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Giving credits to your fellow musicians - fair enough or unnecessary?
Giving credits to your fellow musicians - fair enough or unnecessary?
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I would like to know if I am the only one that recently experiences a certain type of behaviour here in the loops. And I have a wish (more about that later if you read this post to the end).
When I add an own track to another existing track I usually give credits to the fellow musicians who created the mix so far (if I ever should have forgotten to do so: it's not on purpose - sorry).
Some musicians will then play their instruments or sing and upload their mix on top. I always listen and write a comment. I will at least leave a thumbs up, since this is what I would do in real life after a jam with a fellow musician.
Not every singer adds an HQ file with the vocal track to the mix. For me that is totally fine, in particular since I'm always very happy to get a vocal remix. And I always listen to vocal mixes carefully and give a serious feedback to the vocalist since this is my way of giving respect to an artist.
But what would you think if you were a vocalist, spend a lot effort and emotions in creating a song, upload it and then later realize that your mix has been downloaded by another WL member, some instrument has been wiped out by some kind of AI just to be replaced and then another mix was uploaded without any kind of comment at all... no reference to the original mix, no credits for anybody involved?
This may not be against any WL rule, but in my opinion this shows no respect for your fellow musicians. To me it became so frustrating that I stopped listening to this type of mixes.
In fact I first was confused and later disappointed and didn't upload any more tracks for quiet awhile. If my current membership expires I'll have to think once more. And I can understand each vocalist that would do the same.
Here's my wish: let's be fair and respectful with each other. It does not take much to add a short note to an upload or to ask a vocalist for an HQ file.
Thanks to all other fellow musicians here that always create a warm and friendly atmosphere <3
When I add an own track to another existing track I usually give credits to the fellow musicians who created the mix so far (if I ever should have forgotten to do so: it's not on purpose - sorry).
Some musicians will then play their instruments or sing and upload their mix on top. I always listen and write a comment. I will at least leave a thumbs up, since this is what I would do in real life after a jam with a fellow musician.
Not every singer adds an HQ file with the vocal track to the mix. For me that is totally fine, in particular since I'm always very happy to get a vocal remix. And I always listen to vocal mixes carefully and give a serious feedback to the vocalist since this is my way of giving respect to an artist.
But what would you think if you were a vocalist, spend a lot effort and emotions in creating a song, upload it and then later realize that your mix has been downloaded by another WL member, some instrument has been wiped out by some kind of AI just to be replaced and then another mix was uploaded without any kind of comment at all... no reference to the original mix, no credits for anybody involved?
This may not be against any WL rule, but in my opinion this shows no respect for your fellow musicians. To me it became so frustrating that I stopped listening to this type of mixes.
In fact I first was confused and later disappointed and didn't upload any more tracks for quiet awhile. If my current membership expires I'll have to think once more. And I can understand each vocalist that would do the same.
Here's my wish: let's be fair and respectful with each other. It does not take much to add a short note to an upload or to ask a vocalist for an HQ file.
Thanks to all other fellow musicians here that always create a warm and friendly atmosphere <3
+9
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Three thumbs up for these thoughts, Michael! Completely backed up by me, and I do it like you - I mostly stopped listening to those who never gave credits other than "I'm reusing it, that should be credit enough"...
+3
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I'm not sure I have experienced that situation. I just wanted to say that as WL expands and develops we will get more feedback, remixes and such and our 'newsfeed' section can get very big and hard to keep up with. It's easy to miss comments and replies and I feel guilty if someone has gone to the trouble of doing things that get lost. As a vocalist I tend to chose the simplest templates and often at the expense of ignoring some great, full remixes. We are all human and self interested to a certain extent but I wouldn't want automatic likes or obliged credit to become patronising, it has to be justified.
+4
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Hey all, and thanks SoulFingers for addressing this issue the way you did.
There is a lot to say to this, and I'll take the opportunity to state both the official wikiloops rules side of things, but also to play the ball back at you folks who have an opinion on this, as there are a few questions I would like to raise.
Before I start, let me say that I absolutely feel the irritation caused by the mentioned remixes, so, even though I'll play the devils advocate here, don't get that wrong. I think SoulFingers is expressing something quite a lot of members have felt irritated by.
You may wonder: Why is that type of remix not against the rules in the first place? Short answer: Because taking single tracks off of some branch of remixes and re-assembling them can make sense if you are working together to create a seriously great sounding collab. People have used the wikiloops stepped uploads to arrange songs, to then revisit the idea and do a final mix of the various takes. This is a valid scenario, and assumed that the musicians involved are deliberately collaborating with their pack of friends, everybody is happy & aware when the final mix comes up. This is why there is no hard no-no, we didn't want to limit creative use-cases like this one.
