We've decided to add a music forum to HA here, though the structure is not entirely planned out yet. Given HA's traditional approach and desire to maintain a high level of quality in discussion, we believe that the problems presented in creating a music forum will be somewhat difficult. Therefore, we have setup this forum to allow people to share their ideas on how to make this a great place to discuss music, but without the typical problems created by this sort of discussion, especially in regards to the HA philosophy present within the rest of the forums.

So come and share your ideas here, and we'll see what we can do.

Obviously this is just the beginning of this section, so it is likely that the structure will change as new subsections are added. For now, until more solid basis as been agreed upon, we will simply have one single forum for all music discussion. Again, this will change over time

Nice. Squeaky wheels do get greased once in a while.

I think this forum is a good idea. I think you should create separete section's for the most popular Genre's (aka Pop, Rock, Metal, Classical etc.) Would be much easier and would keep people from flaming other's music taste down.

I think the problem of categorization here is going to be a little more complicated. We could simply add sections for popular music, but then what about music which falls outside of those sections? What about when people disagree on classification?

I believe there is probably a better solution out there, we just have to find it.

hmm, does a music forum match the cross-platform cross-format psychoacoustic audio compression topic on HA.org?

if, yes, I second superorc thoughts.

No, but we are gonna change the logo and the logo text pretty soon.

I think the answer is obvious:
the sole reason psychoacoustic audio compression is so popular and important, and has so many talented people devoting themselves in body and soul to make it better is MUSIC.
We love it, we love it so much that we frequent a forum that tells us how to make it smaller so we can fill dozens of gigabytes worth of music, so we can listen to any particular piece of music at any given time, while sitting in our computers. And we also want to make it smaller so we can carry it with us in many different devices. We visit a forum that gives us precios information on how to enhance our music-listening experience.
Music is the reason audio compression exists. Isn't that enough for you?
I think a music forum's existence in HydrogenAudio is completely justified.

I want to thank the Admins for trying this.
Hope it works out.

Besides the sub-forums, another issue, which should be adressed, are guidelines regarding the posting of Songs, Samples and OggPreviews as an extensions of the current Terms of Service.

Seconded. Here's a suggestion about genres (ripped from ebay.com "Music" category with some modifications):

Blues | Classical | Comedy | Country | Dance | Easy Listening | Folk | Jazz | Metal | New Age | Pop | R&B | Rap, Hip-Hop | Reggae, Ska | Religious | Rock | Soundtracks, Theater | World Music | Other

Besides these there could be sections (or a "general" section) for other music-related topics such as "For Musicians" or "Musical, Dance & Stage performance". Maybe I exagerate - I need some sleep. Good night.

since you mentioned the quality of discussion, i'll add my own thougths which probably aren't shared by many. Everything i'm going to write is my personal opinion - not some rule i would like to enforce on everyone.

IMHO, categorizing into genres is an outdated and limited way of thinking, talking - and listening to music.

There has been a long time in my life when i was focussed on a certain type of music "representing" my taste. After changing my taste from extremes of oldskool-techno to trance and goa music, to goth-rock and metal and finally to ambient, idm and experimental music, i finally understood that it isn't that important WHAT kind of music it is, but HOW it is made.

Additionally there is alot of music which doesn't fit into categories, because it either is a mix of different style, or it's a category of its own. Today, i would even say, that the latter is the goal a song/band/project should aim to archive - beeing original - a genre of its own - but this is just my personal taste/opinion.

For the above reasons, i think it may be an interesting approach, to not create subforums based on genres, but instead on HOW music is discussed in these forums.

There could for example be a forum for "listening hints" aka "i'm looking for something which sounds similiar to this and this - any ideas?".
Or there could be a forum for discussing music-philosophy.... like history and how different styles envolved and changed, or methods of how songs are composed, etc. - or more simple explained: discussions about -music- itself, not bands.
Oh, and some kind of rant-forum for stuff like "xyz rulez and is the best, blah" *lol*

These are just some ideas - i'm sure there are more possibilities.

- Lyx

Well.. one of the problems for example is that even though you listed off 19 categories, you basically missed all of the categories for the music that I personally listen to except maybe one..

Anyway, I kind of agree with what Lyx is saying here.

Please see my discussion of categorization issues here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showtopic/14507

I don't think splitting up the forum into genre sub-forums is a good idea at all for the following reasons:

1. Not all music is easily classified.
2. IMHO this music forum should not only be a place to discuss music but also introduce other people to artists or genres they might have never heard before and thereby introduce them into a whole new scene of music. If there were genre sub-forums I'd probably never discover anything new.
3. If all the genres you listed get their own sub forum, this music section will become unmanageable.

I do like the idea of having some kind of musicians sub-forum, which would discuss issues of making music (using digital/analog tools). If there's any further splitting up, this would be the way I'd prefer.

