#Best of 2023 - Suggestions & Discussion

154 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

subtle matrix
#

Hi friends,

We're looking towards the Community for feedback, suggestions, and to have a discussion about Best of 2023. Please drop your suggestions, questions and feedback below so I can compile it and put it together for our lovely team.

heavy river
#

My suggestion is three separate comps for each label, with separate voting for each

sudden basin
#

30 for each

#

30 uncaged
30 instinct
30 silk

#

Hi several people

plucky sentinel
#

one track per artist, so we don’t have bossfight on the comp 4 times

golden fern
#

separate voting for each brand for sure, unsure if we wanna go like 30/10/10 now or what precisely

sudden basin
heavy river
sudden basin
#

What’s a good number for each

#

30?

cyan garden
#

at the end still show the vote counts so we can see what the actual most voted songs were + maybe advertise the BO more around on YT community posts or whatever because i feel like many ppl dont know about it (i only found out this year too and i’ve been listening since 2012)

sudden basin
#

25?

sudden basin
heavy river
#

^

sudden basin
#

There isn’t really much to change about bo23 in my opinion it’s good as it is

#

We’re just gonna have to accept

#

That’s it’s gonna be more uncaged

cyan garden
sudden basin
#

if we like bossfight songs

#

We’ll vote for bossfight songs

#

it’s not because we don’t like or undervalue the others,

#

just that we like that group of artists the most

cyan garden
#

if you vote for them, they will also end up in the BO though… even if its multiple songs

sudden basin
#

older artists are gonna have a higher chance of holding but there’s not much that I can see being done, besides putting a handicap on some artists and not others

#

you either limit some artists, or limit everything

unreal ember
#

Might as well throw my thoughts in here assuming it'll be a minority opinion. I actually really like the way the BO Voting/Compilation is done currently. As a whole, Monstercat is Monstercat, just branded three different ways. So if you are doing a true best of compilation, every track, regardless of brand, would have an equal shot at getting on. Yea Silk isn't as popular as Uncaged, but putting purposefully a ton of Silk on to be "fair" to each of the sublabels doesn't feel like a true Best Of Compilation. As tough as it is to say, the Best Of compilations aren't pity contests and I don't think we should adhere to less popular tracks because that's not the core of what a best of compilation should be. Best Of is a popularity contest, that's just how it goes.

Voting wise, I think it's simply vote for 10-20 songs that you think were truly the best of the year, no cap on songs per artist or cap on branding. Just your favourite songs on Monstercat from the year, period.

And then compilation wise, I think it'd be a shame to make the compilation too big as you'd begin to lose the "prestige" of making it on the compilation. 40 tracks max in my opinion.

Just my thoughts 🙂

sudden basin
#

^

#

I aree

pine radish
#

honestly I've said my piece on this so many times and I'm kinda over the whole thing, if they split it that's great, if they don't I'm not losing sleep over it

sudden basin
#

Ok so I just red bowtieds stance

#

And I agree 105%

pine radish
#

although I do still highly disagree with bowtied here lol

#

so I guess I kinda do care a little bit

plucky sentinel
#

how about, when promoting the tracklist, don’t make it a “top 10 list” video? so that the smaller artists who got on don’t feel like they’ve been overshadowed by the bigger ones

agile pond
#

i dont think any of the artists on bo comps will feel that way xd

#

and imo since we're splitting the 3 labels to live in their own ecosystems the best of comps should split along with it

pastel shard
sudden basin
#

Here’s an idea

#

Post it all at once

#

one day, preferably a Friday, just post the entire list

heavy river
#

Monstercat is probably one of the most diverse EDM labels out there, yet the best of comps don't repsersent this at all

agile pond
#

wasnt last year's reveal strategy good

woeful ruin
#

I'm at work rn I'll post my ideas here later

agile pond
#

gets the community excited at the same time each day to see results

sudden basin
#

It’s the best part about the Bo comps

plucky sentinel
#

i did like the story aspect behind the bo2022 voting

sudden basin
#

it had a story aspect?

heavy river
sudden basin
#

I thought it was just cats fighting for land

plucky sentinel
#

“the silence is back! defeat it by helping the 3 guardians present a showcase of their best music!”

#

now i want to know more about “the silence”

#

what’s its goal? why does it want to erase the music of the monstercat realms?

agile pond
#

sadly it's not very talkative

plucky sentinel
#

ahhhh i see what you did there

sudden basin
#

it’s a manifestion of evil cat

heavy river
#

As much as i liked the award system last year it was honestly mostly predicable who was going to win them

sudden basin
#

The awards should be more then just top 5 of each

#

maybe make them more funny awards

#

Like “uncaged artist most likely to release on silk”

#

Or “most likely to write the next bestseller”

heavy river
#

like it was obvious that Koven was going to win Best Female artist

sudden basin
#

I thought it was gonna be gg magree

heavy river
#

that was never going to happen sadly

#

she got way to much hate from the comunity

#

it was based on our votes

#

The only award that felt unpredictable was the trailblazer award

#

and that was the only one not based on our votes

#

🤷

stark fox
#

I actually do like 30/10/10 split idea now that Instinct and Silk have releases decreased

#

The 3-1-1

#

50 tracks isn't too big of a comp

#

It would still be a "popularity contest" but just within the brands

heavy river
#

How many releases would we have for each brand by the end of this year presuming there aren't any brakes in the schedule?