However:
The wikiloops public license explicitly requires to state who is involved in the making of the the audio, so, the notion-less variant of cross-mixing described by SoulFingers does not meet this requirement, and is thus not covered by the rules.
Keep that in mind for now, we'll continue down the rabbit hole.
The possible technical solution at hand
People have requested wikiloops should offer a declaration-interface in the upload flow that would allow to add "cross links".
That would work like this:
In the upload form, one would find an additional field where one would be able to enter track IDs of tracks one is merging into ones "cross mix" (think "I also mixed in single tracks from track #12345 and #12346").
Ideally, that would lead to automatic notifications towards these referenced tracks uploaders, and could theoretically display the now involved musicians names and avatars on the final tracks screen - which would then display a mix of authors of the referenced cross-mixed tracks, the current uploader and the musicians involved in the track the upload is connected to. This would automatically solve both the licenses requirement and the missing notifications.
Downsides: There would be no way to display the two-dimensional remix tree to visualize how this track came together, as there is no clear parent->children branching to this track.
This would be the technically perfect version. More on that when summing up.
Third stop: Let's talk about user irritation for a bit - this is where I'll play the devils advocate part now.
Musicians are highly sensitive to irritation, it really does not take much to trigger the wildest emotions when it comes to "how did someone treat my musical output".
If your music is an expression of your inner self (which it is to many, and which is why making music is so beautiful), then who'd be surprised you'd react emotionally whenever your music gets "stolen", taken out of context or repurposed in a way you did not see coming.
The bad news here is:
This is wikiloops, and you will never know which type of remix you will get, and yes, some will leave you speechless in the not-so-good way.
We are deliberately sharing our music for others to have fun with it, and sometimes the others definition of fun is outside of what we can enjoy.
It hurts, I know, but it's part of the deal. You invest six hours recording and smoothening to get a two minute remix by someone who may not have cared or understood what you were laying the grounds for.
I've received remixes where people failed to notice where the rhythmical "one" was, hard to endure listening to that and not feel offended. I know the pain.
But- we've chosen this risk when uploading, and let's be brutally honest:
We are talking about being irritated by a fellow wikiloops user posting on wikiloops. I hate to say it, but we should all be aware that there is more unattributed/irritating use of wikiloops tracks outside of wikiloops that we are simply not aware of.
Don't even start to think about on how many YouTube videos our tracks end up, where people "forgot" to add the required link to the original track on wikiloops.
If you are not comfortable with that, best don't post any audio anywhere online where it is public, that's the hard truth here.
Why do I mention this here? Because I feel we should talk about a solution to the (justified) irritation. There is a cause -> symptom relationship at play here, and any solution should make sure the symptoms go away, right?
A few words on the particular cause of irritation we are talking about today:
Those familiar with the community will not have a hard time recognizing the user(s) who are known to be fond of cross-mixing. I highly appreciate we are not name calling here in this thread, but I hope we also agree that this is a phenomenon that is not wide-spread, but centered about a tiny group of people.
It is not a big problem by numbers on the cause side, but the irritation it causes is significant, so, we better do something.
What can be done?
1st: Maybe someone could try to reach out and let these members know, and propose a better way to share cross mixes? We are all grown ups, sometimes talking helps.
2nd: Someone irritated could also play the hard way and report such tracks as rule violations (red flag button), simply based on the fact that not all involved musicians are stated. That would be technically fair as well, if there really is no notion of the involved folks anywhere in the title, description or comment section. That will most likely escalate the problem onto my desk to deal with, I am just stating it as an option.
3rd: You could go into self-reflection and ask yourself - why do I bother to a point where I feel it disturbs my otherwise good wikiloops experience. You are in full control of what you get notified about, and what appears on your news feed. If anything irritating shows up there, block the irritating user and you will never see any notifications about the irritating agent again - also a viable way worth mentioning. The only loophole left is you looking at the "latest jams" list and noticing "one of those" uploads there. Is that beyond tolerable? That's a question I'd actually like to read answers to.
Why don't we extend this discussion to "how to minimize irritation", as that is the symptom. We can agree on our point of view on what is right or wrong, can make calls for better manners or do whatever - truth is, all that will help little if those causing the irritation do not notice this thread, don't care or continue to do what they do for good or bad reasons.
Sure, we can ban members who effectively hurt wikiloops (think off spam or other clear violations), but limiting creativity and judging levels of irritation to then determine who "belongs here" and who doesn't is a very dangerous path.
