Audiotool board archive

I understand the concerns of audiotool as a daw becoming useless. You have to remember what the main demographic of audiotool users are. People who can't afford DAWs, audiotool will always be there for them. For outsiders looking to promote their stuff onto audiotool, this raises concerns that you cannot make good music with audiotool. But as long as it is discouraged in some way, i think it can be executed well. Such as revoking charting and such. The main idea is to connect followers from my audiotool presence to everywhere else seamlessly. Within audiotool. I still plan to use both audiotool and bitwig but it is controversial to upload my work here. I have the skills and i feel like i've shown it's possible to create good music no matter if its on audiotool or bitwig with my latest album.

assuming if things went my way, i think audiotool would change. we would see more outsiders upload their tracks onto audiotool. however i still see the possibility of them using audiotool's DAW anyways. i feel like people are always looking too far into the worst case scenario for everything. How about we trial this? let's try it out, see what actually happens. I think audiotool could blossom!

The bullet point in the terms is outdated and will be removed

Respectfully, that's the stupidest decision Audiotool could make at this point. It will legitimize everything you guys have done in the past to keep this site from being overrode with copyright and songs that just simply aren't AT. What's the point of the sample-pocalypse, and adding limits and making sure AT is an AT-styled place to make music if you're just going to remove all these rules and limitations and let users go free? Just seems stupid in my eyes.

1. Not all tracks have to be moderated. People can report tracks to be moderated.
2. Moderators could force enable this feature on tracks. Depending on how serious this issue is, this could be a permanent setting for the account or a ban. How about instead of dismissing ideas, we discuss them?

Everything is naturally able to be circumvented. How would you feel about the addition to add samples onto audiotool, when audiotool has never had samples. The risk comes with the site changing to allow sample artists, people can upload entire tracks from other DAWS and people can upload copyrighted material which puts audiotool in danger. This all sounds very dangerous to audiotool, therefore we should not add sample functionality to audiotool. And yet we do, and it works well in my opinion. I feel like last time, moderation on samples were more laidback, and that's why audiotool got into trouble. But I cannot confirm myself.

Let's throw away the worst case scenario in our heads. Let's throw away that "audiotool is too small to improve the site" can we just discuss what to improve instead?

For the issue of too many tracks uploaded to be moderated by humans, we can look at how YouTube handles copyright. Is it perfect? Nope. Does it work? Yes. How about we take a note from their books?

Audiotool could open up positions for more moderators, like Reddit. Which would be the easiest solution.

I say to throw away the worst case scenario, but what i really mean is think more carefully. Try to see how it could improve things, on both sides. I feel like the community does not want to add a single new feature to this site because it's too small to handle it or the community is too fragile. Let's discuss that. What exactly needs to change to make this work safely?

That decision needs to be explained, in my opinion. For the democracy of this site. Some people find this issue pretty important.

I forgot to add: Why does removing chart rights on audiotool make this idea execute well? Well, think about it from the perspective of an artist trying to set foot on platforms. What is the point of uploading your work here if the community does not welcome it and it can get taken down or have chart rights removed. It would be a hostile environment to actually share your work here. It's much easier to just upload your work on soundcloud and youtube. This is why I think this idea could work.

And the main goal of this is to blend the space between my audiotool creations and outside DAW creations, for my fanbase on audiotool.

even if it's not an issue anymore according to the audiotool team, i still think it's important to discuss this anyways. as you can read below, other users find this subject controversial

I understand what I said sounds bleak, but I think it's realistic when you take this into account: Digital art, especially music, is an extremely oversaturated and overpopulated field, which is a hard pill to swallow in itself. There are thousands more just like you and me who want to make and share music; there are far too many options for the average listener. As such, people will do anything it takes to get heard, some the ethical way, and others, the intrusive way. I'm sure you remember all of the bots, shameless self-promotion, and BS services (i.e. buying listeners or followers) on places like Soundcloud. Once people figure it out, they'll see Audiotool as a golden opportunity to explode, which isn't a bad thing in itself. It's what some of them will do to achieve that. Also, spam on Audiotool already somewhat works, but the results are super variable. There were times when a song reached #1 on the singles charts due to spam. I don't think the negative results would be immediate, but I'm confident in its inevitability. Not all artists are villains, but it only takes a few to bring the horde and ruin it for everyone. This is all in regards to if it were simply allowed without any moderation right now as things are.

