New features for Reasontalk

[Kenni]

Hi all,

I thought I'd share with you what we've been talking about lately in regards to new features. While Allihoopa is a nice idea, we think there's a need in the Reason community, a void left from the good old Reasonstation.net days. I'll just outline all the ideas that I've been playing with, and have been talking with the other moderators about.

Idea 1: The Repository

In short, this is the place for sharing all your user generated content with the world. Patches, refills, cover art, you name it. On top of that, I like the idea of sharing actual reason project files, instead of just a reason project including a bounce, like Allihoopa. As outlined in this post, Rack extensions could become a problem. To me, it's not. First of all, you're able to open and playback a reason project, even if you miss some extensions. For the rest, it's self-explanatory why it's not a problem with a few suggested features:

• Reason projects can be public or private
• You can create collaborations between users. In collaborations, you can outline internal guidelines on which RE's to use
• The reason project overview (before download), will show you a list of Rack Extensions and Refills used, and provide a link to the Prop-shop to obtain them if you want. Reason does this as well

So, the "selling point" of this repository idea would be something like:

• Share your Reason projects with everyone
• Share them only with the people you collaborate with
• Share and find cover art
• Share your refills or patches
• Share your project templates

Personally, I really like this idea, and is the one I think have the highest priority.

Idea 2: The Marketplace

This is where the more serious developers, refill creators, tutorial makers and template designers could sell their premium content, something that is already happening. The advantage of this would be to gather everything on the same platform. I'll keep it short. Content in this area could be:

• Refills
• Project templates
• Tutorials

Idea 3: The Publisher

I currently own a share in an aggregator service, that can publish to more or less every digital platform, except BeatPort. (So iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, etc. etc.). This could be the place, where Reason users could publish their music to the entire world. However, since there's expenses involved with each and every release, this would require one of two models. A) Subscription service, or B) A cut of music sales. However, the possibility is there, and for some, this might be an attractive feature. So an overview:

• Publish your music to nearly every digital platform
• View statements and sales statistics

Conclusion

No matter which idea we might go with, there's a lot of work involved. Especially with idea 1, the repository, which includes a lot of pre-study as well. However, this is personally my favorite idea, since this particular setup is currently missing.

Please let me know what you all think, and share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions with us!

[submonsterz]

Pm sent with ideas

[The_G]

Idea 3: The Publisher

I currently own a share in an aggregator service, that can publish to more or less every digital platform, except BeatPort. (So iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, etc. etc.). This could be the place, where Reason users could publish their music to the entire world. However, since there's expenses involved with each and every release, this would require one of two models. A) Subscription service, or B) A cut of music sales. However, the possibility is there, and for some, this might be an attractive feature. So an overview:

• Publish your music to nearly every digital platform
• View statements and sales statistics

Conclusion

You could also charge a flat, per-song/album fee. That might be the simplest way of doing things.

[SoulState]

Love the Repository Idea! That would be a great.
When Propellerheads dropped that facility from the PUF years back...quite a few of us missed it!

[ZombieFightsShark]

Don't know that I have any great ideas, but as a ReFill creator I'm very interested.

I definitely agree that there's a space to be filled - that NEEDS to be filled.

-Chad


ZombieFightsShark.net

[Noplan]

Even if reasonstation was not perfect it was my favorite reason community just because of its functions in sharing and rating projects. nowhere else i had so much collaborations and fun like there. I would appreciate those functions.

[sinnerfire]

Idea 1: The Repository

Please make this come true!!

I will definitely contribute a lot of song files, refills>

[Kenni]

Bump.

Please keep the ideas coming

[Lizard]

Are you looking to implement these ideas (more specifically #1) in phpbb or another platform?

[Kenni]

Are you looking to implement these ideas (more specifically #1) in phpbb or another platform?

Well, to share some light technical details, first and foremost, I'm writing an API. This API won't reuse any phpBB code, but it will be digging in to the forum database. This way, I can tie any future portals, such as any of the above ideas together with the user base, and do some implementations with the forum in general.

All future platforms tied to this forum will have nothing to do with the forum software itself. I want to separate the forum software from everything else as much as possible. This way, updating the forum software or any of the other systems individually wont be a problem, and the level of security will be as high as possible.

