TL;DR Genres will be replaced by classification tags which can be assigned by the artist and all listeners.
The introduction of the genres was a big step forward to find the music you like. It enabled us to provide you with a fresh stream of related tracks and weekly charts.
About one year after the introduction, we all made experiences showing some shortcomings of the current implementation: important genres are missing from the list, some genres are overcrowded while others seem to be dead, users were starting to abuse other genres to chart without any competition, lack of understanding of the genres, ...
We thought about several updates to mitigate those problems but every solution raised new questions. So we stepped back to re-evaluate the entire situation.
Some of our main challenges:
- Genres are never sharp categories and their definition even changes over time
- Avoid single-track niche-genres
- Include sub-genres and fusion-genres in search
- Add requested genres easily
- Charts
- Abuse
Taking one more step back we realized that the main function of the genres is to find similar music. But there are even more measures to group tracks together: moods, situations, XY type beat, ... and they all overlap. Lots of users already added those additional information to their tracks using the tags.
To cut a long story short: We are going to convert everything into tags - even the genres. While this seems to be a step backwards, we also introduce mechanisms to find related tags and allow everyone to assign tags to any track they want.
So in future one can express: "Hey that makes me wanna #dance", "Sounds like #hip hop and I like the #rap part", "I like that for #workout" (the full text expression is just for explanation - you'd just click on the #tag)
The more input you provide the better the results when looking for #dance music or a specific genre. We can even provide #dance charts or #workout playlists.
There are still some open challenges and there will be lots of WTF moments during the transition. But we believe we're heading towards a globally better solution.
Q/A
How to combat tag trolls? Users will get some kind a trust-level which affects the weight of their tag-choice. If we recognize that someone is abusing the system they will get their trust-level reduced. We can even automatically detect if users are consequently diverging from the community's choice and reduce their trust-level based on that. That also works vice versa: users that are known to have a good sense for the right tags may get a boost of their level. We might also want to enable tagging only if the user actually listened to n seconds or x % of the track.
What happens if 100 listeners select 1000 different tags? Only the most popular tags will be shown. So if 10 users add #sad and one user adds #melancholic, all will be taken into account internally but #melancholic might be hidden. (both tags are considered to be similar btw)
(I'll fill this according to your feedback)
Comments (99)
so we, the listeners, get to #tag things ourselves?
Yes. The artist suggests tags they find appropriate (to have something to start with). The listeners may add more.
I honestly have a really bad feeling that people will abuse the tagging system
Yeah - I'm pretty sure that this will happen.
I added my suggestions in the section "How to combat tag trolls?"
I think enabling tagging after listening to a certain percent of a track is a good thing. It incentivizes users to actually listen to people's music (if they want to tag it), but if the system doesn't recognize when a person skips ahead in a track, it kinda defeats the purpose, since people could still tag troll by skipping ahead like 2 minutes in a track, and tagging it with something stupid or irrelevant.
@dominik_fusek – look at this great post.
I believe 30 seconds of listening would be enough to determine the genre and mood of most tracks. It will be harder to do perform a mass-trolling with this restriction.
I added the section "What happens if 100 listeners select 1000 different tags?" to address some concerns about stupid/irrelevant tags. (loosely related to you question)
what happens if a track is under 30 seconds long?
i.e. shitposts/experiments
Those values were just an example. "needs to listen for 30 s or 80 % (whichever comes first)" would solve this.
Wow this is going to be a massive thing! Still would be a good thing to be able to distinguish between the tags provided by the creator and those from the community I guess.
I guess that tags (especially in comments) are only relevant to upcoming releases after the function being implemented? One possible option would be parsing comments by a routine generating tags from old comments to be able to include them in a generated playlist where those tracks would otherwise fall out. The parser could be based on a library generated from a list of user generated tags with a specific count >= x. That would probably be lots of extra work I guess but that wouldn't exclude old tracks from user generated taxonomy playlists. Just my two cents, need to think about that more, but I see a lot of potential in this!
tags by the creator can be bolded, maybe
Yes, the artist's tag should be highlighted somehow (there are lots of loose ends design-wise).
Parsing the comments sounds interesting but I believe the outcome will too thin. And there's a risk of wrong interpretation "This track is definitely not #trap"
I thought about showing the tags once we have collected the first few unbiased guesses.
After that we might want to suggest related tags to refine the initial classification.
Tags will be added anonymously. The track will just show an aggregated view.
But those are just details about the user interaction.
That personalized search thing is an interesting idea - will be hard to implement as a real-time thing or it will consume a huge amount of DB memory.
#nottrap
#lmao
So the system against tag trolls kinda works like Trust Factor in CSGO, right?
