Song length quota?

[J-B]

As an Aural Moon newbie I realize this may have been discussed before, or I may even be moving into a danger zone by raising this....

I've just requested a wonderfull Tranastlantic song....a very very long song. It took me a long wait and just a few very long songs before it came on. Some of them seemed interesting, some of them seemed very boring and never ending. And then I thought: wait a minute? What if someone finds my 29:40 minute song boring?

I do apreciate that some of the best songs in the genre are 20+ minutes long, however, it can be very tedious if three songs in a row are of the long kind, especially if they are not your cup of tea. While often thought, long songs are not necesarily represantative of what the genre has to offer.

At Aural Moon I have discovered an artist quota: good! I have discovered a personal quota: also good! But wouldn't it give variety, other music and other people a better chance if there would be some sort of personal song length quota?

Suggested personal quota:
1 out of 4 songs 10-15
1 out of 8 songs 15-20
1 out of 12 songs 20+

Go ahead, hate me for my suggestion

And yeah, I am realy realy enjoying listening to 'All of the Above' by Transatlantic, it's on now

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by J-B

As an Aural Moon newbie I realize this may have been discussed before, or I may even be moving into a danger zone by raising this....

I've just requested a wonderfull Tranastlantic song....a very very long song. It took me a long wait and just a few very long songs before it came on. Some of them seemed interesting, some of them seemed very boring and never ending. And then I thought: wait a minute? What if someone finds my 29:40 minute song boring?

I do apreciate that some of the best songs in the genre are 20+ minutes long, however, it can be very tedious if three songs in a row are of the long kind, especially if they are not your cup of tea. While often thought, long songs are not necesarily represantative of what the genre has to offer.

At Aural Moon I have discovered an artist quota: good! I have discovered a personal quota: also good! But wouldn't it give variety, other music and other people a better chance if there would be some sort of personal song length quota?

Suggested personal quota:
1 out of 4 songs 10-15
1 out of 8 songs 15-20
1 out of 12 songs 20+

Go ahead, hate me for my suggestion

And yeah, I am realy realy enjoying listening to 'All of the Above' by Transatlantic, it's on now

Please, feel free to provide me with the PHP and mySQL access code for this feature and I will install it.

Seriously, I've implemented a bit of code in the past few months that makes it easier to track requests and requesters. I know who is abusing the privilege and who is not. I've also added a way to tag each request with the requester's name. This appears to have put a damper on some of the over-requesting. Many long time moonies are well aware of some of the request abuse issues that have plagued the moon in the past.

For now, I can manually pull requested tracks if they appear to be tracks that have been requested time and time again by the same requester. I do not (or have not) pulled a track that has been requested many times but by different requesters. Be mindful though that if I find a cabal conspiring to over-request a track that track will get pulled.

However, all that now said, I do not see a more restrictive request policy in the near future for 2 reasons:

1. I don't have the time to code up such restrictions and there are some other web page improvements I have started but have not yet completed. I will devote my efforts to completing those before I attack any new bit of code to enforce request policy.
   
2. Most of the request policy is enforced by SAM. Unless the folks at Spacial Audio provide a more robust schema for song requests, requesting is likely to retain status quo ante.

[J-B]

Fair enough. I am actually pretty good at SQL. Don't know about PHP tho.
Ah well. Don't get me wrong. I think this station is realy realy good and varied and seems to be a fair democratic process anyway.

Oh and about over requesting a song. I completely agree. I don't like hearing the same song over and over again myself. Even if it's a favorit!

[Rick and Roll]

Originally Posted by VAXman

robust schema[/list]

omg robust! One of those terms that has been hijacked by corporations to use in their ridiculous commercials!

However, schema makes up for it!

[NorCalKurt]

To limit song length requests is not in the spirit of the Moon. Most people on this site have self control, therefore, why change the system. Yes, even I have been guilty of requesting the same song more than once. At least I wait some time before doing so. As our numbers increase on this site these things will happen.The system works now. I think Vax already has enough to take care of. Let's give him a break.

[mailotron]

What about calculating the inverse Laplace's tranform of the requested quotat ? Or a non linear 5th degree smooth curve of quotat versus Moonies hematocrytis blood concentration no thanks

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by mailotron

What about calculating the inverse Laplace's tranform of the requested quotat ? Or a non linear 5th degree smooth curve of quotat versus Moonies hematocrytis blood concentration no thanks

The Laplace Transform (the engineer/mathematician in me gets to shine) is a way to model functions in the time domain into the frequency domain. The inverse Laplace would be frequency domain function modeled into the time domain.

