The Syndicate

Fellow music nerds! I have traveled afar in distant lands such as Mafia Universe and have brought back with me knowledge of strange rituals. I'd like to try running a "Walrus" here (I have yet to be enlightened on why it's called that).

Wait, WTF is this?

(Bear with me as I'm quite new to the concept as well and might miss something.) Basically, Walrus is a way to share music recommendations based on prompts. It's set up as a competition, and contestants will score points based on the quality and category-fit-strength of their submissions, but you don't have to view it as such if you would rather just think of it as a structured but fun outlet for exchanging tunes.

How it works: One person, the host/judge, decides on a set of categories (themes, concepts, technical specifications, whatever). The norm seems to be to have around 8-12 categories, and they can be anything from specifications such as "shorter than 3 minutes" or "cover songs", to silly criteria such as "has a color in the title" or "features an unusual instrument", to descriptions of vague conceptual feelings or aesthetics that may result in a variety of subjective interpretations. The host may provide sample tracks that would fit each category to give the players some frame of reference, and the host may also specify some of their particular tastes (potentially even banning artists or genres they particularly despise) but otherwise variety/uniqueness in genre is highly encouraged!

For some examples of categories and host guidelines check out these two that I have submitted to: Shad's (aesthetic-based categories with somewhat of a loose chronology/storyline) and KoC's (categories all based on titles of songs by one artist). To see a completed walrus game with the reveals of winners per category, skim through here or here.

Players will have some amount of time to select one track for each category and PM them to the host (for each one just send a simple URL for youtube, spotify, bandcamp, soundcloud, what have you). Submissions may be changed up until the deadline. Then the host will listen to each submission, preferably multiple times until they get a feel for the songs and can judge them fairly. Now, I don't think the following is strictly required but I got the idea from Shad and it sounds ideal: while listening through, the host should somehow set aside and randomize the links for each category such that they don't know which is whose until the reveal, so that there's no bias or preconceptions based on who submitted what.

Then, the host will score each submission according to how well it fits the category and much they like it overall, and reveal each submission publicly from worst to best. There is a Discord server in which the reveals happen live with the songs actually playing over audio chat -- I haven't witnessed this firsthand yet and am not entirely sure how it works or if we'll make use of it, or just post the links on the forum so people can follow along at their leisure. Depending on the host I think the whole process can take up to a month or two, with a couple weeks open for submission and then however much time the host needs to listen and sort through -- reveals can happen one category at a time, so the host may choose to reveal the scores for the first category before finishing listening to the later ones.

So, I hope that all makes sense (I recommend checking out the example links above). I'm going to go ahead and start one up in the next post so I hope there's enough interest.

Tagging some people who may be interested:

This looks really neat. I'll certainly participate.

No promises but I may try.

I'll think on this.

Are we allowed to repeat artists?

Not that I would want to, I’m just askin’.

Sloonei wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:45 pm Are we allowed to repeat artists?

Not that I would want to, I’m just askin’.

Yes

I would participate, but all of my picks are already taken in the examples.

Might have to give this a shot.

This sounds cool but I'm not sure if I know enough music to even fill all the categories.

nutella wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 2:07 am Submit via PM, ideally providing just a bare URL for each track if possible (so I can just paste it in a separate log to hopefully decrease the likelihood of me associating the song with who submitted it - I'm not sure how well this will work and there's probably a better way to anonymize submissions but whatever).

Syndicate is turning that bare URL into a full preview of each video.

I'm considering using a link shortener but then each person might use their own link shortener so goodbye standardization.

Sticking a blank URL tag on it negates that. Like so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 9:34 pm This sounds cool but I'm not sure if I know enough music to even fill all the categories.

Some of my suggestions are "Ooh, this one will be cool!"

Some will be "I found one that meets criteria!"

I look forward to what everyone else has submitted

Yeah I submitted mine

How long do I have to submit?

Creature wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 11:56 am How long do I have to submit?

2 weeks left

Yay!! More Walruses!!

