I think I discussed this with most of you before, so the idea might not be new to you, but I thought branch would be a great place to discuss this.

I probably forgot to add a few people who were in the email conversation, but feel free to add anyone to this who you feel shares a broadly similar musical taste with us.

I got sidetracked and completely forgot about it...

No worries. What do you think? Still interested? Like the ideas? Have any improvements?

I'm still interested, and love the ideas we had:-)

Well, if anyone who is interested in participating can suggest some of the records from over the summer that they think should be included we can create a master list by combining them all together. If anyone isn't interested then I am sure branch must have a way for you to excuse yourself.
Also, if you think anyone else might be interested in getting involved, feel free to invite them.

Yeah, still in. Will give it some thought.

'ello!

I am also in. Great idea, although will be interesting to see how it works in practise.

Yes, indeed. I am sure it will evolve quite as lot as we try it out.
Josh made an interesting and useful point. He was worried it might end up being just music that the people who vote are involved in releasing, and perhaps to prevent that we should instigate some sort of rule that people can suggest any songs to the list, but you cannot give a song a rating if you are in any way involved with it. (For example I wouldn't be able to give Collider's single a rating because I was involved in releasing it, etc.)
What do people think about that?

That sounds good to me. So we all nominate releases, and then once we have a 'shortlist' we all listen and vote for anything we've not been involved in?

Yes - I think to save time we shouldn't require people to listen to everything. I think we should ask of a minimum of 3 ratings from each of us, with no maximum. I know some people are very busy.

How I envisage the process:
Step 1: We create a long list of releases everything month that each of us things would be worth including in the list.
Step 2: Each of us gives a rating to anything they haven't been involved in.

I think a direct vote would result in too many ties because there are likely to be so few of us. A rating system could work better, I think.

Yeah, that's definitely a good idea. Inhibits Natural biases that way.

This sounds quite like the Fresh On The Net Listening Post - freshonthenet.co.uk although more quantitative I think.

I'm notoriously bad at knowing what's recently been released, though, or what's coming up imminently, so I'd have to do a bit of research!

My only concern about this is a time one. I barely have enough to listen to the stuff I have to at the moment. It's hard to see where I'll get time to listen to 20 odd other songs.

Also, are you just talking about 'singles' or tracks from albums that have been out hat month?

Dan - that is why I suggested 3 to save time for the busier among us who still want to be involved. Based on the fact that we are the people suggesting the songs and voting, it might not actually mean any more than our regular music listening. Perhaps this is me being naively optimistic, but I did offer myself as a coordinator for this, and as it was me who originated the idea I am happy to spend more time on it than others.

WIth regards to 'singles' or album tracks - we would have to decide, but it is my opinion that album tracks should be included.

Would you weight the voting, in that case, so that the score per album was related to the number of people who rated it? Are you suggesting we rate at least 3 tracks per album, or at least 3 albums out of the short list?

What would be really helpful, I think, is if there was a google doc or similar with all the picks, and links to where we can download/listen. I could happily stick them on during the day at work, for example, and listen / rate then.

What might work is if you put the long list tracks in to a Mixcloud stream & them it'd be easy for people to listen to. I know you've said only vote for 3 but I'd still want to listen to them all before deciding, otherwise you're introducing an element of randomness that doesn't really sit well.

Both very good points.
I think the best way to weight would just be to take an average of everyone who votes for it (I also think we should have a minimum of votes for something for it to be included in the final chart - 1 person doesn't represent the whole group).

I think the Mixcloud idea sounds good, but I am also happy to put everything from the master list into a google doc as well.

How about a ranking system rather than a rating system? People rank their top 3 tracks (top 5 would be better if people are willing) from 1-5. That gives a score for each track. You'd have to work out how to count that across albums, though. If people give two of their top 5 to tracks from the same album, there'd have to be a calculation somehow. Unless we were just voting for singles in which case it would be easier.

