archive?

[dobro]

1 Should mp3s for these threads be archived somewhere so that people can always hear them?

2 How do you do that?

I use soundcloud nowadays to post stuff here cuz it's so easy just to click on the track in the body of the post, plus it looks cool to see it scrolling along the waveform. But I regularly take stuff down from Soundcloud because of the limitations of space there, and then the mp3 is gone and the thread makes no sense if you can't hear the mp3. But how often do people read older threads and listen to older stuff? Most of the time, I just listen to stuff here while people are working on it, so most of the time it doesn't matter to me. But occasionally, I've gone looking for stuff that was posted a while ago and been disappointed when the mp3's missing.

So... at the point when I was going to take sth down from Soundcloud, I spose I could transfer the mp3 to something like Soundclick (where I could leave it forever) and then edit the thread so that it linked there instead of Soundcloud.

Thoughts?

 

[Greg_L]

I think it's obviously up to the original poster. Some people might not want their MP3s lingering around forever.

 

[dobro]

Yeah, for sure - the person who put it up has the final say about what happens to it. I was just wondering if anybody gives a shit one way or the other about being able to listen to older stuff.

 

[heatmiser]

I have run into that a few times where I wanted to go back to an older track of someone's and the link was dead. Disappointing, but not a huge issue, as I assumed that they no longer cared for the mix and didn't want it out there anymore. I guess if I wanted it that bad I could've downloaded it and/or bought it at the time.

I don't think this site purges any of that stuff though, does it? I mean, as long as the OP leaves the content on whatever site they linked to, it'll still be there if others revisit it later, right?

I think it's an interesting idea as I imagine I would scroll back through time and listen to more older tracks from members here if they were all archived someplace, but I think that may be beyond the scope of what this site is intended for maybe.

 

[Greg_L]

Yeah, for sure - the person who put it up has the final say about what happens to it. I was just wondering if anybody gives a shit one way or the other about being able to listen to older stuff.

I've had people PM me about old mixes that are long gone. I always oblige if I have a copy handy. But me personally, I've posted probably like well over a hundred mixes in here. Most of them are not available anymore. I'm not worried about it.

 

[Chili]

You can always put them directly in the post as an attachment. That's what I've been doing lately. It's a 10meg limit which for a 4:00 minute song let's you encode at 256kbps, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[dobro]

So, I could do both - an attachment, plus the soundcloud widget. Then later, when I ditched the soundcloud file, there'd be something left. As if it mattered.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Setting up some kind of HR-side archive would be cool but the technical and legal limitations probably means it won't happen. You'd have to get all the mp3s to HR, which would require connecting to Soundcloud/Bandpage/reverbnation/bandcamp/soundclick/etc. APIs to download all the songs, and you'd probably still need someone to manually go through and grab the ones that don't have relevant APIs available (e.g. I personally post links to a page on my site which enables a direct link)
On top of that, you'd need to get permission from all the musicians involved. Usually this could just be in the terms of service that if you post a song it gets added to the archive, but what about people who post songs that they don't own, mixes they do for other bands, etc? That sounds like a legal problem for HR just waiting to happen.

I'd personally love to see some kind of annual "best of the mp3 clinic" compilation be put out, but it'd be a lot of work for whoever takes that task.