So, why don't we go for the technical solution outlined above?
My con arguments are: Besides the effort of implementing something like that on the code end, I have very strong doubts if that would be used. If people were willing to put in that effort, they might as well state the track IDs and involved musicians in the description text, and even that seems to be asked too much from what we observe.
Adding yet another option to the upload form complicates things for new members, who should best get to understand the standard upload case first before tripping about this nerdy extra option, which is really a rare case. Convince me otherwise if you will, but this "feature" is a "wontDo" item on my list, I have developed enough things that then were ignored, this is a highly likely candidate IMHO.
I also do not believe the cross-mixed-but-not-mentioned irritated users would really appreciate getting notified about these types of mixes, as they do not really feel like someone is out for collaboration.
Getting remixes by someone who does not share your musical taste or approach can get quite annoying, and one doesn't want to miss notifications on other remixes either, so, it is not uncommon and absolutely okay to disable notifications by user, using the newsfeed-block option (gears icon in the top right corner of on any newsfeed entry). THAT is the most powerful tool to protect your wikiloops experience, hoping we could change the eventual odd person is ... less effective, to say the least.
Soooo. Bottom line:
I feel someone should invite the friends of cross-mixes to this thread here. Assumed any recent cross mixes were edited and the missing mentions of participants were added to the description text, thus removing the license breach, I'd opt for "let's leave it at that".
If that does not happen and the license breach situation is not solved, ask me to go ahead and wipe this content, and it will happen - be it by actually removing it, or by setting some sort of "shadow ban" status on these tracks which would prevent them from appearing in search results on wikiloops (yes, that option exists, too).
Looking forward to your responses & opinions!
There is a lot to say to this, and I'll take the opportunity to state both the official wikiloops rules side of things, but also to play the ball back at you folks who have an opinion on this, as there are a few questions I would like to raise.
Before I start, let me say that I absolutely feel the irritation caused by the mentioned remixes, so, even though I'll play the devils advocate here, don't get that wrong. I think SoulFingers is expressing something quite a lot of members have felt irritated by.
You may wonder: Why is that type of remix not against the rules in the first place? Short answer: Because taking single tracks off of some branch of remixes and re-assembling them can make sense if you are working together to create a seriously great sounding collab. People have used the wikiloops stepped uploads to arrange songs, to then revisit the idea and do a final mix of the various takes. This is a valid scenario, and assumed that the musicians involved are deliberately collaborating with their pack of friends, everybody is happy & aware when the final mix comes up. This is why there is no hard no-no, we didn't want to limit creative use-cases like this one.
However:
The wikiloops public license explicitly requires to state who is involved in the making of the the audio, so, the notion-less variant of cross-mixing described by SoulFingers does not meet this requirement, and is thus not covered by the rules.
Keep that in mind for now, we'll continue down the rabbit hole.
The possible technical solution at hand
People have requested wikiloops should offer a declaration-interface in the upload flow that would allow to add "cross links".
That would work like this:
In the upload form, one would find an additional field where one would be able to enter track IDs of tracks one is merging into ones "cross mix" (think "I also mixed in single tracks from track #12345 and #12346").
Ideally, that would lead to automatic notifications towards these referenced tracks uploaders, and could theoretically display the now involved musicians names and avatars on the final tracks screen - which would then display a mix of authors of the referenced cross-mixed tracks, the current uploader and the musicians involved in the track the upload is connected to. This would automatically solve both the licenses requirement and the missing notifications.
Downsides: There would be no way to display the two-dimensional remix tree to visualize how this track came together, as there is no clear parent->children branching to this track.
This would be the technically perfect version. More on that when summing up.
Third stop: Let's talk about user irritation for a bit - this is where I'll play the devils advocate part now.
Musicians are highly sensitive to irritation, it really does not take much to trigger the wildest emotions when it comes to "how did someone treat my musical output".
If your music is an expression of your inner self (which it is to many, and which is why making music is so beautiful), then who'd be surprised you'd react emotionally whenever your music gets "stolen", taken out of context or repurposed in a way you did not see coming.
The bad news here is:
This is wikiloops, and you will never know which type of remix you will get, and yes, some will leave you speechless in the not-so-good way.
We are deliberately sharing our music for others to have fun with it, and sometimes the others definition of fun is outside of what we can enjoy.
It hurts, I know, but it's part of the deal. You invest six hours recording and smoothening to get a two minute remix by someone who may not have cared or understood what you were laying the grounds for.
I've received remixes where people failed to notice where the rhythmical "one" was, hard to endure listening to that and not feel offended. I know the pain.
