to video footage. I can get away with saying "oh I was checking the news or whatever for a minute. what's up?" but not with "I was just obviously listening to music for a half hour, what's up?" in case anyone was wondering.
posted by shmegegge at 11:08 AM on August 30, 2007

What shmegegge said. I'd love to be more active on MeFi Music, but I do most of my *Filtering during downtimes at work, and the bandwidth cops here get snippy when we listen to online audio. So I can only listen at home, and I'm just less likely to comment then, because I'm often in the middle of something else. Which makes me feel bad. I should listen more, and comment more.

that said, I've decided I'm going to start uploading my recorded like a sonovabitch... look for MeFi Music to get swamped with accomplished garage rock/very lazy art rock in the near future.
posted by COBRA! at 11:38 AM on August 30, 2007

General admin question: I was just "talking" to COBRA! in one of his songs and he linked to an old song he posted (this one) and it turns out it was closed to new comments. I thought songs were going to remain open indefinitely, did that change?

I can get away with saying "oh I was checking the news or whatever for a minute.

Oh, that's simple, only listen to the good ones, then.
posted by micayetoca at 11:38 AM on August 30, 2007

Threads should be open indefinitely. And have been for a while, but aren't now. How odd. Maybe some of the pb tweakery flipped a switch; I'll see if we can get that fixed.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:54 AM on August 30, 2007

micayetoca, they're supposed to be open indefinitely, but some old code crept into the page yesterday when we made the other changes mentioned in this thread. It's all good now.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:54 AM on August 30, 2007

hey, thx a lot, cortex and pb. I thought something like that might have happened, yet I had to mention it in case no one had noticed.
posted by micayetoca at 12:03 PM on August 30, 2007

I still wish we had a player on a user's Music activity page where we could listen to all of their songs.
posted by bluefly at 1:13 PM on August 30, 2007

font-family:Arial,sans-serif;

Arial? Seriously? Looks like something out of a MS Word document from 10 years ago.
posted by delmoi at 4:35 PM on August 30, 2007

What bluefly said! Great idea!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:05 PM on August 30, 2007

Wouldn't that make some people's profiles extremely huge?
posted by tehloki at 10:32 PM on August 30, 2007

Not the main profile page, tehloki, but the Music activity view.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:58 PM on August 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

(Although throwing a slim-view player onto the man profile isn't a bad idea, really. Hmm.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:58 PM on August 30, 2007

Hey, baby, wanna see my... man profile?
posted by languagehat at 7:08 AM on August 31, 2007

Yeah, huh. What the hell happened there?

Oh. Main. Right.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:07 AM on August 31, 2007

I'm totally in favor of the idea of having a slim-view player in our man profiles. or the main profiles, even. That would be really cool. If I mention to pb that today is my birthday, you think that would make any difference, cortex?
posted by micayetoca at 8:40 AM on August 31, 2007

Happy Birthday, micayetoca!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:54 PM on August 31, 2007

thx, flapjax!
posted by micayetoca at 8:40 AM on September 1, 2007