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Never underestimate the power of nice
Getting a lot of attention and have awesome musicians spice up your track - that sounds like musicians heaven, and yes, it does happen on wikiloops.
However, it does not happen by itself, but we will offer some guidance on how to get there in this article.
As already indicated by the title, the ingredients to having fun on wikiloops include quite a lot of social interaction skills and awareness of how online interaction works slightly different.
These things may seem totally self-explanatory to the "digital natives"-generation, but let's mention them once more in the following paragraphs.
Being known helps a lot, here is how to get there
Once you have followers on wikiloops who get notified on their newsfeeds everytime you upload a new track, finding people who will join you will no longer be a problem.
There are quite a lot of users on wikiloops who rather suffer from getting too many remix notifications than from having no-one notice their tracks.
You may not be there yet, so let's have a look what it takes to let people click on your tracks first, and eventually on the "follow"-button on your profile.
For a start, are you identifyable at first sight?
well, you certainly are yourself, but have a look at your own avatar image, especially when its displayed in the smallest version (for example in the online users panel).
Some users are very easy to recognize by their images, so it is easy to remember "yes, that guy with the dark-blue kangaroo avatar, I've heard that one before!", while others may leave you wondering wether it was this guy you heard last week.
Second, where will people notice you on wikiloops?
Your uploads will appear on the "latest jams" list where curious folks may sample the new guys track.
Now, this is the most obvious chance to leave a good impression, but it can also end as devastating as having listeners decide "I'll never listen to that guys uploads again", so take care what you present at first.
Once you have an audience, you can receive 45 likes for doing quite odd things, but that does require people know what you are capable of and what your "musical humor" is like.
Speaking of humor, we can only recommend you check out the "How to choose a good track title"-article, but on the other hand we recommend care when working with humor. Especially sarcasm and irony do not translate well when people use online translation tools, and certain jokes do not belong on a child-friendly wikiloops either.
now, continuing in the question of where you may get noticed, keep in mind there are quite a lot of other ways to get noticed on wikiloops:
Besides the latest jams list, you should be aware that the musicians who provided tracks which you remixed get notified on their newsfeeds when your remix is posted.
Do not annoy them by posting four versions of the same remix because you forgot something in the first three attempts!
Away from posting uploads, you will get noticed everytime you:
- give a "thumb" for any track (the tracks-uploader gets notified and may check out your profile)
- write a comment on a track (again, the track uploader is notified by newsfeed)
- reply to a comment left to one of your tracks or any other track (the author of the initial comment and other users who also replied to this comment will get notified)
- follow another user, who will be notified about having a new follower
- visit someone elses profile, which will let you show up in their "recent visitors on your profile"-area
- say "hello" in the wikiloops shoutbox or
- join or start some thread in the wikiloops forums,
so here they are, 8 ways of raising interest in yourself and your music, 6 of which are completely unreleated to your musical qualities.
Things to improve about your tracks
In this paragraph, we will point out how your choice of tracks to join, the audio quality of your recordings and the added track data can possibly be improved - just check below list and see if you have thought of these things:
1st: The interest in your remix will vary depending on your choice of track to remix
Read more in the "Finding collaborations to join"-article.
2st: Things like sloppy timing, unusual tunings and failure to provide any hint on the songs structure are...
not so motivating
Read the detailed suggestions in the "Creating a track which others may join"-article.
3rd: A comment on your own work can balance a lack of recording quality
This may seem odd, but the polishedness of your recording does not matter much IF you comment on the recording quality in your tracks description. Bad recording quality does not say much about you - you might be a beginner who couldn't do it better, or someone who just doesn't care and "rapes the backing".
If you provide a comment like "Not all happy with the sound, anyone got some good advice what to do different?", you are clarifying the situation & may get some feedback.
4th: Using the "tags" for text-search, providing some chords, attaching a HD single-track and stating the correct categories all increase your chances to have the track search tool list your track
Read more about the track search tool.
5th: Don't forget, we do collaboration, not self-presentation
If you provide tracks in which you have arranged and played everything, and are now hoping to have your favorite wikiloops singer join that... then experience shows us that that is rarely working on wikiloops.
The less "done" your tracks appear, and the more space you leave to others, the higher the chance someone will join you.
I know it's not much but my support is given, better days will come ... Thanks for creating this great Wikiloops community ...