Albums and music on FanFare?

September 14, 2019 8:14 AM

Is there any place on FanFare for albums or music discussions?

I asked this a while ago on FanFare but didn't get much response, and it was suggested that I bring it up here.

I looked, but didn't find any rationale on why books, TV shows, Podcasts, movies, and even events were FanFare...fare, but no music categories. I love the front page posts about music, but I feel like a high volume of new music / album posts would be unwelcome. AskMeFi has some great threads when people ask for music suggestions, and the front page posts about music often generate great discussions - so I feel like we're a community that would enjoy discussing music.

I'm unsure if this was considered and ruled out for some reason when FanFare was created, or if it hasn't come up (I'm guessing it must have, but again I can't find the discussion) before. This Mefite would love a place to discuss music with folks who have more thoughtful takes than elsewhere on the web.

posted by jzb to Feature Requests at 8:14 AM (39 comments total)

As said in the FanFare thread: I like this pony.
posted by General Malaise at 8:40 AM on September 14, 2019 [8 favorites]

The short answer from the mod side is basically, you're right that there isn't really an existing place for this on Fanfare; instead, music discussion happens on the blue and green in the ways you mention. Over the years people have raised adding music to Fanfare more than once, so there's definitely some persistent interest and it's something we can think about for the future. But fair warning, adding a new media category etc would take some doing, and there are a lot of other things that are higher on the priority list right now.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:20 AM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

What are these alb-ums of which you speak?

I don't object to the idea, but I wonder how practical it is -- how would discussions about new music be structured in an era where artists often drop multiple singles before the album release? Do we just not talk about someone's new music until the album appears? Or do we host discussion for the singles? Or start the album thread when the first single drops (assuming it is associated with an album-to-be)?

Those aren't insurmountable problems, just something to think about, in the same vein as whether a given Netflix show gets episode-by-episode threads or season-by-season ones.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:29 AM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I don't object to the idea, but I wonder how practical it is -- how would discussions about new music be structured in an era where artists often drop multiple singles before the album release? Do we just not talk about someone's new music until the album appears? Or do we host discussion for the singles? Or start the album thread when the first single drops (assuming it is associated with an album-to-be)?

Probably depends on the fans of any given artist, just like Netflix / streaming shows today. Some folks choose to post full season posts, some folks want to do episodes. Some folks want to do show/book discussions, other folks just want to have show discussions.

If it were me, I'd probably wait until an album was out before putting up a post.
posted by jzb at 12:16 PM on September 14, 2019

It would be interesting to think about if Music could be adapted for this purpose instead of FanFare because you could post YouTube links to a single song or to the full album so you could listen to it right there. There would have to be some verification that the link was from the artist or label's official account I guess.
posted by bleep at 12:37 PM on September 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

Why wouldn’t this be on the MeFi Music subsite? It’d be a lot weirder to have a whole subsite devoted to music yet expect people to put music posts on Fanfare, no?
posted by iamkimiam at 1:47 PM on September 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

How would you make the distinction clear to users about the types of music posts that belong on fanfare versus music?

And what about Mefites who are commercially successful?
posted by iamkimiam at 3:33 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Negativity is also an issue on fanfare that I've noticed- personally I think if it would be rude to say to someone's (digital) face, it's probably not a productive thing to bring into a fanfare thread either. Constructive & well-meaning feedback is something different.
posted by bleep at 3:43 PM on September 14, 2019

Why is there a separate Music category and not one for Art or Writing? Why not move discussions of albums, songs, performances into Music?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:25 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think 23skidoo has this right. Music is for members of the community to post music they're recorded and talk about music they're making, whereas Fanfare is for appreciation and criticism of media produced by other people. Discussion of Taylor Swift's new album would fit in effortlessly in the spirit of Fanfare, whereas it wouldn't fit in at all in Music. Yes, it's called "Music," but discussion of other peoples' music isn't its ethos, whereas discussion of all things media is exactly Fanfare's ethos.
posted by General Malaise at 5:54 PM on September 14, 2019 [5 favorites]

Why is there a separate Music category and not one for Art or Writing?