So how about a Mixcloud for listening then a Doodle poll to pick your top 3 / 5 on. The track with the most first place votes wins etc?

I've just looked at Doodle Poll & I don't think it will work. Just a Google Doc then?

Yeah doodle isn't really set up for that. You could have a separate column in the google doc, though, for each person's ranking. List all the tracks, with a link to where we can listen, and then each person ranks the tracks they like. Then you could have a column on the end which works out the average score per track.

I don't think it should be the track with most first place votes. I'd prefer a system where first place = 5, 2nd place = 4 etc etc, to work out an average score for the track

To be honest, I dont really listen to individual tracks, rather albums or EPs

So do you think the albums should be rated as a whole, rather than people rating particular tracks from the album?

Yeah, that would be my preference, although if Im the only one that thinks so, Im good to go with the majority

I just wonder if that'll lead to people not having time to listen to everything. Although, arguably, if you're not listening to the whole pool then your scores aren't truly representative.

True, although I would argue that we will have heard the majority anyway, as we all have similar music tastes as far as I can tell

Ok, I think that scoring system is a good idea. Quite easy to understand. Do you think it would be best to do it like that, or golf-style (ie. 1pt for 1st, 2pts for 2nd, etc.) ?

I, also, usually listen to music as an entire release rather than a single track, but I think I agree that it might make the monthly listening unwieldy.
Perhaps a compromise (but not ideal) would be that in the mixcloud stream of the songs, each album or EP is represented by a "stand-out-track" (chosen, perhaps, but the person who nominates that album or EP) and if anyone thinks that this track would make their Top 5, they can then go and listen to the entire EP or album, and if other people don't think much of it, they won't. The problems with this are obvious, but it might be a useful idea as a compromise between the two?

Ok. I have added a few more people... people who I think were included in the original email conversation. If you aren't interested, I apologise and feel free to excuse yourselves.

Also, a quick question - can others add people to this branch, or just me as the host?

I have the option to add people

Ok, good good. I am glad it isn't just me. (Thought i'd check though)

yeah I think anyone can add. You can also share the thread on twitter and facebook if you wanted to bring people in that way, although I'm not sure they'll be able to join until they get a branch invite.

Yes, I did know that. I did share it initially. If either of you can think of anyone who might be suitable and interested, then obviously give 'em an invite. I don't really know what the ideal number of people would be, but I think my initial ideas were about 12 active members. Depends though, I suppose.

I think we've had some good ideas today. I'll just attempt to summarise.

We are going to develop a long-list of music to include for each months chart. I am then going to create a mixcloud stream of the whole lot so people can listen. I am also going to create a google doc with links to the music, where people can listen and also input their rankings.

We are going to rank our Top 5 out of the music we heard, and these are going to be averaged together to create the overall chart.

I think we agreed that it would be acceptable to suggest music you have some relationship with, but it wouldn't be acceptable for you to include it in the rankings yourself.

From our discussions today there are also two immediate questions that arise.

Firstly, will we just include singles and individual tracks, or are we going to include whole releases like EPs and albums. I think this is an area that needs further thought and discussion.

Secondly, the question of output after we have compiled the monthly chart. My suggestion for this (which is something I would personally like to do anyway) would be to create a monthly chart podcast. I would be happy to do this (with input from anyone who wishes, availability pending).

What do people think of this?

to answer your questions:

1: I am for releases as opposed to individual tracks.
2: Fine with me.

I would note though that we need to sue the release date for the month of rating an album/track, and not the date some of us may receive something (label has music in advance, as do those who get promos)

#1: If we are sure we can find enough EP/album releases a month to build a decent length chart, I'm sure we could do that. But I definitely like the idea of doing a singles chart as well.

#2: Oh that podcast sounds great and I would love to help.

The ideal, although it would involve more organisation (and possibly more people) would be to have a singles chart and an album chart. That way, people with less time on their hands could listen and rate the singles, and people with more time could listen and rate the albums. But it would be more work.