[Kenni]

Oh, by the way, if there's anyone out there who want's to contribute to the development, send me a PM and include some references to stuff you've done.

Main technology as of now are PHP (Lumen/Laravel). Deciding on future technology of any coming features will be discussed as a team, but it might include looking at technologies such as C# (.NET Core), Java (Scala/Groovy), PHP (Symfony/Laravel) and whatever you can contribute with.

[mreese80]

Sounds good to me. The people know what they want anyways. You get better response and answers from the people anyways. Sounds very beneficial to me

[pushedbutton]

I would love to have more focus on sharing so the repository is a great idea... http://www.reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7493705 ... after making this post and having practically no feedback it would be great to set some focus on collaboration and learning and detract from all the batch and moaning that goes on here.

[moneykube]

-song files... listing re's used
-a place for patches and refills would be cool but sort of exists now... but still a dedicated place would also be cool
-like the private public option for collaboration, but if it is private collaboration there is always drop box and google so maybe more work then needed
perhaps separate place for samples
-know nothing about coding though so I'm no help there
-this would indeed make it a go to place for many reason users not upgraded to 8 and against prop attempt at said venture

[gak]

I seen nothing wrong with any of the ideas. For those about rock (work harder than we deserve), we salute you!

[SA Studio]

"Idea 3: The Publisher

I currently own a share in an aggregator service, that can publish to more or less every digital platform, except BeatPort. (So iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, etc. etc.). This could be the place, where Reason users could publish their music to the entire world. However, since there's expenses involved with each and every release, this would require one of two models. A) Subscription service, or B) A cut of music sales. However, the possibility is there, and for some, this might be an attractive feature. So an overview:

Publish your music to nearly every digital platform
View statements and sales statistics"

This sounds like a really good idea

[Jagwah]

I'm curious about how this will effect Prop's Allihoopa venture. Sorry as I don't understand Allihoopa very well (R7 user) so I may be well off, but will these proposed features be 'stepping on toes' so to speak?

[pushedbutton]

I'm curious about how this will effect Prop's Allihoopa venture. Sorry as I don't understand Allihoopa very well (R7 user) so I may be well off, but will these proposed features be 'stepping on toes' so to speak?

well Aliihoopa is still only sharing wav files so they've not provided anywhere for reason files/patches/midi, all the good stuff.

[Jagwah]

well Aliihoopa is still only sharing wav files so they've not provided anywhere for reason files/patches/midi, all the good stuff.

Man that's so archaic. Surely their intention is to eventually provide such features as being suggested here (at their desired snail pace), which is why I wonder about toes being stepped on.

Heck, it's probably for the better anyway. Imagine if Reason became open source freeware - would we start seeing sorely requested features users have been longing for much faster than we can typically expect them?

[SA Studio]

I'm curious about how this will effect Prop's Allihoopa venture. Sorry as I don't understand Allihoopa very well (R7 user) so I may be well off, but will these proposed features be 'stepping on toes' so to speak?

It sounds 10 times better to me. Sounds like Kenni knows a few different key spots to send music to = Spotify, iTunes, etc, and has experience in making that happen.

It's the one thing i'm terrible at, actually = Promotion and Distro.

I would throw, shoot, or catapult money at someone who can make that final bit of distribution easier and more of a non-brainer.

Allihoopa?

That whole service is not a repository for anything that's musically serious. It's something you drop to after you're done using Figure while you were making another drop, if you catch my meaning. Take a listen to most of the "drops" on there = entirely un-musical and un useable.

A service like the Publisher could start a tidal wave of production = There's people here, raises hand, who have full albums and productions done with Reason ready to go and distribute. Once a few of us get the ball rolling, other people who may NOT have finished works yet, will perhaps see that's it's all a bit easier to bring something to the "finished" point and it could really encourage much more production, and quality production, than the entirely basic and juvenile "loops" that get dropped to 'Hoopa.

[pushedbutton]

Personally I feel that I have some good ideas but I have no confidence in my finished product so consequently nothing gets finished. Having someone to kick my ass about working towards an end result, pulling me out of a creative loop and helping me to see past my own nose would be a million times more useful to me than any other tool.

