Better ways to incorporate Plug.DJ into the MB community
 

Ok, so I figured this was more suited to the suggestions and feedback forum, but if a mod disagrees and feels it's better in General Music or whatever then feel free to move it.

Plug has proven rather popular as of late and it only makes sense. This is a music forum and Plug offers the ability for users to chat, a place to get to know one another better, and of course for us all to play and listen to music together. It's a perfect fit and I think users are benefiting from an easy to way to discover music that is new to them and get to know each other music tastes better. It does also have the potential to retract from the music discussions here, and almost become a replacement for the music forums.

I've started this thread following a discussion between myself and Arya in the shoutbox a few minutes ago where we sharing ideas about what we could use Plug for, more specific ways to use the site to both bring the community together and maybe even create more discussion on MB in the process.

I'm going to share with nyou a couple of ideas that were mentioned, give you all the opportunity to offer your input, brainstorm and of course share your own ideas. If we can get some solid ideas together that we would like to try then we create more threads and try and arrange something.

The ideas we came up with are:

• Full album streams and listening parties, where we can schedule a time, lock the DJ booth and the nominated DJ can create the album playlist and we can all listen to it together.
• We could even make that idea a little more specific, such as new release streams and/or genre-specific parties.
• Essentially we could have an album club scenario, but with group listenings. We could still have the feedback for the album be given here on the forum.
• We could use it as a resource for allowing our more musically talented users to share with us their work. This could work in many ways, if the interest was there and a user was willing to do it, then we could allow a user to DJ, lock it for everyone else, and give them the opportunity to share a playlist of their work with the community.
• We could also open the DJ booth and allow multiple users to do the same and share their music with us.
• And in what I feel could be a very interesting project, we could have themes. If we had enough users willing to participate and contribute then we could themes, maybe monthly themes, where we could have users record covers. For example we could have a different theme every month, either a genre of music or even a specific artist and let everyone have a go at recording cover versions.

I have no musical ability, but I know that is something I would at least enjoy being a part of and being there to listen to others work.

There are certainly issues, such as timing. Timezones creating possible problems. I still think it could be fun to try any of these and try to use the site in a more positive way. I have nothing against the way we use it now, by the way, infact I love it, it's a lot of fun. I don't think it hurts to try and think of other things we could be doing that may just get people using and posting on MB a little more!

As I said, feel free to comment, criticise, and offer suggestions. And please, if you have other ideas, and better ideas, than the ones above then share them!

Honestly, I love all these ideas. We could have a stickied thread started with a separate Plug.DJ room specifically for all of the above, and have set times to do the listening parties. Separate so that if certain members don't want to participate in whatever album it may be (or whatever music is being played) the more informal room is still open to do whatever in.

So yeah. Do it.

I was actually going to create a thread for ideas for better incorporating plug.dj into music banter, but this is way better than what I was going to come up with, so thanks for saving me the effort.

Honestly I'm down for all of these ideas.

I'm really loving the idea of listening parties for new releases, and would be a part of that for sure.

I'm happy to give Mojo the power to organise this sort of thing in the main MB room - right now he's only at the "bouncer" level, which doesn't give him the ability to lock the DJ booth.

I would request that there be separation between mods in the plug and mods in the forums - simply because I feel they're different things that require different moderation.

This is also because the plug thus far has been largely unmoderated and has been, in my opinion, the better for it - the live environment leads to less drama and I think if the time comes it needs moderation in the way the forums do, something will have gone drastically wrong.


Otherwise a seperate room for the listening parties, where moderation is wholly consistent with the forums makes sense, but as I said before - I think there's a different dynamic in the forums vs the plug, and I don't foresee it being a good thing to have a ton of mods in there, since its worked very well already with minimal moderation - I think for the simple reason that it being almost unmoderated, forces people to be slightly more adult about things, rather than crying for kicks or bans just because of arguments happening.

We shouldn't need mods, as such, really. I agree it's fine as it is. If a time comes where it seems we may need that then so be it, but I wouldn't be worrying about that for now.

If theres enough interest then when it comes to working out exactly how we would organise these things, keep in mind that the creation of private rooms is now enabled again. At least for now. I made one, simply to make one while I could.

Also I am obviously willing to be involved in the process of creating and organising this stuff but I think that for anything involving the recording and sharing of users own music, it would be more appropriate if someone else did that. For now I'm nominating Arya, but obviously thats her call. I say this simply because I wouldn't be contributing to that, as I can't play anything.