The other thing might be to start with singles, see how the system works, how much time it's actually taking people etc, then progress to albums if people would like to?

Yeah... I was thinking that too.

The other thought is, we nominate the tracks & then it goes to a public vote?

Perhaps we could start with just individual tracks, but then in November-December, as well as the individual tracks, do an Album of the Year as a test drive, and see if we can manage doing both concurrently.

I think I prefer the idea of keeping it to a small group instead of the public vote. I like the idea of it being curated by us, as opposed to it being about the public.

Ok - I can envisage a slight problem with averaging the Top 5 scores to create a rating - I think the ratings might have to be cumulative.
Reason:
If 5 people think Track A is the best, and 5 people think Track B is the best they would get equal points.
But if one person who thinks Track B is best also thinks Track A is second best, that would reduce Track As score slightly, which seems unfair, and gives advantage to tracks that some think are best, but others hate, over tracks that everyone generally likes.

Perhaps the best way would be to use a cumulative system, where instead of averaging the scores, you add them up?

that will only work if each voter has a limited amount of points/votes

Yes, but if we follow the idea of each voter choosing a Top 5, then there will be a limited number.

It's AV, James - how did you vote in the referendum?! :-p

But yeah I was suggesting adding them up - each person gives a ranking, 5 points for 1st, 4 points for 2nd etc. Then you add up the number of points for each track, giving a total score. You don't then average that by the number of people voting.

Haha. It's not AV, actually ;) (Source: politics student)
I support electoral reform - if anyone cares.

Yes, I like the idea of adding them up. Seems better to me.

Ok. I like the discussion we are having, and I think the details of the system are getting better and better the more we discuss them, but as well as discussing them, if we want to do this we should get on with it.

We seem to have come up with a good voting system, but the singles/albums issue seems unresolved.

Apart from my earlier suggestion of doing an album of the year Top 10 at the end of the year as a test run for doing an album chart as well, perhaps we could have a single Album of the Month to run alongside the Top 10 individual tracks?
Perhaps instead of the open nomination like the individual tracks, only Albums that receive multiple nominations make it through to the voting stage, making the time constraint easier?

I have created a file for the summer list, and will branch this off to avoid stopping flow of the discussion of the main mechanics behind the chart, which can remain here.

Album of the month might work. Perhaps everyone could just nominate 1 album, and everybody scores it, and the one with the highest score wins?

I'm slightly confused though as to how this is working in practise still. Are we each nominating 10 singles? 10 albums? 10 random tracks? Are all nominations going to the group vote? If each of us nominates 10 albums I can say right now that I'll never have enough time to listen to all the albums that have been nominated.

That's presuming that none of them overlap, and you haven't heard any of them already though, which I think is pretty unlikely.

Well I have to say I've not actually listened to any of the albums in your list so far. Plus I'm not sure I'd want to rate some albums based on prior exposure and some albums based on listening specifically for the purposes of this. Personally, I'd want to listen to everything on the chart at the same time, with rating in mind, for a true reading of my preferences.

I might be wrong here, but I wouldn't think in a normal month that each and every one of us would have 10 unique singles to nominate. If the list got too unwieldy we would have to have another method of cutting down as well which we can discuss, but I am not sure it will. For this original dry-run for the summer, we might indeed have a lot to nominate. If the lists becomes too long we can improvise.

My idea before was that for an album to make the list (currently, and with time in mind) it had to be nominated by two (or perhaps more) different people. I think that would cut any possible list down substantially, but maybe it is unfair.
Perhaps your idea of everyone nominating a single album each month to go to a vote is a better idea?

After some thought, I think we should initially stick with individual tracks, and then do a year end Album chart. This will save us on time, and let us iron out the crinkles in the current system before we start looking at lengthy albums which could take up some time. I would like album inclusion eventually, but I think we should work up to it.
Do people agree?