Because MetaFilter is old and file hosting and playback for music used to be hard and there was a critical mass of regulars who made music and wanted to talk about it. History of how things developed more than conscious decision to include/exclude.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:09 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Just putting in my vote; I am in favor of adding albums / music singles to Fanfare. Been wanting this for a long time.
posted by nightrecordings at 6:14 PM on September 14, 2019 [5 favorites]

Why is there a separate Music category and not one for Art or Writing?

Because MetaFilter is old and file hosting and playback for music used to be hard and there was a critical mass of regulars who made music and wanted to talk about it. History of how things developed more than conscious decision to include/exclude.

And, to echo that, I think that's mostly subsumed by Projects for the most part.
posted by General Malaise at 6:22 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I vote yes.
posted by Fizz at 6:46 PM on September 14, 2019

I would value the addition of non-Mefite-created music to Fanfare. The recent discussion of the new Tool album on the Blue would fit well there, and a long-running Tori Amos thread might get more love over time, and big threads compiling links to tracks in an obscure genre could last longer and be easier to find. I appreciate the challenge of organization (artist/genre/time period/???) that comes with tackling music organization and don't want to suggest blithely that the work should be done, but it would be cool and I would love it and contribute to it.
posted by a moisturizing whip at 7:16 PM on September 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'll echo my comments in the FanFare talk thread: there are sites to use as IMDb and Amazon are used for movies & TV and books, respectively, for music, so it's technically do-able, and I like the idea.

In the past, some podcasts have been used as sideways album discussion posts on FanFare (totally blanking on which ones those were, at the moment). While I would generally say "post more of the music that you like to the blue," I realize that there's generally a feeling like FanFare has a lower threshold for entry/ posting than MetaFilter.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:58 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Just thinking about some of the comments above, looks like there’s lots of ways you could go here...
Rescope Music, rename Music, add a music category to Fanfare, merge Music into Fanfare, allow cross-posting between Music and Fanfare, address the negative feedback issues, and on and on.

My vote would be for whichever solution(s) best iterate toward the overall strategy and direction for MetaFilter.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:40 PM on September 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

The reason I suggest that is because decisions like this can have impact on the overall direction and it’s much harder to get to the goal when you have to untangle hundreds of small choices later. Especially if people become used to the decisions and have built norms and expectations around them.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:56 PM on September 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

A side thought- but often when Music and Fanfare come up, people don't really know what they are... (and when I started on metafilter, I started with the green, and only found the blue and grey a bit later). Is it worth a blue FPP about the nifty site called music?
posted by freethefeet at 12:08 AM on September 15, 2019

I would really, really love this (I love talking about music). Some of it recently has defaulted to the Front Page, which doesn't bother me, but this excellent conversation about the new Sleater-Kinney record totally strikes me as a what a Music Fanfare post would look like.
posted by thivaia at 8:09 AM on September 15, 2019 [3 favorites]

I would love this SO MUCH. I vote yea.
posted by holborne at 8:46 AM on September 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yes, please. It seems like a very natural add.

I keep hearing about how great FanFare is, but there's nothing there for me right now. Adding music would change that significantly.
posted by dbx at 4:23 PM on September 15, 2019 [3 favorites]

I also think this is a good idea, and would like to add that games are the other major type of media also missing from FanFare. In particular tabletop games which are maybe a tougher putt for finding media to put an FPP together on than a video game. (If this is too much of a derail delete and eventually I’ll get around to posting the game equivalent to this thread.)
posted by Caduceus at 8:21 PM on September 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

I fully support adding music to FanFare. I think both singles and full albums can be handled equally well.

And to be honest, if there's some sort of interference or confusion that people are worried about, I wouldn't be against axing Music entirely. It's a ghost town. There have been only two submissions to Music so far this month; no faves, no comments. The last Music Talk submission was back in March; no faves, no comments.

It its current state I just don't see the point of it anymore.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 1:54 AM on September 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Music on Fanfare seems like a natural, albums, singles, or just the odd music video. Games too seem to be a good fit there as would be any sort of media that sparks enthusiasm but doesn't really fit a FPP to the Blue.

I'd suggest combining projects and music and opening it a bit more to any Mefi endeavor that people want to share with the community.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:27 AM on September 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

My only concern is that discoverability and navigation are already issues on FanFare, and this would mean adding new threads for potentially any song ever on top of that.

I also think that if this happens, it probably makes sense to move Music into Projects (and maybe make Music Talk into Project Talk, which has some neat implications) for simplicity's sake.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:19 AM on September 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I suspect, given how it appears many of the people on the site make use of it, that Music on Fanfare would quickly become the most popular aspect of that subsite as the songs/videos could mostly be indulged immediately and reactions given with more ease than shows or movies which take time and effort to enjoy. I also suspect someone would end up making playlists on youtube or wherever to have curated long playing possibilities at some point, depending on how it all worked out. It seems like it'd be a huge boost to Fanfare to add music for those reasons and give the site as a whole a little more flexibility in use beyond constantly refreshing for updates or new posts, for those who do hang out here a lot.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:42 AM on September 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

Seconding gusottertrout. With music, it's trivial to follow up on a fellow Mefite's recommendations, so this could potentially be a great discovery site.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:51 AM on September 16, 2019

I want to ride this pony into the sunset. I love to talk music.
posted by SansPoint at 7:35 AM on September 16, 2019

however it gets done, count me in as in favor of getting music (songs-albums-whatever) into Fanfare. The temptation is to say, let's just call them records (ie: recordings), static pieces of sonic artistry that can now be discussed. But then, what about live stuff, current concert tours and the like?

I am a little confused about mixing it up with Projects. We already sort of that for Mefi members' own musical creations, don't we? The subsite known as MUSIC, which I realize is limited to one-track-at-a-time posts ...

Or am I missing something?
posted by philip-random at 12:41 PM on September 16, 2019

Without FanFare I would never have even discovered and fallen in love with The Good Place. I can't even imagine how much great music I'm missing out on!

My vote: yes, please!
posted by snsranch at 2:02 PM on September 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'd be interested if it included existing and older genres (for example, mainstream jazz from the 40's to the present) as well as newer music
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:35 PM on September 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think the only limitation may be dependent on whichever sourcing database is used to confirm a release exists, if that's even necessary. At this point, Musicbrainz and Discogs generally get new releases before or shortly after they're available to the public, and have a pretty extensive back catalog, so to speak. I still have some lesser-known albums that aren't in either database, but they're definitely outliers (and as such, less likely to have audio to stream online, so talking about them without a way to hear them is awkward at best).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:00 AM on September 17, 2019

those outliers are often available via Bandcamp, and if not, they're generally the tracks that can be posted to Soundcloud without getting immediately taken down. That's how I've generally worked things via my blog.
posted by philip-random at 8:36 AM on September 17, 2019

I'd like to talk opera performances if anyone else is into it. And if I get around to watching any opera videos, but knowing there's someone to share them with would help. I guess those would be more in the line of video than audio recordings, though.
posted by asperity at 9:40 AM on September 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Me! I am! I have a subscription to the Met, too, and can go on for hours. (But I promise not to.)
posted by holborne at 7:28 PM on September 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I used to work at the Met and got to see quite a few operas for free, which got me into the art. Now I gotta buy tickets, but I'd still be down to talk opera. I'm seeing Akhnaten in November, and I know I'm gonna wanna talk about it... though how much of that will be gushing over Anthony Roth Costanzo, I can't be sure. Probably at least half.
posted by SansPoint at 6:38 AM on September 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Works for me!
posted by holborne at 7:53 AM on September 27, 2019

(I went ahead and started Opera Club, because I figure most posts would fit fine into the movie category, or maybe they'd work as events.)
posted by asperity at 9:12 AM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]