As I'm an antisocial bastard I much prefer to have you lot at arms length but I'd love to share my ideas and creations with you. Giving you a wav file doesn't really show the full story but being able to share combinators and Reason files would be a better way to try to illustrate my intent, even if what's going on in my head doesn't match what's hitting your ears.

I've got better at going through a mental checklist to make sure my tracks conform with some sort of expectation but I've always thought that having a master plan or template to work from gets me just a bit closer to getting something finished.

Any way to encourage members to collaborate or at the very least, provide critical feedback would be great. I'm just a guilty as anyone else for not spending time listening to other people's work but I'm sure someone can devise some sort of way to make this more of a focal point of the site.

Perhaps some sort of radio stream that we could add to would help to highlight all the talent that's out there and while a track was playing we could provide feedback, request the file to work on or just ask a question. I find negative feedback much more useful than positive feedback as long as it comes with a suggestion for improvement. Eg. 'those drums suck' is useless feedback whereas 'the drums are too repetitive and there's not enough bottom end' is helpful.

Themed challenges and events are always fun and productive as long as enough people get involved. I am not especially interested in challenges that are there to promote a particular rack extension because they tend to be too specifically focused on that device.

I realise not everyone is at the same level and it can be hard to not scare some people off while boring others but coming up with some general themes for each month might just help develop more of a sense of community around here.

I'll shut up now.

[Jagwah]

Yeah I agree with you guys, I think this will be great for all of us and at the same time strengthen the community.

Love the idea of a radio stream of Reason musics.

@Kenni I am particularly interested in the publishing idea. It's something a lot of us would be interested in for sure! Just want to suggest adding information / links about mastering services - there's a few guys here who already do it so it would be good to be able to find the info on them when wanted. Very exciting stuff man, best of luck with it and be sure to let us know if you need any help.

[Kenni]

I wish there was a more elegant way to do this. Especially because you were a part of the team doing the migration to the new Reasontalk platform. You were a huge part of everything here, but then chose to have your account deleted. I'm sure you had your reasons, but your response to the thread about the ideas (definition: intention, conception of a yet-to-be-detailed future) would have had more vitality being posted here as a user, instead of a podcast. I'm going to include your podcast here, so that people can listen through your thoughts, and I will also leave a comment about them.

The podcast about the ideas

Let me start out by saying that even though it might be a language barrier, I find your laughing and negativity towards the ideas posted arrogant and belittling at best. I ended the post with "Please let me know what you all think, and share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions with us!" - The whole tone of my post was "nothing is set in stone" - I guess you ignored that. Ideas are subject to change.

The Repository

You might have some points about how the repo would be used. You also have a point about being able to attach files to posts in the forum. It's just a very bad platform for file sharing. The repository is ment as a place with structure. That's all I can really say. People might use it a lot, or maybe they wont. I'm a developer. I love to develop. For me, the satisfaction is to create something that works. People can use it if they will, or they can chose not to, it doesn't really change anything for me at all Personally, I'd like a place to share my creativity in the slightest forms with like-minded people, so templates, patches, self-made refills etc. I think there's actually someone interested in this, besides me.

The Marketplace

Monetizing? Really? And you even brought up a premature comment about it that I made in the chat when we migrated. When I ran this with the other moderators (so, hidden from public), I wrote this, quote:

I also realize, that this smells like monetizing, but I promise you, it's not. For me, it's a profound love for developing and building communities, and in case any of the above would become reality, I'd only "require" that the server(s) cost was covered.

Implicitly stated, if I have to pull out money left and right every month to run this, it won't happen. I think that's a fair standpoint. Other than that, I couldn't care less about the money. If I did, I'd ask for donations or plaster the site with ads already, since running this place costs money, after all.

The Publisher

I don't know where you've "read on the internet", that you can publish music to all the major digital platforms, just by using XML-file magic. Please let me know, so I don't have to pay money to keep my aggregator running. I've been active on a label level for the past 14 years though (and have been running my own label since 2007), so I kind of know how things works these days. So far, I haven't heard of a way to publish music on major digital platforms for free, until I heard your podcast.

