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  #61  
Old May 8, 2010, 08:45 AM
Ira Ira is offline
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Originally Posted by Another Soundscape View Post
The way the music is made (garage or not) is irrelevant if it's an official soundtrack or not (i.e. music featured in the game).
We're talking about the way things are presently. My point is that even if a game is released independently the soundtrack may not be.
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  #62  
Old May 8, 2010, 09:15 AM
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Yeah, about Mozart I agree they should be treated as regular arranges. I was mostly kidding to point that the "fan/unofficial-arrange" terminology is kind of nebulous. But as long as we keep clear what it means its ok.

I'm ok with Ira's suggestions but I think enterely dropping all the doujin/indie info in favor of fan-arrange would be a pity.
So why not simply preserve the publisher info (or checkboxs for doujin/indie and bootleg), but don't use it for colors like Another Soundscape says, and add the fan-arrange classification=orange?

This way ZUN or this could be blue again but you still know it was doujin/indie published. Same with doujin 'works' albums. Also, some people may be interested in doujin as a whole (not only fan arranges) so they could still filter non-doujin.

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Originally Posted by Another Soundscape View Post
Beyond this the actual publisher should already have the relevant "publish format" (i.e. a doujin group is a doujin group and so on) so you can find that info there. Am I wrong?
I guess a doujin/indie label could publish official albums if they get permissions (wouldn't this be one example?), but besides I think the db needs per-album info to filter.
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  #63  
Old Oct 28, 2010, 04:32 AM
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THREAD, WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE!

I'm getting more and more frustrated with the Doujin/Indie publisher type. When stuff like Super Meat Boy! Soundtrack gets the "Doujin/Indie" label I think something is wrong.

While publisher type is about the status of the publisher (in this case Danny's own company) it's still handled as the main thing to sort by and decides the "color" (i.e. type) of the entry. Beyond that there is no clear way to define what's Doujin/Indie (especially the latter). Is it indie if they don't have a big company backing? How big does that need to be? Danny B's music is immensly popular and Super Meat Boy! is one of the best selling/scoring game on Xbox Live Arcade. What makes his publishing different from Dog Ear Records except the staff/users obvious bias towards the latter being "superior"?

While it's not implied, I think it's dangerous to start labeling things like this as with the filter function many filter out really good original soundtracks trying to get rid of Touhou fan-arranges. I know Doujin doesn't exactly mean fan-arrange (also a reason we should maybe consider "Fan-Arrange" or "Fan-Made" as a publication type) but most people think of it as that.

The danger, and I want to stress this, is that anything not "commercial" (and Super Meat Boy! very much is commercial) will be thought of as "not a real soundtrack". Original soundtracks for games gets lost because of a hang-up on "publisher type", something that's even quite unnecessary when we have publisher pages with information.

This needs some re-working.
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  #64  
Old Oct 28, 2010, 05:50 AM
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Maybe we should drop "Indie" from the Publisher Type and just make it "Doujin/Fan-Arrange", like it was a long time ago. That way, soundtracks like this can be classified as commercial.

Also, Publisher Type --> Publication Type. Information on the album page should pertain to the album, not the publisher.
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  #65  
Old Oct 28, 2010, 08:35 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel View Post
Maybe we should drop "Indie" from the Publisher Type and just make it "Doujin/Fan-Arrange", like it was a long time ago. That way, soundtracks like this can be classified as commercial.

Also, Publisher Type --> Publication Type. Information on the album page should pertain to the album, not the publisher.
Now you're speaking my language.
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  #66  
Old Oct 29, 2010, 03:46 AM
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I was writing up this stupidly gigantic post, but I don't really feel like inflicting that on anyone (I am sleep deprived), so here is a summary. Yes this is a summary, imagine how long the real thing was.

#1: I'm voting that we stop using the word "doujin" in this context, because it's caused nothing but confusion and it's not really what we're talking about anyway: fan arrangements.

#2: My gut solution was Ira's suggestion of chucking the field altogether and adding a bootleg checkbox and "fan arrangement" classification. Not perfect, but with the gray areas we're working with I don't think there is a perfect. It is better, which is what's important.

#3: Thinking about the "Publication" idea, I think that could work too, if we can apply it on a track-by-track basis like Classification and change the name to something better like "Licensing" or "Copyright." There is overlap with Classification, because copyright by definition involves content, but I think it's probably a distinct enough concept to stand on its own because legal status isn't actually content. It's a bit more overhead, but it strikes me as a bit cleaner than splitting up the legal stuff. Putting "fan arrangement" into Classification isn't ideal anyway because, unlike everything else in the category, it implies more than just the content of the audio.

#4: And then the rest of the post was free thinking about ramifications of the above decisions and what we're trying to filter out, becuase I get the feeling we don't really have a firm idea about that besides "them doujins."

#4a: Bootlegs. We want to hide all-bootleg albums, so albums with the bootleg checkbox set or whose only licensing status is bootleg are gone. Mixed albums with bootlegged and legit tracks aren't possible with the checkbox, but are possible with a track-by-track field. I can think of exactly one album where this matters: the Marginal Sound Track.

#4b: Fan arrangements. "Fan arrangement" seems kind of specific to me for a legal status, but "unofficial derived work" is hella wordy and that's really what we're talking about anyway. We obviously want to hide fan arrange albums (albums with only that classification, or albums with only that copyright status). What about fan arrangement + original work albums? There are a lot of them, but I can't really imagine that someone who isn't interested in fan arrangements would be interested in a fan arranger's original works. Fan arrangement + original soundtrack albums? We probably want to show those, though. And what about albums that are simultaneously fan arrangements and original soundtracks?

#4c: Original works. Completely original albums by doujin groups are currently hidden if you're filtering on "Doujin/Indie." Either solution to the publisher problem would show them, because they're not fan arrangements. Is this what we want? The Synergy albums are hidden by the current system, which is probably not an intended consequence. But trying to quantify what makes them special is a minefield surrounded by another minefield so I dunno.
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  #67  
Old Oct 30, 2010, 04:47 AM
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Well, this change is possible, except the Classification field isn't in it's final form. We've talked about auto-generating the classification from individual track classifications (sort of like if an album is mostly arranges, it's classified as an arrange album.) This unfortunately would put finalization on this way off in the future.

We also don't filter by classification yet, and there are so many classifications, I wonder if anyone really wants the ability to filter on every one of them.

Also, one thought. I suspect that most people who remove Doujins from display also filter by Game or Anime to remove works albums, so the Synergy stuff wouldn't show up. Another thought, we could try to make a distinction between works by those who have Composition credits, vs. those who have Arrangement or Performance credits.
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  #68  
Old Oct 31, 2010, 02:50 PM
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Some more thought. What if "Publisher Type" became a "Special Classifier" with these choices:
  • (none)
  • Contains Fan Arranges
  • Is a Bootleg

Doujin and Indie would no longer be mentioned on the album page. Color-coding would be keyed off of this choice, so that albums that contain Fan Arranges are Orange, and Bootlegs are red.
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  #69  
Old Oct 31, 2010, 03:40 PM
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I need to think about this some more but my gut says I like the last option. The downside is "contains" seems odd with all the (and there are many) fan-arrange albums that are ONLY that.
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  #70  
Old Nov 1, 2010, 06:08 AM
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Well, I was just being descriptive. We can change the actual text to something better.
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