In regards to your sample comparison, I think it's kind of loose. samples usually aren't full songs, rather they're mostly one shots or loops of varying lengths. With this in mind, they're more akin to a creative tool for the creation of a song vs the sharing of an already finished one. Due to this, the context as to how the introduction and re-introduction of samples affected Audiotool wouldn't be as similar to the potential outcome of introducing external music to the site as you'd think, but I understand where you're coming from, and I'd consider it as well, but with a grain of salt.

I cannot stress enough that this change could have the potential to ruin Audiotool down the line. At first, I was totally against having external tracks shared here, but I've become more open to the idea so long as it's executed wisely. I don't think it's a good idea to just jump in and see what happens without any precautions. Something I thought of was extended integration from other areas like YouTube (YouTube would make more sense for music videos and such). There could be a section dedicated only to videos or external music on your profile. It can have favorites enabled but be exempt from the charts like how samples are (your idea). It might be able to achieve the goal of connecting your followers with all of your music seamlessly.

I would like to explain my sample comparison, it is not more about the features but rather the risks of introducing the feature. I feel like they can be comparable to introducing this new feature.

Reasonable worries/concerns. What could we do about this though instead of straight up dismissing the idea? I cannot stress this sentence enough. I have some suggestions. How about instead of letting new accounts create these types of posts from outside of audiotool, we introduce a reputation system? (Not my original idea) The details of how this could work would need to be discussed thurther and such but what i have in mind is things could increase your reputation such as years on the site, uploads, favorites, followers. For people like you or me who have used the site for a long time, this makes sharing our work very easy and guilt-free. For outsiders, they need to interact, intertwine with the community and use the audiotool DAW in order to post their works from outside. Which i think is a plus!

Ideally it would be nice if external/audiotool music were in the same place but for there to be an obvious tag that it was not made on audiotool. and perhaps even accounts can have an option to completely hide these external tracks on the website so they can't see any.

I wasn't saying we shouldn't discuss it, I was simply stating why I think that particular suggestion wouldn't work. Do discuss! in fact, I wanna be proven wrong on more negative topics like this. Hell, I wouldn't feel so negatively about the idea of a second samplepocalypse if audiotool develops more robust sampling tools, and does more partnerships with sample companies. I should write a board topic on this, shouldn't I?

Sure, go ahead. Also my bad

Sorry if what I said came off as a dismissal. That wasn't my intention; I'm extremely wary of the potential drawbacks of this change, and I want to stress caution. I wasn't only speaking of the negatives; I mentioned that I became more open to the idea of allowing external songs here, but I neglected to acknowledge your ideas, which I wanted to let you know, aren't bad at all. I did pitch an idea of my own too as to how this could be implemented, but perhaps it wasn't what you had in mind. What you mentioned about reputation and new users needing to interact and use the DAW first is something I think can work too, alongside the tag for it being external, and exemption from the charts (They could have their own charts even).

That's ok, sorry if I'm too pushy on this feature. My goal is simply to gather ideas and solutions for all the concerns

By the way, forgot to mention but i like the idea of the external link to go listen to the music outside of audiotool, but it would need to be within the users track page without being segregated

Thank you for doing this. What do you exactly mean with demo?

In the Google form, the option to vote is called "Demo mixes/30second clip of non-audiotool tracks are ok" so people are ok with 30s previews or demo mixes which are unfinished tracks at full length mixed together into a single track. Like this: https://www.audiotool.com/track/vlqq27p5fm/

Oh, yes let me be the first to admit that this pie chart isn't that accurate. People can vote multiple choice so it may look like the majority of people are ok with tracks being treated as demos/stems but there is the possibility to have the majority vote saying that no foreign tracks are ok.

Some people also voted "no foreign tracks" and demos/stems which doesn't make sense at all. Next time i think i will make a better form. If this goes anywhere more serious, I'll make a revised version. The goal for this form is to get an idea about people's opinions because the subject is ambiguous

gotcha. thanks for explaning

Yeah, if we didn't have the "unsafe" samples, we wouldn't have AT as we know it.

Every genre on here has been helped out by the unsafe samples.