Good topic: I recently checked which tags were found to be similar to #lmao. Those were there results: #xd, #lit, #lol, #idk, #oof, #xd, #l m a o, #lit af, #n o i c e, #litaf, #oo, #l i t, #ooo, #xddd, #noice, #lol
Looks promising - not for mankind, though ;)
@balisthey yes, this should even work as expected :)
No, not exactly. There are parallels, though.
welp, mankind can wait :/
At least people could finally put trap kids in their place
with disregard to the community driven part, will this necessitate more more involvement from the team/community moderators? Seems complicated to me, but I am still excited to be seeing it in action.
I like the amount of involvement that this puts on the community for categorizing tracks properly. There will definately be a really rough start on this (I foresee much whining and people not reading this post to understand the change) but after people get used to this it'll be much more stable than the current system.
I'm all for it and I can't wait to see #rock on audiotool!
#rock ftw
That's quite possible. I believe there will be some some initial work in figuring out how the community reacts and which tools and rules will be needed to compensate for any abuse.
We can also nominate tag moderators, which simply have a boosted weight for the tags they assign.
I just asked the elders of the tag library what #rock means to them: #metal, #indie, #guitar, #classic, #alternative, #acoustic, #world, #electric, #string, #synth, #drum, #pulverisateur, #song, #upbeat, #heisenberg, #original, ...
(that's just based on the status quo of tags assigned by the artists)
The elders have blessed you with good good
related tags. May they have mercy on your continued endeavors.
I'm glad the staff is taking serious steps to address this issue.
How will this affect the charts system? Are these going to be completely overhauled?
this is pretty good :)
i was thinking charts needed an update, and i agree with everything.
but i do have one problem: how will people find new music?
in the current charts, only a few artists rule the charts because of their popularity. how will other artists compete? just a question.
im a trap kid and i agree with this
Good question. We want to offer more perspectives on music than just the genres. There will also be moods and situations associated with the tracks. So if you release a track, it may chart in "#dance", "#house", "#workout" at the same time. I believe It's way harder to dominate in non-genre categories.
Trap alone has many facets (#sad, #melodic, #edm).
For those leftovers I want to offer special views where one could browse through otherwise unnoticed tracks. But here's the problem with those tracks:
We cannot distinguish between bad (I mean really bad) and underrated tracks. Any idea on this?
Technically yes - they will be completely overhauled. But they will look similar.
The new thing is that charts may be bound to genres or other criteria (like moods or situations). The number and kind for those charts will be moderated (whatever makes sense). As a consequence a single track can appear in several charts.
If you manage to create a good edm track integrating some guitar skills you might chart in #dance, #rock, #house, #happy at the same time.
Note to me (thinking loudly): I just found a problem with that: while the association with multiple charts is fine to me, the placement should not be coupled. If your listeners agree that a track is a #1 in #dance it's not necessarily better in #rock. Just counting the plays/likes whatever might be insufficient. One possible solution is to limit the participants in the charts by their associated tag weights. Revisiting my example above: the track can be at maximum: 25 % #dance, 25 % #rock, 25 % #happy, 25 % #house. If other tracks are > 40 % #house (more pure house) they will take precedence over my example track.
We need to limit the number of tracks which can participate in the charts then.
enigma, eh?
I've got nothing
It boils down to the question which tracks shall participate in a certain chart list (e.g. #trap):
The solution will be something between those extreme cases.
Just got an idea: what about a special charts ("pandora's box", "bonanza" or another name which is not "leftovers") where only tracks will be included that cannot be associated with any other chart list we have. The contents would by highly volatile and hard to control (on purpose).
I believe it's worth a test.
sounds pretty cool, actually.
me: "computer: what means #rain to our community?"
computer: "soothing, quiet, calm, peace, calming, lullaby, nature, soft, dreaming, gentle, relaxing, bird, wind, water, emotion, dream, rose, thunder, sea, sleep, chillax, hopeful, peaceful, slow, crazy bout u, beautiful, chilling, relax, beauty, atmosphere, days, eyes, dr, lost, static, inspiring, thoughts, zen, ocean, pretty, reverb, paradise, memories, morning, aeiter, kevinwire, lovely, dramatic, melancholic, idea, hope, echo, opaqity, depressing, emotional, warm, serenity, winter, pad, story, falling, past, mellow, minor, spring, mr, chimes, tears, ..."
me: "Wow! Well done, community!"
Track roulette?
mr
Can of worms?
not sure how'd that relate to tracks lmao
lol @themp20q is one of the tags
There are several artists who added themselves explicitly as tag. That won't be necessary because we have that relation nonetheless but is also doesn't hurt.
If you check out @themp20q tracks, the relation is justified IMO.
Am I the only one who found it hilarious how easy it is to chart on reggae, oh well those days are gone now, and I know ppl who are going take this post too seriously, no I’m not advocating to keep the old genre system calm down
my bad
nah u good, just thought it was cool
Reggae is only one of many other genres where the charts have been vandalized for personal benefit. A high chart ranking in those genres isn't worth anything at the moment.
I'd like to change that.
Ok since it’s gonna be changed can I just publish one memey thing in reggae, it’s just for the memes
Er no - it's not Reggae, so don't post it there!
