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(NOTE: I've been told that our previous music system asked people not to submit as they were added to a list. We now require submissions so please send your tracks if you want them included. Updated submission information here.)
Music has always been a fundamental and important part of the fandom thanks to its prevalence over the years in the actual show. We started off with remixes of what we heard in the recent episode, and it quickly evolved into encompassing a wide variety or original ideas created by every genre of musician out there.
We've tried many different systems here over the years to make sure we spotlight music as well as we possibly can. There is a lot to dig through every day and no system is perfect, but hopefully we've at least kept you informed on all of the good stuff being churned out. At the end of the day, spotlighting awesome pony stuff is the goal here.
Unfortunately we've had some issues over the past year with the current review apparently ignoring certain musicians for personal reasons and drama behind the scenes that I thought was originally a misunderstanding that we solved. As of a few days ago I've been made aware that it is not at all fixed, and if anything ended up even more messy than before.
With that in mind, we are destroying the entire system and rebuilding from the ground up! I'll structure it out below, but if you want a TR;DR: Music Posts will be less common and maximize quality for a bit. We are essentially going to be in a very selective transitionary stage until a beefier review process can be set up in the next month or so. There will be super high quality main page music, but also a weekly (or multiple times a week based on how much we receive) compilation for songs we can't quite review yet so you all can still be made aware of new tracks releasing. Anyway, read below for details!
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We will have two sections while we build a new system. I can't stress enough that this is temporary, so please don't freak out if you think your style of music won't be in spotlight:
Spotlight Main Page Music - These are tracks that are unquestionably pony themed. High quality remixes from the actual cartoon (Tell Your Tale, Friendship is Magic, Equestria Girls, G5 Shorts, etc.) along with original top tier vocal tracks (i.e. PrinceWhateverer, Vylet), or songs that build their entire theme on chopping up pony vocals in amazing ways (i.e. Sogreatandpowerful, PinkiePieSwear )
Open Music - This section will be a compilation of everything else happening whenever we get enough tracks to fill a post up (think 10-15 or so). Similar to our Open Art section, there won't any super strict quality requirements. It still needs to be based on pony, but if you want to get all experimental with it or are a new musician still learning, this is the place. Most purely instrumental tracks will also land here until we can get our new review system up and running, as these have always been, by far, the hardest to place.
Again, I don't want anyone to think we are just ignoring instrumental tracks going forward. We want to be able to review these properly. Some of the most important tracks in the fandom were instrumental early on. I still listen to For the New Lunar Republic just for a dose of nostalgia even this many years later. For now though, the main page will be focused on high-end unquestionably pony songs while we build that team.
For the future review system, our goal is to avoid as much community bias as possible. EQD has always been built based on judging content rather than creator in every other category. Music review on the site has been essentially outsourced for the past few years, which had musicians judging their friends. This is a system that lead to both low quality tracks being posted, along with many tracks being lost due to personal issues between members of the music community. Unfortunately this has kinda killed people's trust in our review process for music, which hurts everyone in the long run. The viewers grow tired of low quality songs and stop bothering with the entire section as a whole, while some songs never even make it due to infighting between music folks.
Back in the super early days of the fandom, and what many consider the music golden age, we essentially teamed up with another cartoon animal fandom who already had a strong music review base to help avoid bias in bronies voting on fellow bronies. It was a fusion of pony musicians and external musicians that could judge tracks entirely on their merit assigned based on how little they knew of the actual person they were reviewing and focused entirely on the song itself. I've already talked to some of those old reviewers and a few are interested.
It will take a while to get this system up and running though, so please bare with us with the transitionary system in the meantime. We want to make the main page music exciting for your average EQD lurker to view again while simultaneously providing musicians a fair process that doesn't take into account behind-the-scenes rivalries. At the end of the day, we all just want to enjoy more pony, and music is a huge part of that!