But- we've chosen this risk when uploading, and let's be brutally honest:
We are talking about being irritated by a fellow wikiloops user posting on wikiloops. I hate to say it, but we should all be aware that there is more unattributed/irritating use of wikiloops tracks outside of wikiloops that we are simply not aware of.
Don't even start to think about on how many YouTube videos our tracks end up, where people "forgot" to add the required link to the original track on wikiloops.
If you are not comfortable with that, best don't post any audio anywhere online where it is public, that's the hard truth here.
Why do I mention this here? Because I feel we should talk about a solution to the (justified) irritation. There is a cause -> symptom relationship at play here, and any solution should make sure the symptoms go away, right?
A few words on the particular cause of irritation we are talking about today:
Those familiar with the community will not have a hard time recognizing the user(s) who are known to be fond of cross-mixing. I highly appreciate we are not name calling here in this thread, but I hope we also agree that this is a phenomenon that is not wide-spread, but centered about a tiny group of people.
It is not a big problem by numbers on the cause side, but the irritation it causes is significant, so, we better do something.
What can be done?
1st: Maybe someone could try to reach out and let these members know, and propose a better way to share cross mixes? We are all grown ups, sometimes talking helps.
2nd: Someone irritated could also play the hard way and report such tracks as rule violations (red flag button), simply based on the fact that not all involved musicians are stated. That would be technically fair as well, if there really is no notion of the involved folks anywhere in the title, description or comment section. That will most likely escalate the problem onto my desk to deal with, I am just stating it as an option.
3rd: You could go into self-reflection and ask yourself - why do I bother to a point where I feel it disturbs my otherwise good wikiloops experience. You are in full control of what you get notified about, and what appears on your news feed. If anything irritating shows up there, block the irritating user and you will never see any notifications about the irritating agent again - also a viable way worth mentioning. The only loophole left is you looking at the "latest jams" list and noticing "one of those" uploads there. Is that beyond tolerable? That's a question I'd actually like to read answers to.
Why don't we extend this discussion to "how to minimize irritation", as that is the symptom. We can agree on our point of view on what is right or wrong, can make calls for better manners or do whatever - truth is, all that will help little if those causing the irritation do not notice this thread, don't care or continue to do what they do for good or bad reasons.
Sure, we can ban members who effectively hurt wikiloops (think off spam or other clear violations), but limiting creativity and judging levels of irritation to then determine who "belongs here" and who doesn't is a very dangerous path.
So, why don't we go for the technical solution outlined above?
My con arguments are: Besides the effort of implementing something like that on the code end, I have very strong doubts if that would be used. If people were willing to put in that effort, they might as well state the track IDs and involved musicians in the description text, and even that seems to be asked too much from what we observe.
Adding yet another option to the upload form complicates things for new members, who should best get to understand the standard upload case first before tripping about this nerdy extra option, which is really a rare case. Convince me otherwise if you will, but this "feature" is a "wontDo" item on my list, I have developed enough things that then were ignored, this is a highly likely candidate IMHO.
I also do not believe the cross-mixed-but-not-mentioned irritated users would really appreciate getting notified about these types of mixes, as they do not really feel like someone is out for collaboration.
Getting remixes by someone who does not share your musical taste or approach can get quite annoying, and one doesn't want to miss notifications on other remixes either, so, it is not uncommon and absolutely okay to disable notifications by user, using the newsfeed-block option (gears icon in the top right corner of on any newsfeed entry). THAT is the most powerful tool to protect your wikiloops experience, hoping we could change the eventual odd person is ... less effective, to say the least.
Soooo. Bottom line:
I feel someone should invite the friends of cross-mixes to this thread here. Assumed any recent cross mixes were edited and the missing mentions of participants were added to the description text, thus removing the license breach, I'd opt for "let's leave it at that".
If that does not happen and the license breach situation is not solved, ask me to go ahead and wipe this content, and it will happen - be it by actually removing it, or by setting some sort of "shadow ban" status on these tracks which would prevent them from appearing in search results on wikiloops (yes, that option exists, too).
Looking forward to your responses & opinions!
+1
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i'm trying to get down to the crux of the issue here. is AI-stripping a members contribution the issue? when you publicly upload, i believe you give consent for anyone/members to use the track, but does that include a user removing your contribution, and say uploading it one branch up from your contribution? is that more of an etiquette/behavior thing? does it violate anything in the Terms of Use or license?
it may be few and far between the times that it happens, but if it's not explicitly stated somewhere (the AI removal of a members contribution), is that a snowball that will get bigger?
it may be few and far between the times that it happens, but if it's not explicitly stated somewhere (the AI removal of a members contribution), is that a snowball that will get bigger?
