Pony.fm

[Freewave]

^ Completely disagree. We are a niche fandom. While its cute that musicians think they operate in a different environment then fimfiction, fimart, and even clop, wer'e just another aspect of the bigger MLP fandom. Just look at EQ Daily to see how big this fandom is. People ACTIVELY look specifically look for music about mlp ALL the time and that's reflected in the musicians who make it, the websites that cover it, the multitude of brony radio stations that only play MLP music, and even those who host it (TWO sites now). You are reading this from a forum called MyLlittleRemix too. Let's not put our head in the sand, shall we?

[Pulse Wave]

My main problem with Pony.fm is that all genres are pre-defined by the interface. Always. No exception. And there aren't even that many. Now what if you make pony music that doesn't directly belong to any of these genres? You cannot specify that a song is Hi-NRG or New Jack Swing or Glam Rock or Acid House. Sometimes you have to be more specific, even (especially) if it's music of a kind that hardly anyone under 20 has ever even heard of. And you cannot label anything that's R&B or Soul at all. (No, it neither goes into "Disco / Funk" nor into "Pop" nor into "Adult Contemporary" nor into "Jazz", and it sure as heck won't go into "Other".)

Besides, I wouldn't count on the possibility to have a song fit into more than one genre. A sound-alike of Giorgio Moroder's "From Here To Eternity" would be both "Disco / Funk" and "Synthpop". (That said, "Disco / Funk" limits the entire genre choice to not much more than Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang and anything Nile Rodgers made.)

EqBeats, on the other hoof, supports whatever genres you enter into your ID3 tags or Vorbis comments before you upload your songs. I've been told that it doesn't alter anything except the artist and the title. This means that I can shove four entries into the Genre tag which is allowed by the Vorbis comments standard, and EqBeats will leave them all in as far as I've been told. The same goes for Composer or Performer, for example. That obviously means that EqBeats lacks a point-and-click genre search, but I for one am absolutely fine with that. Yeah, I know that most brony musicians don't fill in their tags at all, but I would, and how.

Also, does Pony.fm (still) offer lossless downloads? I certainly don't want to use a platform which requests lossless uploads but then only gives out MP3 and maybe another lossy format. I would like to distribute music as FLAC, thank you very much. And I don't care how many bronies don't even know that audio file formats besides WAV and MP3 exist.

[JSynth]

My main problem with Pony.fm is that all genres are pre-defined by the interface. Always. No exception. And there aren't even that many. Now what if you make pony music that doesn't directly belong to any of these genres? You cannot specify that a song is Hi-NRG or New Jack Swing or Glam Rock or Acid House. Sometimes you have to be more specific, even (especially) if it's music of a kind that hardly anyone under 20 has ever even heard of. And you cannot label anything that's R&B or Soul at all. (No, it neither goes into "Disco / Funk" nor into "Pop" nor into "Adult Contemporary" nor into "Jazz", and it sure as heck won't go into "Other".)

TBH, the gerne's you are pointing to are pretty rare in the fandom. Most of the music here falls under an EDM genre. Plus, a lot of people in the fandom are under 20. But I do agree, it would be nice if you could adjust the genre tag, and the artist tag for that matter.

Also, does Pony.fm (still) offer lossless downloads? I certainly don't want to use a platform which requests lossless uploads but then only gives out MP3 and maybe another lossy format. I would like to distribute music as FLAC, thank you very much. And I don't care how many bronies don't even know that audio file formats besides WAV and MP3 exist.

When I click on the downloads button, I get these options:
- FLAC
- MP3
- OOG Vorbis
- AAC
- ALAC

[Jason Martin]

EQBeats is closing down. SoundCloud is in extreme danger of being closed down. YouTube can be complicated for some people. Pony.fm is the best thing in the world.

[Freewave]

Sadly its a bit difficult to upload track in there and have them take it. Usually its the image or settings that cause issues so it won't publish. My recommendation is always use Chrome as firefox seems to have issues.

Those who don't yotube at all aren't really aren't making a solid effort at being taken seriously. That's like making tracks for a few friends level of music.

Agree that it is use it or lose it time with pony.fm. I don't think they really have a fanbase that purposely seeks out tracks through the website or markets them to steady listeners. i haven't seen ANY real results of that in action. It's a nice free backup that's a good alternative to eqbeats and soundcloud but i also think most people use mediafire for free downloads for their tracks or bandcamp for paid. The days of websites specifically tailored for our fanbase and people actively using them may be numbered or there's too many people doing so and not giving feedback. Ultimately we're not the same community or fanbase we once were.

[Jason Martin]

Sadly its a bit difficult to upload track in there and have them take it. Usually its the image or settings that cause issues so it won't publish. My recommendation is always use Chrome as firefox seems to have issues.

Those who don't yotube at all aren't really aren't making a solid effort at being taken seriously. That's like making tracks for a few friends level of music.

Agree that it is use it or lose it time with pony.fm. I don't think they really have a fanbase that purposely seeks out tracks through the website or markets them to steady listeners. i haven't seen ANY real results of that in action. It's a nice free backup that's a good alternative to eqbeats and soundcloud but i also think most people use mediafire for free downloads for their tracks or bandcamp for paid. The days of websites specifically tailored for our fanbase and people actively using them may be numbered or there's too many people doing so and not giving feedback. Ultimately we're not the same community or fanbase we once were.