stark fox
#

Probably around 50 each for Instinct and Silk, around 150 Uncaged

pine radish
#

depends on how many EPs and LPs are released

pine radish
heavy river
stark fox
pine radish
heavy river
#

👍

pine radish
#

er, 170

pastel shard
#

Pity points. The main 40 tracks shouldn’t give out pity points. Been my same opinion for the past five or six years. You can do what ever you want with subvotes. But leave the main votes alone.

pine radish
#

they're not "pity points" lol, it's about best of being a representation of the label in addition to representing the community, rather than only a representation of the community

stark fox
#

I've never understood the pity point thing

#

Nobody is asking anyone to be gifted a spot lol

pine radish
#

it's just that because the community is so split into different niches that it makes sense to represent each of those niches equally

stark fox
#

Exactly

heavy river
#

that's how i view this

stark fox
#

Agree

#

Honestly the schedule changes do have me kind of open to last year's system a little more, since the tracks will be uneven anyway

#

But I still like 30/10/10

#

The awards last year were really cool too

heavy river
stark fox
#

Yeah I like that, especially with these being increasingly separate labels

#

But I think they may value Best Of being a single comp bringing the label together

marsh peak
#

I just want to mention that silk and instinct would have a total of about 48 releases per year each (considering december will likely be special and a cutoff point).
Having a top 30 for instinct and silk separately would essentially be a compilation of the entire year.

#

unless there's an LP or EP that takes a lot of slots but you know, unlikely I would say

heavy river
#

that's just put it into perspective to me how significant the schedule change is

heavy river
marsh peak
#

I think an overall best of comp and label specific best of mini-comps would be a good idea

#

For voting I'm thinking of letting you vote for x tracks per label, but only being required to completely fill the vote for one of the labels as someone could exclusively listen to uncaged for example.
Not sure if it'll be fair for the overall vote (if that would even still exist) but should at least let listeners of each label influence the best of for that specific label without having a "ugh, I have all these uncaged tracks I want to vote for and have no room for instinct or silk" moment.

pine radish
#

I don't think it should be split evenly anymore though since there just won't be the number of silk and instinct releases necessary for that

marsh peak
#

anymore? it never was even

pine radish
#

i mean my opinion has changed about it

#

i don't anymore think it should be evenly split

#

my bad

twin tiger
#

the one thing I have to say is

make the best of comp 50 songs long

#

because 40 is a weird number

#

that is if and only if we're still planning on doing one big comp for everything on the label

#

if we split up, then there should be a best of uncaged and instinct and silk that each have 25 songs

#

that's what I'm thinkin

subtle matrix
#

Thank you friends for all the feedback thus far Prayge

#

I'll be bringing it back to the team on Monday once I make all the notes nice and tidy 🙂

grave quest
#

Put the best of mix available for download and other streaming platforms

#

Put good work into that just for it to be YT exclusive angerycat

#

Slide it into sc or gold download xd

golden fern
#

they wouldnt be able to put it on Spotify or the like

#

but anything directly uploader-controlled yeah it would be nice

boreal geyser
#

I think having separate “best of” comps where each brand picks their best 30 tracks and the top 15 from each get added to a larger “Best of Monstercat 2023” album would be the way to go. It illustrates that each brand is under one company, but also acting as their own entities

#

It could also incentivize branching paths in lore that are all connected together by the larger, 45-track comp

twin tiger
#

EXACTLY

twin tiger
golden fern
#

Ok but having a top 15 from each brand wouldn't make sense at this point

#

Since the release numbers are going to be so different now, that'd be like 25% of Instinct and Silk for the year and not even 10% for Uncaged

twin tiger
#

that's why I was thinkin 25 would be a better number

golden fern
#

That's still way too much

#

Presuming that releases end on the 8th of December, Instinct and Silk will have 57 releases this year

#

25 is nearly half of them in some form

twin tiger
#

i don't think there's a good number that'll be a good midpoint for everything

#

because uncaged has so many more songs

#

and also I just Do Not Think in a hypothetical scenario where each thing has it's own comp

#

that each comp will have a different number of songs in it

#

so trying to find a good midpoint for everything is just Impossible

#

so I feel like just leaving everything at 25 is good

#

cuz anything above that means Everything on instinct and silk is getting on the comp

#

which is great but completely defeats the purpose of a Best Of The Year comp ya know what I mean

golden fern
#

Well I think different numbers is what we'll have to do

#

As I suggested earlier, a 30-10-10 split would just feel right for this

#

Doesn't make a massive comp and keeps the release ratio roughly intact

#

Plus Uncaged with a large portion of the spots would certainly make the less integrated fans happy

stiff niche
#

Tbh, I'm more a fan of shorter comps.

#

I think 15 or 20 tracks each.

#

Shorter comps are gonna be better for algos too bc they're more easily digestible for casual listeners.

#

No one wants to spend 2 hours on one compilation.

#

Speaking from my own experience, when listening to a best of comp straight through, I never make it past like, track 17. Not even halfway on recent comps.

#

30-10-10 is an interesting idea, but something about it doesn't feel right.

twin tiger
#

yea

#

agreed

stiff niche
#

This might be mean to say, but uh... with 3 tracks per week, it's not like all those tracks are gonna be BO worthy.

#

We'll have more great music, yes, but with more music you can't just slap a Best Of label on everything. It has to become more selective.

#

I would recommend just 20 each, or if splitting is really a necessary idea, then 20-15-15.

stiff niche