The Future of Young Composers

Ok, so when is all this talk about a social network and music management system going to end? There have been so many promises made to fulfill this dream, and it only seems to be all talk and no action. Today, action has finally been made, and development has begun.

Back in July of 2007, we hired an independent contractor to design a social network and music management system drafted by myself. After paying the first installment of $2800, the contractor went bankrupt after 2 months. In September, we submitted our project on a website called Rent a Coder, found by Mike. To my surprise we received many bids. In mid October of 2007, I finally decided upon a contractor. His name is Adam, and he lives in Australia. The name of his firm is called "Systems Enginuity". The project is to be paid in 4 phases, and today I finally paid for phase 1.

The project is estimated to take about 180 days to complete. This is a complete custom solution, and the real deal here, making the project net worth of around $16,500, and fully copyrighted and owned by Young Composers. In other words, this is not an off the shelf software solution, such as our forum software, Vbulletin. I searched for many off the shelf product solutions, but the closest solutions I found are called Zoints (which is free) and phpFox ($300). I was very close to choosing Zoints, until I was told that we would be completely dependent on the Zoints network. This is no good, because I want Young Composers to be an independent and standalone social network. As for phpFox, after reading many reviews, I was literally scared away from this product because it was declared buggy, slow, not very modular, etc. I am stating this info because some of you may ask, "Why on earth would you spend so much money if you could simply install a free script, or buy an off the shelf solution for only $300?" The main reason is because we need a fast, scalable, reliable and fully customized solution for what we want to accomplish here.

Vbulletin will be integrated with our custom solution. The cool thing about our new system is that it will contain a fully customized trademarked smart search engine, that will rank our member's music and videos in a unique and logical way. The algorithms are custom designed by myself, and Adam will try his very best to implement my calculations. I plan to use this fully customized smart search to power our forum search as well.

The main additions will not only be the addition of integrated mp3 playbacks and flash videos, but these media will be auto categorized according to tags. This allows our users or guests to find your music in many different ways:

1. The search engine

2. The forum

3. On your profile

4. Our category section

5. Bulletin advertisements (yes, like myspace)

6. The homepage, if your music is featured

There are some basic things to keep in mind to rank well in our custom search engine, but we will provide you with this information after the launch.

Another cool thing about this custom solution, is that it will be modular. This means, we can add further functionality even after the software is implemented and fully constructed. So if you get an idea sometime down the line, you can let us know, and if we think the majority of the community would benefit from your idea (and if we have the capital) we can develop it.

I invite everyone to leave comments and/or questions.

I'm going to bypass mentioning how awesome this is and move on...

During software installation and initiation, will the site be completely down for any length of time, or will this be instantaneous... or bit by bit?

I'm going to bypass mentioning how awesome this is and move on...

During software installation and initiation, will the site be completely down for any length of time, or will this be instantaneous... or bit by bit?

Ooh, good question. Also, I assume all the threads will still be on the site, we won't have to start ALL over will we? I doubt we will, but I guess it could happen.

I'm going to bypass mentioning how awesome this is and move on...

During software installation and initiation, will the site be completely down for any length of time, or will this be instantaneous... or bit by bit?

There should be no significant downtime during installation. This change is going to happen all at once, after 6 months or so.

Ooh, good question. Also, I assume all the threads will still be on the site, we won't have to start ALL over will we? I doubt we will, but I guess it could happen.

The forum will remain intact. The social network and music management will be fully integrated with our forum. Without the forum, our social network will not grow, and this investment would be useless. If/After our network takes off, the forum of course will still remain intact.

There should be no significant downtime during installation. This change is going to happen all at once, after 6 months or so.

The forum will remain intact. The social network and music management will be fully integrated with our forum. Without the forum, our social network will not grow, and this investment would be useless. If/After our network takes off, the forum of course will still remain intact.

I will go to bed early and wake up early on that day! I might even stay home from school to play around with the new forum! haha.

Wonderful news Micheal! :D

I sure hope that this company will not go bankrupt aswell.

This is a complete custom solution, and the real deal here, making the project net worth of around $16,500, and fully copyrighted and owned by Young Composers

This is the reason why he is the Sun King of YC :D

... that is alot of money, are you going to demand some payment via membership priviledges?

