Hello everyone. I felt it was time to explain a few things on my side. To finally get some things off my chest. I've been meaning to say this for a long while now, just never had the courage.
As many of you are aware, I had left Newgrounds a while ago, saying that I would not be submitting again, and i'm sure some of you know now that this is not the case. However I would like to share a few things with you all, as I am now here to explain that things were not as they were really made out to be.
But first I get ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.
Several months ago I began recieving emails from anonymous people stating that all of my music was far over rated and that there was really nothing to them (in fact if you go to my "The Woman's Roar" and go to page 1, you will see that one of them actually felt the need to post their "constructive" words). Now normally I would not listen to such people, especially if they didn't even have enough spine matter to leave their aliases so that I knew who I was talking to, however with every passing day, these emails became more frequent, and more vicious.
As would be expected I began to doubt myself.
At the same time MilkMan_Dan was said to be leaving Newgrounds to join the military. I jumped ship then to unite with him and hoped to create some wonderful songs before he left. We were even talking about producing a cd.
Sadly enough I fear this cd is not going to happen soon, through many factors, involving both of us, progress slowed, and eventually nearly disappeared entirely. I don't blame him nor myself, in all honesty though we are both what I feel quite compatible composers, the truth is both he and I work when inspiration hits and forcing ourselves to work on pieces sent to each other simply didn't work. On top of that there were connection issues, passing work back and forth properly, blagh, it was a mess.
I was left without a home, and after I killed off MaestroSorrow, I was given the perfect oppurtunity to run a series of experiments to see how the environment of Newgrounds worked. "Manipulating the masses" in a sense. Here are the results of that experiment, some may make you go "duh!", and others may make your nod in interest.
_-=*~_/[Step One]\_~*=-_
My first move was re-introduce myself as somebody else, that nobody would know. I created SoulStrings.
Now SoulStrings was supposed to be your every man. He reviewed rarely, and mainly those in the same genre. He was technically there to try and get as much exposure as he could without doing the fan chasing. When he DID leave reviews however, he left pretty damn large ones, go check them out if you don't believe me, I left damn essays on each song >:(!
The results of said experiment.
- A close circle of loyal listeners that stood by every piece I submitted due to the large reviews.
- Review/Response Ratio (30-40%) mainly those in the same genre.
- Still I get pm's from some people asking them to review their pieces despite the fact SoulStrings has not submitted anything in a month and has remained silent for a long while.
His disappearance was intentional of course, to see what would happen to his page without any more effort poured in from SoulString's side.
The results were pretty obvious.
Effort spent, is reviews earned, clearly and frankly speaking, unless you have your audio looping on the front page... or making Techno songs, because 14 year olds seem to enjoy techno/trance pieces so damn much, that section clearly ushers in more reviews, and a crap load more competition and 0 bombs.
I can say this statement with confidence as it was generally agreed that SoulString's music was better structured and melodically more advanced. Technically he should have been more famous then MaestroSorrow.
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So after recieving this data, I was faced with a question of fanbases. How would they influence the tides here (other then the obvious)? Clearly an already established fanbase would greatly effect your page with 5 votes and 0 bombs to your competition (if they seem to idolize you enough...)
However I could not test out any theories involving these fanbases by returning to MaestroSorrow, that would blatantly make that account out as a liar and the data would be tainted. Yes I recognize that by returning period my credibility to what I say has been damaged but for this next step it was a sacrafice I wanted to make.
_-=*~_/[Step Two]\_~*=-_
I created MaestroRage.
Why? I needed a face that was familiar to people. Not famous, but at least with a decent amount of listeners to have the data effected in the way I wanted. I began creating what I felt was some of my best work and plastered it up there.
MaestroRage was supposed to act like MaestroSorrow, mass reviewing. Not one liners of course, I have NEVER approved of giving one line reviews, only in EXTREME conditions where I honestly didn't know what to say, yet wanted to drop my support, even then it was always at least 3 liners.
I also added another twist to the reviewing. MaestroRage spent 90% of his reviews outside his genre.
THe results of the second experiment
- 80% of reviews given were returned, 5 votes were freely given from that person since they were outside the genre that they were voting for, they did not feel threatened by the score of that song and could honestly and freely support said artist.
- Finding underrated and for some reason ignored artists of course was another field MaestroRage focused on. He made it his DUTY to find those who were freshly into the system, who were in need of a some kind words and constructive reviews. I remember my first review given by OCON and I still remember that giddy feeling. MaestroRage spent his energy invoking that same feeling to as many as he could, while he could. This of course built some bonds with some of the other artists, sharing ideas, stories, samples, a small network was being formed.
Because MaestroRage also tapped into whatever remains of fanbase there was left for MaestroSorrow, reviews and downloads were of course greatly increased compared to the speed of which SoulStrings got reviews and downloads. Again however this can be credited to the way MaestroRage reviewed over SoulStrings.
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