Any quota would be a constant which in the frequency domain would map into the time domain as the dirac delta -- a function which has infinite magnitude and zero duration. I'm not sure how I would apply this to request policy. It would seem to me that the policy should permit an infinite number of song requests as long as the song was 0 seconds duration. The corollary to this would be that any song of length greater than 0 seconds could not be requested. We implement the corollary on Wednesday!

On the 5th degree curve... a Bezier curve (a cubic) is far easier to compute. Quartic and higher order splines are very difficult to compute even if hermetian polynomial expansions are truncated after a few terms. I think it would be much simpler for me to just yank a request if I hear it too often.

[mailotron]

lol VAX
what about a song made of a real and an imaginary part ?

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by mailotron

lol VAX
what about a song made of a real and an imaginary part ?

That would make it a complex song. Much of the moon library is comprised of complex songs.

[mossy]

real and imaginary - good theme too

[OverHillandDale(Admin)]

The problem for some of us moonies - I guess I should only really speak for myself - is that we have trouble discerning which is the real part and which is the imaginary. And many times they are one in the same (or would that be one in the saNe?)

[tracer]

Oh boy....

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by OverHillandDale

The problem for some of us moonies - I guess I should only really speak for myself - is that we have trouble discerning which is the real part and which is the imaginary. And many times they are one in the same (or would that be one in the saNe?)

I have always hated the terms real and imaginary when dealing with complex numbers. Both components are perfectly valid, realizable quantities!

I was tutoring algebra to Martha's cousin on Sunday. Her cousin has gone back to school to complete her undergraduate college degree. y=mx+b completely dumfounded her.

[mailotron]

Originally Posted by VAXman

That would make it a complex song. Much of the moon library is comprised of complex songs.

well done VAX

[spewie]

I can not believe that the listeners of Aural moon are complaining about song lengths, If you want short songs go to IO 80's where no song is over 5:00 minutes. One of the reasons I come to the moon is not only for the great progressive they play, but also for the fact that the moon does not cut or shorten songs to make more room for more music, A classic example of that would be Manfred Manns 'Blinded by the Light' which on almost every radio station is cut in half, is that what the moon should start doing...I hope not. We are all fans of the music here and to chop them or somehow change it would not only be bad for the listeners, but it would also be a disservice to the artist that wrote it.

In my humble opinion anyway...

[J-B]

Well. Some seem to ignore a few statements I made in my original post by neglecting them and drawing their own conclusions regarding my intentions. Such as considerering my comment a complaint rather than a suggestion. Or concluding that I don't like long songs. Or assuming that I want long songs cut in half. Or thinking that I want to inflict a lot of work on the admins. And some use the opportunity to do some bullshitting when someone is trying to be serious! Now is that good or bad?

Great to be treated like that as a newbie!

I feared beforehand (as at least some of you may have read) that this would lead to nothing! So why continue this discussion?

And why worry. At times when the queue gets a bit too long-winded to my liking I still have my own collection to play from

And now the ultimate punnishment for all this...I am staying tuned to Aural Moon. I'm actually enjoying this station, the new music I am introduced to, the possibilty to request songs and introduce new stuff to others is special. And I enjoy the nice comments in the shout window. Seriously think you're doing a great job here.

[SnardLivesHere]

Well said Spewie... I also agree with an earlier post that asserted that listeners are self policing (or something to that effect). I don't often see (hear) 20+ minute songs requested sequentially. I say keep the status quo...unless the wind is out of the north at 8 MPH in the requester's location at the time the request is placed, and the barometer is falling at a rate of 1 millibar each 17 minutes, then the requested song length should not exceed 4 minutes 40 seconds. But, there is no way for VaxMan to code that, and it would require more self policing and some expensive meteorological equipment.

[dinosaur]

J-B:
I understood your intentions...and that you were clearly not complaining. Others have voiced a similar opinion at times, I think mainly because the request queue can become several hours long. I very seldom hear any of my own requests because I can't often listen for long periods. (Please understand I am not complaining! I still somtimes request because I think that, first, I'd like to hear a particular song, and second, I think others would like to hear it.) I suspect many on AM are like me, that is, of two minds on this point. We all like the long (Laplace-domain) format, but we also like variety and shorter time constants in the request response.

[Michael]

I like the long songs and the short songs...For myself i try and pick stuff i would think the people online may like and i like .But lately i have been making it a point to pick a bit shorter songs not that i don't like the long ones i just want to get to the next song.And Sometimes i don't even request at all.So after this sort of long drawn out post i have to say IM neutral

[roger]

I knew you weren't complaining, JB, and I thought your post was well-thought-out and well-written.

welcome to the Moon!!

I also got a major guffaw out of Vax's erudite post. ;¬ )

pie are not squared, they're round.