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As much as I sometimes totally rip up a template, I always make sure that all previous participant's stems can still be heard. I think everyone wants to hear their part in the mix, even when the remix is a big deviation from it's source. I've quantized lead vocals before on other sites for a cool but funny outcome. Now I suppose if all stems are provided and the mix you want to work with hasn't already been posted, one might could leave out a stem but a disclaimer should be posted. But, this may violate da rules. Nonetheless, becoming ok with anyone doing anything to your mix is a good mental standpoint to work on, imo. It's not like anyone gets to edit your posted mix, only their remix.
+1
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Publicaciones: 352
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Don`t like it, don`t like any of what I`m reading here.
It`s just good manners to inform people when you`re using their input. I`ve had a couple of situations where the tree was closed due to 6 musicians already involved, so I had to do the upload as a completely new track. Of course everyone got a mention in the track description, which also included a link back to the closed branch. Plus I sent out a mail to everyone involved, simply because I know that some folks are interested in following the evolution of their tracks. That`s just good manners and common sense.
But reading about people taking input without giving credit that`s, ehm.... HUMANS IMITATING AI.
Do I think that technical solutions would change anything? No, because bad manners will just find another hole to creap through. I`d rather spend 5 minutes on sending a - what`s the expression - `strongly worded mail` (i.e. a barrage of 4-letter words ending with yours sincerely) than having the Wikiloops engine room fake good user behaviour.
That`s me having an opinion on a hot tuesday evening.
It`s just good manners to inform people when you`re using their input. I`ve had a couple of situations where the tree was closed due to 6 musicians already involved, so I had to do the upload as a completely new track. Of course everyone got a mention in the track description, which also included a link back to the closed branch. Plus I sent out a mail to everyone involved, simply because I know that some folks are interested in following the evolution of their tracks. That`s just good manners and common sense.
But reading about people taking input without giving credit that`s, ehm.... HUMANS IMITATING AI.
Do I think that technical solutions would change anything? No, because bad manners will just find another hole to creap through. I`d rather spend 5 minutes on sending a - what`s the expression - `strongly worded mail` (i.e. a barrage of 4-letter words ending with yours sincerely) than having the Wikiloops engine room fake good user behaviour.
That`s me having an opinion on a hot tuesday evening.
+1
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wjl wrote:
Three thumbs up for these thoughts, Michael! Completely backed up by me, and I do it like you - I mostly stopped listening to those who never gave credits other than "I'm reusing it, that should be credit enough"...
Three thumbs up for these thoughts, Michael! Completely backed up by me, and I do it like you - I mostly stopped listening to those who never gave credits other than "I'm reusing it, that should be credit enough"...
Thanks Wolfgang. I almost thought that my way of collaboration is old-fashioned. If so, I can say that I'm now happy and convinced to be old-fashioned :)
+1
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Shamika wrote:
I'm not sure I have experienced that situation. I just wanted to say that as WL expands and develops we will get more feedback, remixes and such and our 'newsfeed' section can get very big and hard to keep up with. It's easy to miss comments and replies and I feel guilty if someone has gone to the trouble of doing things that get lost. As a vocalist I tend to chose the simplest templates and often at the expense of ignoring some great, full remixes. We are all human and self interested to a certain extent but I wouldn't want automatic likes or obliged credit to become patronising, it has to be justified.
I'm not sure I have experienced that situation. I just wanted to say that as WL expands and develops we will get more feedback, remixes and such and our 'newsfeed' section can get very big and hard to keep up with. It's easy to miss comments and replies and I feel guilty if someone has gone to the trouble of doing things that get lost. As a vocalist I tend to chose the simplest templates and often at the expense of ignoring some great, full remixes. We are all human and self interested to a certain extent but I wouldn't want automatic likes or obliged credit to become patronising, it has to be justified.
I have also experienced that situation of a fast-growing mixing tree and forgotten to listen to some of the latest remixes (I remember one situation where I found an upload one year and a half later... that was a late thumb and thanks, but a lot more than nothing). The topic here is that for some it became a kind of standard just to remix or cross-mix completely uncommented while ripping out other's contributions from the mixing tree because the last musician in the mixing tree did not upload an HQ file. I personally would ask the last uploader in the tree for an HQ file or would at least add a friendly comment. It's demotivating if our contributions are consumed instead of enjoyed.
+1
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apoyo de:
I know it's not much but my support is given, better days will come ... Thanks for creating this great Wikiloops community ...
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