I have a really good idea for the plug room that Mojo had a big part in, when I get to a computer, I'll start that! :)

Whatever ends up happening, I'm in. I love plug and would love to see it incorporated more into the forum.

The album-club-type ideas are especially ****ing awesome.

This for sure sounds great.

I do listening parties ALL OF THE TIME.
Other people should too! I feel like no one is around when I'm on except for like two people.

Loving the ideas. Happy to mod it up in plug if you have the capacity to do so GB.

Same here!

i like the idea of listening parties for new releases especially

not too big on other ideas, im in plug a few nights a week just hangin out and like it how it is for the most part. maybe open other permanent plugs available to anyone here. right now theres just the main room and the clique room but maybe ther could be one made specifically just for listenin parties or somethin

Wouldn't be against it, but like we said before, I think the less moderated plug is the better for now - I do genuinely believe that if we get a situation where we need mods enough to "control" the room, then that'd be a sign things had already gone very, very wrong.

Agree with that.

Yes, we could have other rooms and arrange listening parties there, leaving the main room as it is.

Sounds good, great thinking Arya and Mojo!

Yaaaay I'm excited about the support!

So if you haven't plugged in a while or want to talk about the changes that are for the better or worse I thought bump this thread.

So plug.dj has changed the look and style of it's virtual dj room. It now looks like you are plugging in a snow globe, maybe there be another change when the season is done. Who knows?

You can still

• woot
• meh
• the curate or add is now called "grab"

Those functions were moved to the bottom, the plus and minus signs are replaced by arrow up and down. I think this is plus because I often skipped my own song trying to get to my play list. One feature I can't find yet if it is still available it the "History" I love that function, I could find out who played what when I joined in later then everyone else and I also could import songs from the history into my playlist. If they got rid of it it will be sorely missed by me.

another helpful hint
Click [headphones] top left
then [Settings]
then under the title Behavior click [Auto Join Wait List]
I think this will automatically add you to the wait list.

Oh man, thank you for this.

Edit: By the way, you can access the history of the room by clicking DJ History (icon above all your playlists) when you pull up your queue.

...and thanks for that info too. :)

...maybe someone can come up with something for "Community Description" and "Welcome Message" and someone like GB or Goofle can add it.

This still happening, p-i-m-ps?

The idea from the first post?

yeah, it could still happen depends on whoever wants to step up and start doing it.

Full Album listens I mean.

I honestly like the way it is. Plug is the main way I hear new music and I like the group of regulars

I used to do that for a bit.

You should do that with the R&B Club albums.

I would do that but we'd have to set up a time that works for you and I'm not even sure if real knows about plug or how it works and what her schedule is like.

It was discuss months ago about spinning whole albums. I thought if there was a room dedicated to just that it would give those not into hearing a option to use the regular musicbanter room for regular stuff.

I thought it would be good for the album of the week clubs. So feel free to use it if you like.

http://plug.dj/musicbanter-vinyl-cafe/

You are a superstar.

Although we actually did do a "full albums" theme just last night and it was a bunch of fun. We got through all of lateralus, a chiptune Album, silversun pickups and Steven Wilson's latest. It rocked.

I've begun to spread the word about this, amen on that.

Also, I've begun spamming newbies with information about plug.dj, in a non-aggressive and effective manner.

Please don't do that.

Yeah but it's almost like you are trying to turn new members away from here by telling them they can learn about new music through plug, implying that they can't learn about it from here and discuss it here.

Oops. My bad.

I was in plug and in the chat box I got this message:


I logged out. But Goffle11 is in there but I guess he is afk in plug. Goofle11 where are you?

If you find plug buggy it's probably because they are updating the site.

Here are a few reads for anyone interested:

Progress On The Site Update | plug.dj blog

An Update on Site Status and a Look at What is Coming Soon | plug.dj blog

The New Design & Improvements to your Plug.dj Communities! | plug.dj blog

Ok, sort of a necro-bump here, but w/e.

I saw the suggestion about scheduled plug sessions in another thread (can't remember which atm), so I was wondering if anyone this side of the pond (Europe, if anyone wonders) was interested in setting up a schedule, at least for the weekends. Nowadays plug sessions seems to be initiated mostly by the Americans (and Canadians), and more often than not when it's the middle of the night over here.

So my initial suggestion would be:
8:30 pm GMT Friday & Saturday
(I normally don't have any opportunity to plug on Sunday evenings, so I'll leave it up to someone else to suggest a schedule for that day if they want to.)

What do people think of this?