I'm very happy that the ball is finally rolling after all these months/years!

To answer your question, Saiming:

... that is alot of money, are you going to demand some payment via membership priviledges?

There will be a paid subscription service allowing users to do a few extra things with their accounts, so yes (standard accounts will remain completely free of charge). This is partially for the purpose of funding any upgrades to the site's hardware which will doubtless be necessitated after the system goes live, but will also act to offset the $16.5K development fee.

It's just a thought, but isn't it an idea to change the name of the site since your making changes on such a scale. The term young is not at all representive to the people using this forum/site. Also marketingwise you are narrowing down and might lose a lot of potential members, because they assume they wouldn't belong here. It might even be that the more accomplished composers witdraw from participating in the forum and so don't submit their works because of the fact the think it's not for them. While young composers like some of us would learn a great deal from them and so the goals of this forum/site would be reached to a greater extent. Something like Composing Minds, or anything else that doesn't rule out a particular group of composers.

Something i'd realy would like to see is an unnanomous rating system for every piece. It happens that a piece is viewed about fifty time a no-one has made a comment. So if you make a poll-like rating option people don't have to make a comment a can still leave an opinion of their impression. So maybe a 1-10 raking option. This gives great options for a hit-list, for competitions and alot more. The composers will know what the viewers thuogh of their piece in much an easier way than simply by the comments. Don't replace it for the comments, but add in the option i'd say.

It's just a thought, but isn't it an idea to change the name of the site since your making changes on such a scale. The term young is not at all representive to the people using this forum/site. Also marketingwise you are narrowing down and might lose a lot of potential members, because they assume they wouldn't belong here.

Interesting point. If these changes are as wide-reaching and exciting as they sound this could be a huge thing for YC. I have also wondered whether the name of the site is a hindrance more than it is an asset especially when you consider that there are virtually no other good composition forums on the internet!

This is by far the best website for composers to talk to other composers and get opinions on their work and I also wonder whether the name might narrow your potential userbase in the future.

I'm a relative newbie to these new boards, so obviously ignore this if you want; I'm just throwing ideas out in the open.

Oh, and of course well done on getting this new software deal sewn up. It's sounds fantastic. Congratulations, I can't wait to see it up and running!

It is an interesting issue, the fact that the site calls itself Young Composers yet is paradoxically home to a number of people who may not necessarily be deemed "young" in the strictest sense (i.e. teens, early 20s). Some people talked about it in the recent survey, actually.

We aim to address the topic from the moment a user visits the home page, via this section of the "About" page. It may well be that there's a better way to do that.

In any case, a site name change would also necessitate a domain name change. I'm not sure how search engine friendly that would be, even if we redirected all youngcomposers.com links to the new domain.

This is all purely hypothetical, by the way: we do not plan to move domains in the foreseeable future. Still a good question, however.

Addressing the name change, it is an extremely risky thing to do. The "Young Composers" trademark is powerful, and is what actually made this forum the way it is now.

But I will not completely disregard this. I will have to think about it, and see how well the social network does. But a wrong decision can break the whole site, and culture. If we drive it into everyone's head that the word "young" can be a figurative state of speech, there is no need to change the name of this website. Young Composers is a great trademark, and it implies "aspiring composers, who are looking to share their works, or to get their works known to the public."

Young Composers has been Young Composers since 1994, IIRC. The immense history that comes with the forum and its name simply can't be disregarded. A name change would mean a complete transformation from what was once the YCC into this.

I indeed think we should look at the potential gain to the site, in terms of potentialy bringing in the more and further developed composers and their benefits to the lesser developed ones under us. Also having more and better composers is something that will give the site a new and different culture. The cost in any way is the lose of built up image and technical difficulties. The gain can be bringin the site to a more proffesional level. A nother point though is that the name isn't the only thing people will deside on when looking whether or not to join. I do heavily suggest to renew the head logo. The playfull little boy as a logo screams: "ment for young people". It doesn't have a professional outlook and might be, more so then the name, a scare-off for the more serious composers. It might be a minor, but by narroing down, we lose a lot potential in general. We can be the leading composers website, but in order to be that, if we aren't already, we need to professionalise. That my view at least.

