For the past few months, DjTheS has been using the $25 allocated in prize money to host compos. While compos are excellent at drawing in specific types of music and for honing excellent remixes, they also fall short in attracting music that is outside the compo's submission guidelines.

I'd like to propose a new idea for the month of April. If DjTheS or someone else wants to host a compo by themselves, that is fine, but I propose that we put the $25 towards a sort of "song drive," which would encourage people to post as many songs as they can. The drive would increase the number of remixes on the site and draw in more listeners to everyone's music.

At the end of the month, we would consider all songs submitted in April that have at least five ratings, and rank them in order from highest-rated to lowest-rated. The first 25 songs would receive $1 each. A person could earn $1 or even all $25, which encourages people to post music. To prevent manipulation, we would encourage people to post links to rate their music, but prohibit those links from telling people what to rate songs. If a link is found and verified to have been posted by the owner of the works, then all of his or her songs would be disqualified.

Comments on this idea?

Lemme make sure I understand this thoroughly...

1. Over the course of April, the site hosts a "song drive" contest-type event where everyone, everywhere is encouraged to submit any songs they have.
2. At the end of the month, the top 25 songs from the song drive receive 1 dollar each, regardless of the author (I.E. one person who submitted 3 winning songs would win 3 dollars).
3. Users are encouraged to post links to their songs, but will be insta-banned if their links explicitly tell people what to rate their songs.

This actually seems like a good idea for the most part. If I could scrounge up some spare change, I'd like to find a safe way of adding an extra 10-15 dollars to the budget. Since, realistically, I doubt more than 40-50 people would participate, there's a chance that everyone that participates could walk away with at least one dollar. This near-guarantee of winning a couple bucks will likely attract a couple more users, at least.

Will this contest apply to every song that's submitted, or will it be hosted in it's own compo? 'Cause if it's the former option, well, I won't be able to upload any songs all April... xp

I don't have an opinion on this. I came to the site to try to enter the competition DJscot hosted for the potential $25 bucks since he advertised it on another site I go to :P

Shred, your understanding is the same as mine, except that we wouldn't "ban" people from the site for ratings manipulation, only that they would be disqualified from receiving any money. But links encouraging people to rate songs whatever they think they should be rated would be allowed.

People who link to their songs would likely leave those links up after the month ends, simply because they want people to listen to their songs all the time. Those links would continue to draw in new visitors long after the contest ends, and would also raise the site's ranking in search results for game titles relating to those songs (like "final fantasy remix"). The songs, of course, on a personal level will be interesting to listen to. And more content means that a person is more likely to find a remix that he really likes and which encourages him to sign up.

I would also hope that if we had $40 in prizes, then we would get 200 or more songs. It wouldn't be a 1:1 ratio. It's not difficult for a person to put up his entire collection at once, since there is no reason not to do so and the only limitation is bandwidth.

I personally like this idea a lot, it adds competition which makes stuff more interesting. So...I really hope for a song drive month, it would certainly be good for remixsquared.

Finally I could participate as well, although I really hope that a lot of people are going to challenge my usual 4-5 uploads. If I win something however, I'd save the prize for a new compo...

I wanted to post that we are going to go ahead with this proposal, hopefully to begin on April 1. Shred is going to be extremely kind and donate an additional $15. I asked if he could design a logo for the contest. Seeing as how his main logo design is so excellent, I suspect that if he chooses to design a contest logo, we will be pleased.

We also need a name for the contest within the next three days. If anyone has any ideas for a name, please post them here. The only one I was able to think of is "Audible April."

My first proposal for a name is "Soundwave", but I've also come up with ideas such as "Sound Rush", "Wave Rush", and "Musicolossus" (that last one is terrible). I've also E-Mailed a proposal version of the logo\banner\thingamajig to Quint.

I guess that "Soundwave" is as good as any other name. Unless someone feels strongly that they have a better name, I guess we'll just go with it.

I've already written the rules and am formatting them to be easy to read and understand, and will put the logo on that page as well. I should have something to show by tomorrow at the latest, and the contest will probably be able to begin on the 2nd.

Make sure to advertise it on places like Reddit :P

quintin3265 wrote:

Which subreddit would you suggest?

chiptune, music, r/gamemusic, to name the big ones I know of

Last-minute name change is go for launch!
Good luck out there everybody :D