Here's a rundown on how my aggregtion service works, and what is currently required to release music to major platforms:

Requirements

• Cover art, minimum resolution 2400*2400
• Registration for mechanical rights on a per release basis (Locally, NCB for Scandinavia) ~ $80 per release
• ISRC label code: Mine is DK-VD2.
• ISRC codes for all tracks in a release, ie: DK-VD2-1600101 (Country-labelcode-YearReleaseTrackOnRelease) - ~$7 for the release itself, and ~$0.90 per track
• EAN Code (bar code, this is required as well) - $17, unless you are allowed to produce them yourself

There's a few more requirements. This is what you get in return though:

• A CSV file with ALL aggregated sales. This includes Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, AT&T, YouTube, Google Play etc. - Here's a full list of those I have a deal with
• Statements with calculations
• Royalties paid up front, so no legal stuff
• NO CUT FROM SALES!

I want to liberate fellow musicians from all of the requirements. Period.

When all the legal stuff is cut from sales, you get 92 cents per dollar. That's how my label works, and that's how the aggregation service I have works. Obviously, allowing users of Reasontalk to publish their music on all distribution channels requires some "moderation".

Then there's your argument about the "user base" - If you're a musician, and want to sell your music, this is really only a concern of your own. See this service I thought of as a way to skip all the legal crap which makes you focus on what you do best - Music. You make it sound like I wanted to build "The Publisher" as a way for people to get "known" - I'm not. I'm opening the world of commercial music for those who want to try it out and take advantage of it. A world which is otherwise a pretty closed and commercialised area.

The next time you want to question my intentions, come to me directly instead. For those of you who are able to read between the lines, I'm sure you can see the benefits and possibilities in this.

Anyway, done ranting Keep coming with suggestions!

[avasopht]

Something I just saw on Quora:

This is Elon
Elon wanted a new payment method on the internet. Elon has created PayPal.
Elon wanted to fly into space cheaper . Elon created SpaceX.
Elon wanted to drive an electric car . Elon founded Tesla Motors .
Elon wanted better transport. Elon will create Hyperloop.
But Elon does not tell everyone how the world is bad .
Elon is changing the world .
Be like Elon

I get what Hydlide was saying, but that goes with everything. There are plenty of ways to get it wrong, which is why you want to think about how to do it right. There were countless social networks before Zuckerberg got it right, endless Bejewled clones and Crush the Castle's before Candy Crush and Angry Birds and countless failed attempts at bringing gaming to mobile before Apple released the iPhone. The successes just got it right where others got it wrong by looking for solutions and understanding the different players in the game (or they just got lucky).

In any case it could fail hard or it could succeed in spectacular form, it's all down to execution and responding to feedback appropriately. If it fails then the content could be preserved on github for free anyway.

[avasopht]

Here are my thoughts.

Considering zipf law there will always be big fish and small fries in any arena, and Reason is a niche in and of itself. That being said by thinking outside of the box we may be able to find a worthwhile solution that positions itself well enough to provide a service that produces tangible results that result effectively providing a solution to one of many problems that musicians and content creators struggle with on a daily basis.

I think that Allihoopa intends to connect markets by appealing to your casual user who just wants backing tracks, connecting them to either Reason based content creators or perhaps they will allow other sources to drop to Allihoopa. I do suspect they will go for creating something not too dissimilar to uJam, and all of this might be a joint effort to do this - given uJam's involvement in the IDT.

So the basic premise for Allihoopa may have been Reason users creating advanced content to be digested by vocalists, rappers, musicians who want to jam or even just regular music lovers who want to listen to a variety of novel music creations.

It's all about managing and facilitating motivation and production in a way that yields value that exceeds the sum of the parts. I think it would be worth drafting a variety of around 20 short 30 second pitches / value propositions / statement of purpose and perhaps prototyping with pen and paper UI drafts and toying with the idea. Weekly development meetings would suffice for a couple months while ideas are being evaluated and toyed with. Such low cost and shallow prototyping allows a diverse range of solutions to be explored and ground to be covered that is more likely to strike the right chord than going in with the first few ideas that come to mind.

All in all it's about strategically and collectively identifying and solving problems to create a communicable, marketable and relevant value proposition. There are plenty of problems to solve in music creation, learning, sharing and collaboration. Sometimes it's little more than guidance and leadership that makes the real difference.

So maybe a little brainstorm of what problems there are to be solved and connections that can be made would go a long way.