Audiotool board archive

What+Why

The most talented artists I know struggle to ignore the hypothetical perception of their future releases. I find myself taking less risks and putting effort in the wrong places, because no matter how much sincerity I produce with I'm still worried about how well my music will do and what that means about my production. A good solution for peace of mind would be the option to hide stats (# of plays, favorites, and comments) on your tracks/albums from yourself and others.
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Hiding stats from others addresses the reality that quality judgements are subconsciously made on tracks based on the amount of engagement they receive. I think that's harmful to the artform. Throughout the history of the site (and music in general) it's been thoroughly observed that engagement =/= quality anyway. A lot of popular tracks on audiotool are shitposts for example. I don't find statistics to be relevant nor helpful, and I want to reflect that on my profile.

Notes:

• You should still be notified when people favorite or comment on your track. Similarly, you should still be able to view peoples' comments and scroll through the list of people that have favorited/listened. My aim with this suggestion is shifting focus to the substance of engagement rather than the quantity of it!!!
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• Turning off stats shouldn't exclude you from charts, but upon charting I think the numbers should stay hidden. Being on the charts in general suggests a ballpark estimate of how your track is doing anyway, so it doesn't seem like an issue to me.
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• There should be a separate option to just hide all statistics in general (clientside); some may want this while others may only want to hide their own stats.
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• "Why not just try harder to ignore stats?" I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to do so because the metric itself is unnecessary. The value it suggests isn't specific enough to be useful to an artist, and for listeners it's a frequently inaccurate system for discernment. So why not address the common denominator and give users this choice?

Examples