The multiple discs thin is always a debate when it comes up. I can see both sides- though ultimately I don't think it's that big of a deal. More music is good, isn't it? Even if it's not your thing, or you don't think the quality is higher. I dunno. Years ago someone told me that having 5 hours of music for DoD's mag month was "embarrassing". I always figured more music was a good thing. If I were PAYING for it then I would be upset. But theres nothing really lost except maybe some time in terms of listening. Oh well. Delete the ones you dislike.
What I want to come back to though, is this whole.. holding it off until X amount of likes was hit. Was this something everyone on the project agreed to? Was it even announced before hand? because Bonkers disdain for it seems like that wasn't the case. And if it wasn't agreed on, thats frankly, messed up. Those likes aren't going to the artists who put their work into it, it's going into OCR specifically. You could argue that this is fine since they will just get promoted through OCR.. but what if they don't do another contribution after that? If I work on a project and someone decides to hold my work random until THEY get the self promotion they want, that will be the absolutely last time i work with them.
Sometimes I've come across a band that wants me to "like" their page before they let me listen to a song. Not only do I refuse to do that, it sours me on the entire band henceforth. This trick by OCR soured me on this whole album. I would have figured that with Capcom themselves promoting it, that would have been enough.. but nope. Sorry guys, it just bugs me.
I understand what you're saying about the likes, but I think it's going extreme, and this is someone who refused to "Like" artists excepting my very favorites for years (which invariably ended up being limited to the likes of Manowar, Gamma Ray, Helloween, Blind Guardian, Nightwish, etc.). The ultimate goal is to try to get promotion. One of several of OCR's missions (
http://ocremix.org/info/Mission - just about everything we do is towards that mission in some way) is to promote the music & artists, and it does so by having a central site the hosts music, and gets people to clickthrough to the site to download a particular song/album/etc. we mention. Then they can find out more about an artist (example:
http://ocremix.org/a...nce-of-darkness ), game, etc. and find more songs, potentially by other artists. With the extensive database of information hosted on the site, one of the goals is to expose listeners (especially the more casual listeners who don't go out of their way as much to download new music, much less video game music) to different artists they may not have otherwise heard of, and check them out. Fans of a particular artist who finds a song on the site may then listen to various other artists and turn out to like them, so as a tool for exposure, it allows artists posted on the site to gain new fans on a scale that has not been recreated in the community.
Here's a quote by Dave (djpretzel) on the heart of the matter with a different context, but I think it brings our perspective to light:
We like VGM, dude. We're ALL second-class citizens. That's the main battle we're fighting, at least here at OCR.
Or more succintly, think of any album by multiple artists. It's an aggregate of work by artists, and often doesn't promote a specific artist over the others on it, but the album gets the attention. The same idea on a grander scale is what OCR is.
To get back towards the "Likes" though, the idea was to 1) promote any future news that is of interest (music, artist involvement with other media or release of other music, random game news, etc.) to those who ARE interested but just weren't aware of the ability to do so, and 2) bring discussion about the album out there. Just by looking at the some stats, it was very successful at accomplishing that, and brought more music to new ears faster (and ultimately more people listening to the album). Even if someone doesn't make another song that's posted onto the site in the future, their work is still there for listeners to go back and listen to and if they like it, they can search for more about the artist if they're curious (and with the case of this album, each artist has a link to their homepage right on the album website). As far as I can tell, the promotion works greatly. I've been told The Megas have been very happy with the positive attention their songs has drawn to them for example. The OneUps also value the attention it draws to their music as well, with a select track from each release getting posted.
I can see the point of view about disliking the "Likes" but...it seems shortsighted and essentially wishing that an artist limit trying to promote themselves to certain methods of expression. It's a false connection between an artists' music and the way they promote themselves. For example, what would you say if someone didn't like that you only posted your drawings on TheShizz, or that you posted your drawings on Facebook (someone cited this as a reason for disliking OCR) and decided that it colors their opinions on your artwork? It's a similar analogy, different approach. I don't take it personal if someone does that, or if someone doesn't like the music, doesn't want to participate in such a campaign, or whatever.
In this case of the content being held, the content was not even withheld for long - only 2 days, which is small considering all of the delays that happened to release due to my missteps in getting the album pieced together and ready for release, which collectively delayed the release by almost an year. Nobody feels worse about that than me - I even thought about it while in boot camp getting jacked up near daily, and it was even in my mind when I used my precious free time there writing letters to friends. It was supposed to be released before I left for boot camp last March. It's important to keep perspective though. In the end, it's doing the artists a huge favor with exposing them to even greater audiences. It even got people more active on social media discussing the promotion & music itself (the jump in Facebook comments, likes, and shares compared to previous releases is notable).
You do not believe that the benefits of exposure outweigh the method here. I disagree greatly due to evidence. I'm happy to leave it at that if you like, but I hope it gives you a different view you may not have considered due to distaste over the method.