One potential drawback of "professionalising" would be alienating younger people who are interested in composition but not yet willing to contend with the academic/professional side of things. Over the last couple of years or so, we have actually tried to mold the culture into one which endears itself more to older, knowledgeable people, but at the same time I would personally not advocate abandoning the fundamental principle of aiming to help young/budding composers grow.

Yes, the logo could do with a re-design. I don't think there are any specific plans in that regard, though - certainly not with reference to the project announced in this thread.

If this place ever becomes a stuffy room full of old people, I'm leaving. ;)

Meaning old in mind, not in body.

I remember the last software upgrade... clicking refresh literally ever 20 minutes for... I think it was 6 hours :laugh:

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere before but would we be able to stream or just download hosted mp3s?

I remember the last software upgrade... clicking refresh literally ever 20 minutes for... I think it was 6 hours :laugh:

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere before but would we be able to stream or just download hosted mp3s?

MP3's will be hosted on our site, therefore there will be no need for external linking. Streaming mp3's and videos will be the new functionality of this site.

:thumbsup:

We live in exciting times.

I'm looking forward to this!

*wonders if perhaps the hideous 'salmon' colour scheme will be reconsidered*

:whistling:

Salmon? I thought it was moldy peach! :O

Sounds great really, I hope that yc will benefit immensly from this venture!

I would have actually described it as sunburnt flesh - I use tangerine for the fourm to save myself the horror! Speaking of tangerine - not a huge fan of it - can we encorporate some more colours for the fourm - a girlie pink or lilac would be appericate.

Great to here the changes which sounded really interesting. Any ideas on how much these "paid services" will cost - you have my support if it doesn't break my student budget - I'll pay.

I know that you probably already have a set plan but you might want to check out a this website. This is a very successful UK based student website which use to be solely in this style of website - it is only very recently had adopted this new look. The site is not lacking a shoutbox, this is availible in what is the known as the "Back Room." This section of the site is only to those who paid the subscription - you get various benifits like for example the shoutbox, private sub-forum which only other subs can access, bigger avatar pictures, customer user titles (whereas this is free here, there its fixed unless you pay.), colour user names and so on.

Anyway, the point of me suggesting you check out this site is because it is very successful here in the UK. It is one of, if not the, most popular student websites over here.

Also, TSR, suvivred a name change - it was first called UK learning.

I would have actually described it as sunburnt flesh - I use tangerine for the fourm to save myself the horror!

You use TANGERINE?!?! :O:horrified::sick:

That's the worst one of all!! I use the Dark Yellow.

You use TANGERINE?!?! :O:horrified::sick:

That's the worst one of all!! I use the Dark Yellow.

I've switched - now on Dark Red, which is slightly amusing.

The default theme I rather consider as being a woodsy look... different shades of brown, maybe a wooden desk, minus the texture. Peach or skin tone never occurred to me. I actually like this theme better than any of the others, but I would recommend a new one for when we update things, some people don't like this one or many of the others, it would be nice to have a new one to choose from, maybe a new default theme.

Banner change? I'd definitely go for that... maybe with a new theme we could have a more professional looking banner, and this old brown theme could keeps its old banner for those of us who prefer the nostalgia. Name change? I like the name Young Composers, I see no need to change it. I agree with Chopin, the risk is not worth the possible gain.

Professionalising the site? Sure, but not too much. As far as inviting more professional composers onto the forum (as this is such a great place to be), could we maybe have a "Pro's Corner"? It would be a section of the site dedicated entirely to those more experienced, but offers many of the same features as our current state.... this could be as simple as adding a new sub-forum with its own sub-forums for discussion and uploading pieces, just like our current board, but without distracting from our main "Young" Composer content. Professional users could also be assigned a "Professional Composer" status, to differentiate them from the rest. Just an idea.

You use TANGERINE?!?!

That's the worst one of all!! I use the Dark Yellow.

I agree! It makes me vomit :pinch:

I personally think that the default theme just screams out YC. The colours that somehow remind oneself about the delicious yet lethal chocolate invention, named nougat, really is the second most important YC organ :w00t: