February 27, 2001

1:01 PM

hoursong:A streaming index of songs based on ideas and associations to a different theme. Whether it's the song, the artist, the album, the lyrics, the video, whatever; the theme can be tied to anything, and everyone can submit their own song that relates. You can also create discussion and song threads on every submission.
posted by magnetbox (16 comments total)

Errr... it looks like a whole buncha records suggested by some guy name 'Ben'. A whole buncha records suggested by 'Ben' that nobody cared to comment on.

To be concise, a site that holds a whole buncha records that was suggested by 'Ben', and any questions about the site can be sent to some guy named '[e-mail]'.

However did you find this, B- Errr... Magnetbox?
posted by Perigee at 1:09 PM on February 27, 2001

Self-post alert! You are soooo busted, dude.
posted by jpoulos at 1:11 PM on February 27, 2001

Well, it's either that or posting news from other sources and/or ranting about other people posting news from other sources.
posted by magnetbox at 1:16 PM on February 27, 2001

It's still not appropriate to parade your own ponies on the front page.
The site looks interesting.
But don't get noble about self-posting. It is the original sin.
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:18 PM on February 27, 2001

However.
posted by hijinx at 1:18 PM on February 27, 2001

So. Does this mean that _I_ can self-post too? =)

I didn't think so, but it was worth a try... as for the link, the concept is pretty interesting. Maybe it will be more interesting once more people use it.

And maybe someone down the road (when the idea has more flesh on it), will post a link to it here at MeFi that _doesn't_ break the self-posting rule.
posted by silusGROK at 1:19 PM on February 27, 2001

Y'know it has occurred to me that my MeFi bretheren might be interested in what I am working on, and (especially) vice versa, but we're all sensible enough to follow the rules. What if we had a spot, maybe on MetaTalk where we let everyone know what's we're doing?

Or is that just asking for trouble?
posted by jpoulos at 1:28 PM on February 27, 2001

I think that having a spot on MetaTalk may very well be asking for trouble...

When I've had something that I think would be of interest to folks here, I've e-mailed the one or two people that I thought it would most intrigue. If they think it's interesting, maybe _they'll_ post it to MeFi. Who knows?

Of course, this being a community of sorts, there're bound to be numerous ways to connect, and various folkways that keep those connections civil.


posted by silusGROK at 1:42 PM on February 27, 2001

It's really simple.

MetaFilter is about discussion.

Self-linking is promotion.

We aren't here to generate traffic, that's what /.'s around for.
posted by cCranium at 2:09 PM on February 27, 2001

There was talk a while back about doing a "announce.metafilter.com" site, specifically for self-posting, and then after a project is posted there, and if it's deemed interesting, then it might get posted by someone else on metafilter proper.

One of the downsides with that though, is it creates this chain of events, that people may post and repost to announce, in the hopes that someone notices and pushes it to metafilter. Also, if announce gets a lot of traffic, metafilter may get a lot of links to new projects that might not be ready for viewing yet.
posted by mathowie at 4:08 PM on February 27, 2001

Simply don't allow the same URL to be reposted to announce.mefi -- interesting projects will generate discussions that bubble up to the top of the recent and most comments views, and that will be that.

I'd love to see announce happen... it would be a great complement to MetaFilter and I can see it going a long way to increase the feeling of community as people get to share and critique everybody's personal stuff.

I don't see why stuff posted on announce would ever need to be cross-posted to MeFi proper. Just let folks discuss it over there and be done with it. Eventually, on my.metafilter of course, I'd like to be able to see the latest 10 announce projects in a sidebar or something :)
posted by sudama at 4:21 PM on February 27, 2001

I'm still willing to start a MeFi mailing list, that would be quite handy for such things. It might allow for community-building outside of the structured links system of MeFi itself. Of course, I'd want to set it up in a way that it didn't cannibalize potential MeFi posts.
posted by aaron at 11:15 PM on February 27, 2001

There's also been talk about an "Ask Metafilter" thing, like "Ask Slashdot." I know I have questions that I would love to bounce off the MF community. A mailing list could be good for that.

On the other hand, whenever something like this is suggested, I think we should ask how it's going to change the dynamic of MF. One thing I can see is that a mailing list will only go to a subset of MF members, and that subset will be more "in the loop" than the larger group, and the A-list/in-crowd issue will be exascerbated somewhat. So I'd tread carefully. Discuss in MetaTalk?
posted by rodii at 7:21 AM on February 28, 2001

back to the site linked to.. so what? sure, it seems like a neat concept with some potential, but without any sort of functional listen feature with *full* songs, who cares? just looks like an attempt to get people to click on amazon affiliate links..
posted by valerie at 8:27 PM on February 28, 2001

Well, it's just that: a concept. The desired end result of either a player (such as a friskit.com that will cycle
through all the selected songs) is tough to accomplish, or the ability to create a cd compilation of any song
that currently exists in the world, doesn't exist either. The promise of using the internet to buy single songs
and burn your own compliation cd barely exists, and when it does exist, it's from a library of hand-picked
songs.

Since all that doesn't exist, one of the points of the site is to fulfill a void that e-commerce shops (or even
browsing at a record shop) doesn't/can't handle: finding/browsing songs. You can't even search by song titles
on many sites, and even then if you can, anything you look for will be very literal to the keyword you entered.

Another point of the site is discussion, as well as recollection and reinterest in certain songs and albums. I'm
satisfied from just the feedback I've received from people so far: just about remembering a song, or someone
who can't believe they didnt think of that song first, or someone who broke out an album that was collecting
dust just to hear a song and has now basically re-discovered how good the album was and has started
listening to it again.

And that's not saying that full songs can't be linked, it's just tough to find them readily available. It's not a
business or company. The amazon affiliate links are there to hopefully break even with hosting and bandwidth
expenses.
posted by magnetbox at 8:35 AM on March 1, 2001