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I'd disagree with this.  As much as I appreciate there is a commercial interest in the forum I firmly believe we should be establishing a community here, not signposting advertising (I resisted using the word "Spam").  Just my opinion and for the record I have no influence over what happens here. 

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I think it might be cool to have subgenre divisions in the band promo section, and cut down on some of the labyrinthine clutter elsewhere. We've talked with the admin about restructuring the forum, including the promo section, and actually planned it out in some detail, but it'll be a large undertaking.

Macabre is right, though. We're not a passive audience ripe for the right advertising scheme. We're a discussion group. Nearly all of the bands that promote here fail to recognize that, or make a passing nod to it at best, and so our promo section is a wasteland of low-involvement members looking for some recognition without becoming a part of the community.

As a musician, I'm happy to have gained a few fans and sold or traded some of my own music to other members during my time here, but it happened organically and it took awhile. It also wasn't my primary goal when I joined. People get interested in things at their own pace. Advertising yourself here isn't worth it unless you're willing to make yourself a part of the forum. If you want clicks and likes and sales, there are other platforms that are much better suited.

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There is also a fan interest, and things in the promotions are a  jumbling of things. Say you want to just see show announcements on an unplanned weekend off. You could spend so much time sorting through promotions you dont get to a live show. The show could have been in driving distance but its over or half way when you find it. The community needs a place where new and undiscovered cream can rise to the top. A mixed promotions channel rather thwarts that however pure or democratizing for all, it's intention.

You wont find metal shows in the local papers here. (the Mid-South US)

When I want to hear new band and not sort through show announcements, or someone selling T shirts, sub categories would help out a lot.

There should be a just starting bands section. For when you do have time to hear some of the almost ready put themselves out there.

If we dont like commercial we have to replace some of its functions. Like replacing any middle man, you need to replace the function yourselves. Metal itself needs some sifting, or sorting of the channel. Its an important function. Without such, discovery of good new stuff is cluttered with well meaning bands putting out early sloppy efforts a grade below booking demo, and calling it a CD debut. This is killing Metal, and will empty a party. Commercial interest is low at least in the U.S. and sorting the not ready bands from the listenable is time consuming to the Nth. There has be a way to sort it for effective use of discovery time.

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I don't think anyone here has the time or desire to curate every single band, solo project, fledgling demo, and playthrough video people post here. Not to mention the insanely high proportion of chaff to wheat. We're not that kind of group. If you're inspired to dig through the promo section looking for the greatest new thing nobody's heard of yet, more power to you, but like on any forum, you'll have to do the digging yourself. A little more organization would be cool, and as I said, it's been discussed. It's up to the admin whether or not to actually implement it.

If you want curated metal, there are plenty of bloggers who offer reviews and recommendations, on personal websites and Facebook pages and through some of the more well-known metal blog sites. I follow No Clean Singing, and peek at Metal Injection and Invisible Oranges, especially certain reviewers, and when I was on FB I got great recs from Starkweather and Mathcore Index; I also spend a fair amount of time on Youtube.  I discuss the stuff I like here, in our discussion threads, and everybody else does the same with the bands they're into, and occasionally we'll collate some of that into posts in our recommendation threads. So it goes.

As far as show indexes go, again, it would be cool, and it's something the admin has proposed but hasn't yet implemented. I've never had a hard time finding out about shows online. Resources for that already exist. Our membership is scattered across the globe, so it's not like we're all going to be attending gigs together. Our show discussions often take the form of impromptu reviews.

You're welcome to join in our discussion threads, introduce yourself, share your own taste in music, and get to know us a bit. That's kind of the whole point, after all.

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