I don't really support a "categorization" of music.
Because, if you start splitting the music forum, one of the points of having such a forum would be defeated: knowing about other kinds of music (edit: dev0 beat me to this)

A workaround for doing this and still having many diferent subforums would be is the music forum had a "portal" page. But different from HA's portal page, like the foobar2000 forum does. That way, you get an idea if what is currently being discussed in a lot of forums, without actually browsing them one by one.

Think, if HA had no portal you would almost always go to your preferred music format's forum and would miss a lot of important/interesting info.

Perhaps the Music Forum should be "differentiated" from HA, like the foobar2000 forum.
Just some thoughts of mine...

It is. I blocked the General Music Forum from Portal and Active Topics. Could be that we block the Music Forum Related Discussion also, but atm there's probably no need to block that.

Don't you think it should be added to the "Hosted Forums" list on the main page? Just below foobar's forum link?

Well, if this "categorization" thing is implemented, there should be a "Dibrom's Choice" sub-forum
Just kidding.

"Other"? B)

Seriously, no matter what happens to 'music tastes'/'What bands do you like'/ ... part of music forum, other music-related sections should be created. Lyx has some good ideas about that IMO.

well, here are my thoughts on that matter...
the new forum could be shaped in two ways,
1. either let it shape itself for a while and see how it goes,
2. or to set frames (and thus boundaries) and rules from the beginning.
both aproaches would of course imply the general ha rules (obviously excluding objective abxing and the like ).
the first way doesn't have to be that bad, if you concider the different opinoins already concerning sunbforums for different styles. I for myself would strongly say NO to that kind of thing.
if one would categorize music in small forums for different styles, I think it would easily turn out to become solid forums on their on, rather than beeing part of the main forum, m u s i c. ppl may just vist their preferd sub-forum and leave all else behind. while this is not bad by itself, I thought (or hoped) one of the goals of this new forum was to open ones mind to other kind of music and discuss that, hear something new! and of course share thoughts about 'your' music (if one is set on one style) with others.
further more, the problem already brought up by dibrom et all of music that can't be easily categorized still stalks around. ppl would say, 'what, this is no metal, this is gothic', or 'gee, that's some r 'n b shit and no hip-hop' and so on.

so, while the idea of sub-forums may be appealing at first, because of it's claen structure and general acceptance (ppl are used to that), I would not vote for doing so because of my expl. above.
summary: it would break the spirit of the new forum the way I envision it (please discuss that), and also will lead to problems due to difficulties in categorization and the different way ppl percive music.

please discuss this matter (with me), as I'm realy intersted in this new forum!!

I think small samples + links to official sites like mtv.com etc should be allowed, though one should not be encouraged to attach a file every second, because of traffic.
as (propper) links are no problem IMO, samples realy should be allowed to directly be attached to the post (in the music forum), as it is sometimes hard to describe the music (some may be able to do so, some not). but again, this shouldn't be handled as the way to go, due to traffic.

so, thanks to the ppl who made this possible!
and I hope be can come to a layout that pleases everbody. and as this isn't possible, some solution that comes near to that would be nice. let's work!

edit: gee, some of my points already are adressed by others, I'm just too slow. nevertheless, get things rollin'.

my ideas so far on subforums:

recommendations - "i'm looking for something like xyz - any suggestions?"
music-philosophy - discussions about history of music, methods of songwriting, etc.
composers - discussions about composing music yourself (tech and non-tech)
music-distribution - discussions about ways of distributing music, including hints to "free artists"(artists who don't "sell" their music but give it away for everyone to enjoy)
general - general discussions about specific bands and genres
evangelism - for those who can't wait to tell others how great their fav-band is(this forum may be unnecessary if the staff managed to kill such postings in the other subforums - but this may become more difficult than simply providing a seperate forum for such posts)

- Lyx

EDIT: i stopped discussing this topic on this thread, and continued on the one dibrom posted instead: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=0#entry146803

I suggest the Music Discussion Section should have its own forum rules. Most of Hydrogen Audio Terms of Service would still apply to that forum, but some parts may need to be adaptated.

Anyway, thanks for making this request for a music category come true.

One sub-forum I'd love to see is a "sound quality" one, where posters could talk about the many editions, remixes, remasterings etc. Such a forum would integrate well with HA, I think : there are so many great "listeners" here, who could direct the would-be buyier toward the best-sounding edition of some CDs.

This could be a cross between the "hard facts" HA forum and the more subjective opinion-based music forum?

I completely agree.
There are some records that have been remastered so many times, it is very difficult to find the best-sounding versions.

And this is very important, IMHO, since the record-labels's "idea" of what constitutes a good sounding record is more a matter of fashion that of commons sense.
Look now, for example, the current thinking seems to be: loud=good