Admin Post: Link Collections and Playlists Are Coming!

[dawn_felagund]

This year, we hope to significantly expand what fanworks we are able to host on our site. We are preparing to build the next two fanwork types: playlists and link collections, and we'd love to hear from you about what features you'd like to see our site offer for these fanworks!

Playlists are collections of songs selected around a fannish theme. Currently, we are planning to offer the following fields when you post a playlist fanwork:

• Link(s) to a completed playlist (i.e., set up on Spotify or YouTube)
• Links to individual songs with a notes field for each song. The notes field allows unlimited text with formatting.
• Audio genre selection; if you choose "Music" as your genre, you will be able to select a music genre as well.
• Album cover art.

Links collections are exactly what they sound like! They can be used for myriad purposes—rec lists, collections of resources and references, collections of images and music for mood or inspiration—and will allow links within and outside the SWG. Currently, we are planning to offer the following fields when you post a link collection:

• Link, link title, and link description fields. The link description field allows unlimited text with formatting.
• Link collection genre selection (e.g., rec list, research, inspiration).

Both the playlists and link collections will have access to the fields available to all fanworks: title, co-creator, language, summary, fanwork notes, character, relationship, rating, warnings, challenge, and completion status.

Is there something you'd like to see offered for playlists and link collections that we don't have on our list yet? Comment here or, if you're on our Discord, the #town-hall channel is currently discussing playlists and link collections and welcomes feedback there as well.

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

The two art fields are happening! :D Two requests out of two comments is good enough for me!

Playlists (like all fanwork types) will have the Fanwork Notes field, which will appear at the top of the playlist.

You will be able to select more than one genre for all genre fields. If you're familiar with the new SWG site, the audio genre list is already in place for Audio fanworks; the music genre list will behave the same way. Also, the genre field is always optional, so if the mix is so eclectic that tagging by genre isn't going to be useful to visitors, it's possible to just skip that field entirely.

Thank you for the questions and feedback! ^_^

[zdenka]

Awesome, thanks! :D

Oh, okay. Having the standard Fanwork Notes field sounds fine.

Hmm, yeah, I regularly put opera and folk music and symphonic metal in the same playlist, so I might just skip that field. :) Or maybe have something like "Mixed Genre" be one of the dropdown options? That way I'd feel okay about tagging just one or two of the genres plus "Mixed Genre" and not feel like I had to be completist. But I'm not sure it matters to get that granular about it. Thanks for the explanations!

[dawn_felagund]

Here is my very rough first draft of the music genre list if you see anything missing (or wording that should change to be clearer):

Alternative
Blues
Classical
Country
Electronic/Techno
Folk
Heavy Metal
Hip-Hop
Instrumental
Jazz
Latin
Pop
Reggae
Rhythm & Blues
Rock
Vocal

No need to reply, of course, but I wanted to make sure you had the chance to give input if you wanted. ^_^

[zdenka]

I'm not really an expert in music genres, but here are some random thoughts which you can take or leave:

-It seems like there should be something for musicals?
-Where would you put someone like Enya -- New Age, maybe? (I mention her not only because I like her but because she's vaguely Tolkien-adjacent, being on the soundtrack of one of the LOTR movies . . .)
-What about Asian pop music, like jpop/kpop/cpop -- where would that go? Those are really popular.
-What about something like movie soundtracks -- would, e.g., the main Star Wars theme really fit under Classical?
-I feel weird about "World Music" as a genre, because it's like putting everything that isn't in the Western/European tradition in one box, even if it's widely separated musical traditions from opposite sides of the world. But suppose I had a track of someone playing the guqin (traditional Chinese instrument) -- where does that fit?

(Like I said, feel free to ignore if that's not helpful.)

[dawn_felagund]

This is all excellent, thank you! I've added Musical Theater, Soundtrack, K-pop/J-pop/C-pop, and New Age. I'm leery on World Music for the same reason you identify. Would Traditional catch those kinds of tracks?

[zdenka]

Glad it was helpful!

Hmm, "traditional" would make me think of stuff like Child ballads and other older/anonymous works. I'm not sure I have a better suggestion off the top of my head, though!