Ideas and features for "Album of the Week"

[i_am_fabio]

I wanted to start a thread where all of the ERR forum participants could have their ideas heard. I want to start featuring an "Album of the Week" on ERR. I think this would be one cool feature to have on the station. I know that there used to be an "AotW" (Album of the Week) so maybe you ERR veterans will have some insights on how it can be better than before and this time survive. As i said in another thread i will be more than happy to do a little research on an album/band once a week in order to feature it for "AotW". It seems that we are almost full on the current server so "Kailef the Great" is working to make us a new server so we can hopefully expand and update our musical library. In the meantime....i thought we could do the "AotW" with some of the existing stuff on ERR.

So here are some things i think would be cool features.....

-Maybe a new Sweeper that could play before a song from the "AotW" is being played.

-Some sort of feature on the mainpage showing band/cd of "AotW".....maybe you guys could help decide what would be cool.

-A summary describing the disc and it's contents. Maybe including band members, when and where it was recorded, maybe some reviews of the album, lyrical themes, etc.......this is what i need you all for....what else could be included???

-Maybe a couple days a week where the "AotW" is played like as often as allowed by Live365.

-And of course a spot in the forum where we could discuss the "AotW".

So what do you all think??? I think this would be a cool idea. Any ideas would be awesome. Again this is only in the preliminary stages....but we're hopin to make it to the big time. 

[Kailef]

*nod*  Part of that is what we used to do... I'd record an album of the week sweeper, and make it play in front of every track from the album that we were featuring, and make it play once per hour.  It was pretty cool.  It would take me a few hours to get everything done each week, which is sort of why I stopped doing it.

Oh, speaking of server...  We're in luck.  I got my hands on an awesome computer to use for the ERR server.  It's a Dell Poweredge machine with 3 SCSI drives and a raid controller.  It's pretty sweet.  :-)  It'll take a while to get it ready, and unfortunately I'll need to pull ERR offline for a day when I do the actual switch.  I might upload some tracks and put ERR in the crummy Live365 hosted mode that most people use, which will shove commercials in your face every few songs... but it's better than silence, right?

[i_am_fabio]

Any ERR is better than none.  That's great that you came up with another computer. Awesome!

And as for the "AotW"......is there no way to cut down on time? A few hours every week.  Man that sounds cool though. I there was a way i could help out, to make the "AotW" a reality once more. 

[Concertmusic]

Here is a twist on this idea, and I'll give it try today:  Instead of asking Kailef to spend quite a bit of time each week on a CD of the Week, let's have us listeners take the responsibility to pick our own CD of the Day or Week, then request songs from this CD, and use the dedication feature to let everyone know that it's our CD of the Day.  We could also use this thread, or a new one, to announce what the CD will be that day or week.

Here is the experiment, then:  I will pick as my CD of the Day Communic's "Waves of Visual Despair".  This Norwegian trio ranks in my Top Ten Bands of All Time, with their very heavy, yet melodic brand of melancholic metal (I shy away from calling them power metal).  They have been compared to Nevermore - which I think is a stretch, as they can clearly be identified by their own sound. Enjoy!

[poison girl]

great idea

Album or artist it doesn't matter   

[amir]

Neat idea for the Album of the Week (AOTW) . We can start a thread with polls, so people could suggest and vote for the next weeks. Also I think if Kailef accepts it, we can add each week a small news to the front page, so that people could read who/which is the AOTW .

[i_am_fabio]

Here is a twist on this idea, and I'll give it try today:  Instead of asking Kailef to spend quite a bit of time each week on a CD of the Week, let's have us listeners take the responsibility to pick our own CD of the Day or Week, then request songs from this CD, and use the dedication feature to let everyone know that it's our CD of the Day.  We could also use this thread, or a new one, to announce what the CD will be that day or week.

Here is the experiment, then:  I will pick as my CD of the Day Communic's "Waves of Visual Despair".  This Norwegian trio ranks in my Top Ten Bands of All Time, with their very heavy, yet melodic brand of melancholic metal (I shy away from calling them power metal).  They have been compared to Nevermore - which I think is a stretch, as they can clearly be identified by their own sound. Enjoy!