What does #colour bass
Mean to them?
Will have a look as soon as I switch back to that topic.
I was wondering if we should re-visit all existing chart placements after the overhaul. There are a lot of unjustified placements because of purposely wrong genre associations. This makes previous charts kinda useless in lots of cases.
What do you think?
jovee and i are # in bass music...lol
do it
do it
Yes
do it
do it please because i don't understand the genres i make
will audiotool have a downloadable app?
Kind of unrelated to this thread but: no, not planned but not impossible either.
WELL I DID IT ANYWAY LOL, it just proves the genre system needs to be fixed lol
But... this whole post is about how it's going to be fixed, the issue is known, the only thing "proving" it now does is make it worse.
reggae is the meme genre, i only post memes in reggae, im doing it now while i still can, because soon i won't be able too, and u can't deny that it is kinda hilarious when u see like a garbage meme song chart. I don't post my normal music in reggae, i am not actively seeking to be like, oh my god I charted in reggae (because that is not an accomplishment). you can shame me, i do not care, let me have my fun while i still can
"Other" seems like it would be the best suited for memes.
other is not a meme genre, reggae is a joke because of how easy it is to chart lol
You put your tracks into other if they don't fit in any other genre nicely, and last I checked, memes are not reggae.
the meme song by odins beard by project epipen, is labeled as future bass, no one complains about it, its obviously not future bass, there have definitely been other meme songs that are wrongly genred, the only reason you have a problem is because its reggae, I've already told you that I'm not putting it in reggae to go and pop off, its literally just to laugh at how easy is to chart in that genre
Yeah
Saying that memes belong in reggae is somewhat disrespectful to the genre itself
saying that by odin's beard is future bass is disrespectful to the genre itself, except no cares lol
im just sayin that it is kind of hilarious when a garbage song charts ok
Guys i got minecraft and i'm happy :)
what skin will you choose?
idk just messing around rn
https://www.minecraftskins.com/skin/13808252/baby-witch/
Yes please do it I don't have a clue what genre I am doing.
Welp, guess what kids you can down vote me but I’m still postin memes in reggae, and IMMA DO IT TILL THIS SYSTEM IS FIXED YALL, yeehaw, yeet, yeet, don’t get mad it’s not in other, yah yeet, yah yeet, fjebsjJnrhekwnjjJbsjsiajnWKEJWHJDNBEJSNJSNSBJNEN. FL FutUre TecHnoLogy GaY laeuehdjdjdbje, Alabama, nah neet, Oreo is retarded sishdydusbnsnkdjdhns, YandereDev milks money off Of PatrEon, fiRe Beat type Beat, law leet, reeeee, white condOm AuDioTooL dEvicEs, SHITTING IM KUREA AND IM SHITTING, ban ban downvote, oh nO tHis iS reggAe, this aiNt ReGgiE mY bodY is ReaDy dOwnvoTe. TRap kiD time TraP kiD time. you know prove should have a feature that autOSliceS everyThing in 30 SecOnd chUnks. Chapter 1, I’m reTarded DensE anIme ProTagonist WhO is AveRage lOokIng. CHApter 2 I now have harem. Ok,ok, bulkron, smulkron, yah yEET. I am KanYe WeSt, JesUs gOd. Ajjrjdjdbjsndjdndhsjsnndjdjdjsjdjjdjsjdjjsjdhdjdj. StUpId IdOt, yOu thInk yOu loOk smArt bY hAting On Something That is Popuar, becaus yoU have nO intelligence, sMall BrAin. Lmao, my penis wAs CriNging For tHe EntiRety of That sCenE.... Man this was coherent
Ok
Hope y’all realize that’s a meme
By the end of 2019 we re-prioritized some changes in favor of a redesign of the website. The implementation of this feature will be deferred.
hi
very good
the other question I have is what happens when someone is just really bad at categorizing their music.
like how I got downvoted, and then someone else put another meme in the reggae genre, and no one complains lol, makes sense.
honestly its common practice, reggae is the meme genre on this site, and no amount of downvoting will change that
Could get overruled by the listeners choices
Does this mean a "Video Game" genre might be added?
Chiptune
Ik
That is highly debatable...
I know Boss Music should be a genre.
But yes, technically... You are correct.
"I know Boss Music should be a genre."
...
ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJrxL7ler7g oh yeah what chiptune vizil
i might be the only one to ask for SUB GENRES, SUB GENRES.
(Don't tell me the cons i already know em all)
Very careful planning I see
No rush
Perfect the system
i cant believe that its been over a year since they added genres, and its only felt like a few months ago.
jebril
Sorry that progress has stalled on this. There are other priorities right now.
Wait that will completly distroy the charted sytstem
Just wondering, how would this handle misspelled categories? And would you be able to set a category that isn't music? So you could potentially chart in #vulkron or #lmao if enough people agree?
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/81469070993?pwd=Vm5yZnh4NGNMUmUvUW81Ky9KQWYzQT09
movie meeting ^