Freesound Forums
Popular Downloads and Scoring
Started January 19th, 2006 · 11 replies · Latest reply by Halleck 18 years, 11 months ago
Two requests probably born out of sheer vanity:-
Would it be possible to have a "more..." button below the list of most popular downloads
in the last 7 days, to get an extended listed to say the top 50 (or more)? Over recent days/weeks,
the top ten has been dominated by the rbh-thunder and prac- files. People might like
to know what else is snapping at their heels.
Also, is it possible to see if a file has received any votes at all? Or who has voted? (particularly
for files the enquirer has submitted). How can we encourage more voting?
Mike
I put up a note on my page asking for comments / ratings on my sounds, initially to get some feedback on the quality. Absolutely no response, but then its not surprising considering the size of the project and now knowing the quality out there.
Not everybody is after the sound of a rain forest and not everybody is desperate for the sound of a chicken. Thing is, sincere users will attribute the sounds correctly, and contact the makers if they are used. To me, this cancels out any egotistical hoohar about ratings and download figures.
Good tagging is essential if you want to get noticed I reckon, apart from uploading a zillion sounds just because numbers matter and it will get you on the front page.
Personally I'd like to see something like monthly competitions that maybe gets people voting on different sounds, disgusting sound of the month, most unbearable 3 second sound of the month...best falling from a height sound of the month etc. Maybe those inclined would contribute and the winners would appear on the front page, highlighting their other stuff..... I DON'T KNOW!
I know freesound has a certain sophisticated user base but there's also the likes of myself who are obsessed with music / sound / noise who just like to have a bit of fun from time to time.....
h
I just downloaded a fantastic file from acclivity, http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14777, and noticed that the average over 80 users was 10.0, yet his file did not show up on the "highest rated sounds" section of the freesound homepage. . .any ideas why this might be?
Yeah, I think that the 'highest rated sounds' list is completely frozen. It never changes!
I also like harri's suggestions for voting contests.
Freesound should definitely have more contest! I love contests! Especialy when I get to do one of my favorite things (make sound)!
I demand contests! And categories! No not mere tags, I say! CATEGORIES!
- Worst sound of the month
- Funniest sound of the month
- most useless sound of the month
- most unique/original sound of the month
- best drumloop of the month
- weirdest sound of the month
- best rain/thunder recording of the month
- best urban/suburban recording of the month
- best birds/animal recording of the month
- best drum kit of the month
- et cetera
each thingy could be awarded at the end of the month. Then, maybe in the winners signature or something, "2-time winner of the ___ monthly sound contest".
That would be so awesome!
I agree that a rank-order list that never changes does little more than reinforce the "rich get richer" behavior. What I would like to see is some kind of "freesound radio" that just streams sound after sound (but not randomly). Would it be possible to stream freesound into Pandora? Or create a Pandora-like "recommendation radio"? Perhaps that could be a service that you charge for, to help pay the bills.
There, tha's better. Had to fix my signature. Anyways.
I don't quite understand what dave is saying about a radio station. Why a radio station? How will that work, seeing how some samples are really short, and that if it spouts out sounds that aren't related to eachother... ???
hello_flowers
I don't quite understand what dave is saying about a radio station. Why a radio station? How will that work, seeing how some samples are really short, and that if it spouts out sounds that aren't related to eachother... ???
I was assuming most people were familiar with Pandora, but perhaps not - go to www.pandora.com It is quite nicely done and I think has a successful business model. A group of people calling themselves the "Music Genome Project" listens to each song and records attributes for it:
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.Over the past 6 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
You create "stations" by entering an artist or song. Pandora then plays songs that have the same "genes". Most of the time it does an amazingly good job. Their FAQ claims that their free subscriptions are paid for by advertising, but I have never seen or heard an ad there. I would guess that most of their income comes when someone hears a song they like, and they click on a link to go to itunes or amazon to buy it - I am sure pandora gets a cut of the sale.
At Freesound, I like to listen to new sounds, sounds that have recently gotten comments, related samples, and occasionally a random sound. When I first visited I listened to the most downloaded and top-ranked songs, which took about 10 minutes, and left me with tens of thousands more sounds to explore somehow. I certainly can and occasionally do searches and explore in various ways. But most of the time I am not really searching for anything in particular - just something I haven't heard and that I find interesting.
I often listen to music with headphones while working. I would love to be able to just listen to a stream of freesounds, like stations on pandora. If I hear something cool that I would like to keep, I would go download it. Using pandora instead of randomly selected sounds would ensure that the sounds were somehow similar (e.g. field recordings, foley sounds). Also since it is a continuous stream I don't have to keep clicking away on my mouse to keep the sounds flowing.
I really think a freesound feed into Pandora could work quite well, for the following reasons:
1. Although there is no "sample genome project" akin to the Music Genome Project, I gather that Bram & Co. have developed algorithms that can extract many of these "genes" from samples. We could also appeal to the freesound community to record "genes" for each sound.
2. I believe the Creative Commons License that freesound uses would be compatible with what Pandora is doing. I just noticed that freesound is not yet international due to licensing restrictions. freesound has no such limitation.
Granted I don't think the world would rush out to listen to "freesound radio" but I suspect that many people would, especially as we all get smarter about this freesound project. For field recordings, I think that some kind of experience that let you sit back and listen to sounds from all over the world would be really appealing to people. I'm thinking of using the geotags to go on "aural journeys" - e.g. listen to sounds from a certain geography, or moving from place to place in some kind of theme, or following the sounds of a day from dawn to darkness in a certain type of environment (wilderness, backyard, city). Or provide a way for people to make a playlist of sounds for others to listen to - a kind of radio show or podcast. We are already doing this on freesound today, creating hour-long mixes to help people sleep, etc.
Of course streaming "freesound radio" directly from freesound would suck Bram's bandwidth dry. All the more reason to approach someone like Pandora about the idea. They seem to have solved the bandwidth problem.
Thoughts?
Seems to me like you could have two "top" lists at least. One is the "all time" favorites, and the other can be time-based (eg "Highest rated samples in the past 10 days", "Most downloaded in the past week", etc.) This is how sites like del.icio.us, flickr, and digg pick their front page material. What gets the most attention in the nearest time period.
Not sure of the exact math for any of these, but they seem to be better ways of digging up interesting stuff as opposed to maintaining the status quo as it were.