 This is pretty much what i was thinking we could do. Except I hadn't really thought about the time issue. I figured we could write the reviews, and choose the artists. But the problem with your idea is that we can't listen and request all day. Are you thinking that spread out amonst the board we could do it? So maybe if Amir is listening early mornings he could be requesting the artist if the week, and then maybe Concertmusic could be doing it at a later time, and then me and then Kailef, and so on. We could have a big review of the band featuring back catalogues and other interesting facts about the band here on the forum. And maybe in the request box it would say something like.....COMMUNIC! ERR's ARTIST OF THE WEEK!!!! Jump over to the Message Board and Learn more about this Prog/Power Trio out of Norway..... or maybe we could even have Kailef add the review to his main page where he posts the news.....this will be considered ERR news. 

I like where this is going. We just need everyone's ideas on how to make this go smoothly.

Time for work. Have some good listening all. 

[Concertmusic]

Actually, I was keeping it even simpler than that.  Today, I chose Communic, and every hour, as soon as the system permitted me, or when I got around to it, I picked a new song, and in the dedication section, said something like "Concertmusic's CD of the Day - Track 1 - and a little about the track or the band".

This way I played songs from the CD for everyone, and gave just a little background - juts enough to whet the appetite if anyone hadn't heard about Communic.

I'll do another CD tomorrow - with an intro on the forum, and then just a few tidbits in the dedication section - have a look and see what you think.

[Concertmusic]

Today's CD of the Day - Dream Theater's "Systematic Chaos".  Yet another outstanding release by these New York-based prog metal giants, and again a CD that has elements not found before on any of their previous material.

On a side note, I will have to send "Train of Thought" to Kailef - a must-have DT disc, and their heaviest offering to date.

Enjoy!

[mojobie]

I absolutely LOVE Dream Theater! "Train of Thought" is really good, "Images and Words" and "6 Degrees of Inner Turbulence" are also really really good, and epic . So is "Octavarium" and "Metropolis: Part 2" and ...etc (I think I made my point ). As for "Systematic Chaos", my favorite is (are?) probably "In the Presence of Enemies" (Parts 1 & 2), good schtuff.

As for ideas, what if instead of Kailef recording the sweeper, why not let the people who donate record them (if they can)? I think that'd be pretty cool.

[amir]

Well CD of the day is a bit too fast IMO. Each album has usually around 10 tracks, and with the limitation of 1 track per band per hour, to get a full listen of an album in a day would require 10 hours of straight listening and requesting at precise moment. So the chances that people could miss is rather high. So I suggest to have at least a week time for it, so that we can get a nice coverage of the album.

[Concertmusic]

I agree, amir - I have only played 6 of the Communic tracks yesterday, and only 1 track so far for DT - the system stuck in "Forsaken" right when I tried to request my next choice.  A week may be too long, however, as you (or listeners) may loose track of where you are.  It's an experiment in progress....

[i_am_fabio]

I don't think a week is too long.  As you said above you were only able to make six requests in the entire day. Even those who were tuned in at some time probably only heard a couple of them. So you figure you play 5-8 songs a day from the album, people who listen regularly are only likely to catch a few per day at most. Many can't listen to ERR everyday and especially all day. < This is why i suggested we all spread around the requests so maybe we could get songs played at different times of the day. And for those that have a job that allow them to listen all day, they cannot always be engrossed in the music and are bound to miss a couple songs. Give it a week and let's just see how it works out. So if your willing....let's just continue with the Dream Theater Disc for the rest of this week. Maybe we should start a dedicated thread for each album of the week. We could then all add what knowledge we have about that release or maybe other related interesting items, such as the video for 'Constant Motion' or an interview and other cool facts and info related to the album.

To make it even easier for all of us to request the "AotW", we could have a statement that could just be copied and pasted into the request box, like this....

Epic Rock Radio Presents "Systematic Chaos" by Dreamtheater as the Album of the Week. Check out the message board for in depth info and details related to this release. 

^^^This obviuosly needs a facelift of some sort. 

[Concertmusic]

Let's do it - whenever one of us is available, and sees that DT, and "Systematic Chaos" in particular, has not been played in the time visible on the main page, we'll attempt to stick in a song of our choice - we'll find out pretty quickly if that works out!

[amir]

I made a sticky post with the title of the albums. I will modify the title to represent the changes of the selected albums. Here it is:

http://www.epicrockradio.com/smf/index.php?topic=3888.0