Some people, like me, don't currently use YouTube simply because they can't for whatever reason. That doesn't mean it's impossible for them to be taken seriously.

And even though I agree that we're basically the same fanbase we once were, we're constantly ever-growing, and need to make sure that everyone has at least one good outlet. It's entirely up to them to choose their main outlet, and their choices should be respected no matter what it is. And yes, I tend to have a few issues with uploading to Pony.fm, but that doesn't discredit it one bit.

[Aurelleah]

Hello everyone. I'm a new Community Admin with Poniverse and am charged with PR with pony.fm among other stuffs as of.. like a few days ago. :)

If anyone needs any help with anything, has any ideas, or concerns, please dont hesitate to message me via skype at Aurelleah, or email me at [email protected] :3

Email can get to me pretty much instantly, and Ill respond as soon as i can

[Freewave]

I did see on mlp forums that the pony music archive project (where there used to be torrents of the original pony music from the fanbase) is something to be a part of pony.fm. Would love to see that happen and not sure how the status of that is. having that archive of classic first and second year music would really add to pony.fm's usefulness.

[Aurelleah]

I did see on mlp forums that the pony music archive project (where there used to be torrents of the original pony music from the fanbase) is something to be a part of pony.fm. Would love to see that happen and not sure how the status of that is. having that archive of classic first and second year music would really add to pony.fm's usefulness.

Its actually almost done!

[Aurelleah]

I did see on mlp forums that the pony music archive project (where there used to be torrents of the original pony music from the fanbase) is something to be a part of pony.fm. Would love to see that happen and not sure how the status of that is. having that archive of classic first and second year music would really add to pony.fm's usefulness.

It's finished, just need to have the search feature added and the genre tags corrected

[WanderPony]

I did see on mlp forums that the pony music archive project (where there used to be torrents of the original pony music from the fanbase) is something to be a part of pony.fm. Would love to see that happen and not sure how the status of that is. having that archive of classic first and second year music would really add to pony.fm's usefulness.

It's finished, just need to have the search feature added and the genre tags corrected

That is awesome! I csn't wait to use it!

[Pulse Wave]

Good thing to see that the MLP Music Archive has finally found a home, one where it can even be maintained (I had a little talk with the crew behind Pony.fm which looked quite promising). And maintenance it'll need a lot, what with strange or plain false genres (nothing tagged "blues" in the MLPMA actually is blues, for example) and a complete lack of vocal/instrumental tags which Pony.fm supports.

Pony.fm will go even further: They're working on taking over EqBeats' entire music archive as of 2016 (when no submissions will be possible anymore) as well so that the music currently available on EqBeats only won't go under once EqBeats will shut down entirely.

Looks like Pony.fm will be the only dedicated place to dump your pony music. It might have its shortcomings, but talk nicely to the developers, suggest new features or even just new genre tags, and they aren't too unlikely to include them.

Besides, Pony.fm does have its advantages over Soundcloud and especially YouTube. It doesn't have shady terms of service. It doesn't spy on you. As far as I remember, it always allows for both lossless and lossy downloads (except for MLPMA material which is MP3 only) — YouTube, on the other hoof, doesn't officially support downloads at all, and due to its nature as a video streaming site, it doesn't have any lossless material either.

[Feld0]

I'm glad you like where Pony.fm is going, Pulse Wave.

Pony.fm will go even further: They're working on taking over EqBeats' entire music archive as of 2016 (when no submissions will be possible anymore) as well so that the music currently available on EqBeats only won't go under once EqBeats will shut down entirely.

To be clear, Pony.fm is not acquiring EqBeats or its music collection; EqBeats is building a way for users to automatically move their EqBeats tracks to Pony.fm. We'll take over the site and its content if it's offered to us, but it hasn't been and I respect that this is how codl and fmang wish to go about things.

Pony.fm is also open-source these days, so if you're a developer, the door is wide open to get involved and add features you want.

[Feld0]

I want to give a little update on what's been going on with Pony.fm. Development activity has picked up a ton this year since Logic joined us as a lead developer, and we've been on a roll with new features. Here is some of what has happened since the last post in this thread:

• a mobile layout!
• notification system, to make it possible to build a following here (on-site notifications are already live, with native push notifications and email notifications coming very soon!)
• tags in the files you upload are parsed to pre-fill the track editor (cover art and even custom genres are preserved)
• site-wide search
• playback stats pages for tracks
• substantial performance improvements
• massively improved admin tools, for managing and expanding the archive portion of the site

If you haven't been on Pony.fm in a while, now's a great time to give it another look. And since it's an open-source project these days, you can always see what's being worked on.

[LogicDev]

Well, I just found this post today. Glad to see Feld0's been chatting to you all. As he mentioned before, I've been taking over the development of Pony.fm as of late. Just wanted to post here and ask if you guys have any feedback on what we could do to make this site better. My ideas as a developer might not line up with what the community really wants, that'll always be an issue with any site, so I'm reaching out to see what the community thinks.

From reading this thread I can see there's interest in the ability to create custom genres and a "spotlighting" system. I can confirm that these features are on the roadmap and development will be starting soon. Hopefully custom genres will be out very soon.

I really want to focus on promoting tracks on the site. Turning Pony.fm from a "backup" site into something similar to YouTube or Spotify. This is still being planned. There will probably be a curated "featured" section, chosen by our team, as well as an algorithm based "you might like..." section.