This looks neat, will do my best to send one in

Submitted

tomorrow's the day!

hmm already? lol probably gonna extend it another week, would be cool if at least a couple more people subbed

I could use more time.

Yes I had forgotten. I will try to get to this within the next couple of days.

Boooo I was so excited too

Aw, me too.

Extending deadline to the 13th, or if everyone who has expressed intent to submit does so before then I may get started.

[mention]nutella[/mention] Must submissions be songs with lyrics or may they be instrumental/orchestral pieces?

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 07, 2019 6:54 pm @nutella Must submissions be songs with lyrics or may they be instrumental/orchestral pieces?

They can be anything, lyrics not necessary!

All done.

Sorry to be a tease, but count me out after all. I’m too busy and my current musical tastes are a tad too pedestrian for this. I’ll check out the results of the first few of these and see if it’s workable for me.

you guys owe me $5 if i get last place

I am so doing this

Turnip Head wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:30 pm I am so doing this

[mention]nutella[/mention], I believe 112 wants to do this too. She mentioned it in discord. You might want to reach out to her, she wasn't sure if it was too late.

[mention]112[/mention] yes of course there's still time!! and omg omg [mention]Turnip Head[/mention] so glad to see you!!!

my anticipation is at max, please please please let today be the day we reveal the picks

[mention]nutella[/mention] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

just ping me when this finally happens i guess

i will destroy you all

Sprityo chill this takes time, this was just the deadline, the reveal doesn't happen until I have time to score. I'll aim to reveal maybe the first two cats this Thurs maybe

nutella wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 2:06 am Now, I don't think the following is strictly required but I got the idea from Shad and it sounds ideal: while listening through, the host should somehow set aside and randomize the links for each category such that they don't know which is whose until the reveal, so that there's no bias or preconceptions based on who submitted what.

I thought of something regarding this during my walk today.

Why not set up one of those sockpuppet / dummy accounts for the sole purpose of users logging in to submit their playlists? Those who want to play can send a PM for the credentials so no outsider gets it.

I like it. Log into The Walrus to send your links to the host. But then how will the host know who to give credit to when the time comes?

I randomize manually by making a spreadsheet of names as rows, cats as columns, one column of identities, one column of random numbers, then I black out the identities and sort by the random number column.

then I copy-paste one column of submissions into another page, start judging, and then sort again to randomize again for every other cat

finally, I'll be able to check the original spreadsheet while revealing to see which YouTube link matches up with which submitter.

Turnip Head wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2019 11:49 pm I like it. Log into The Walrus to send your links to the host. But then how will the host know who to give credit to when the time comes?

We act civilly and take credit for what we submitted. It's no different than a game of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity.

I think that gives the host a bit of fun as well, not knowing the curator he or she is digging the most.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Oct 15, 2019 12:12 am

Turnip Head wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2019 11:49 pm I like it. Log into The Walrus to send your links to the host. But then how will the host know who to give credit to when the time comes?

We act civilly and take credit for what we submitted. It's no different than a game of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity.

I think that gives the host a bit of fun as well, not knowing the curator he or she is digging the most.

I also like this a lot.

I'm currently doing something closer to what iaafr is describing but a little less organized lol. Doing my best to randomize the order so I don't even know which tracks in different categories were from the same submitter.

Anyway. I'm calling it officially closed now; sorry to anyone who missed out. There are 10 participants:
[mention]Dragon D. Luffy[/mention]
[mention]Epignosis[/mention]
[mention]iaafr[/mention]
[mention]JaggedJimmyJay[/mention]
[mention]Keldeo[/mention]
[mention]Sloonei[/mention]
[mention]speedchuck[/mention]
[mention]sprityo[/mention]
[mention]Texas Cloverleaf[/mention]
[mention]Turnip Head[/mention]

I'm going to aim to do the first round of reveals (probably the first 3 categories) this Thursday, 10/17 around 6 pm PST / 9 pm EST. For those of you familiar with the live discord reveals, I'm prooobably not going to get that set up for this (likely not that many people would be there and there's only 10 contestants anyway, plus I don't really know how to do it haha), I'll just post the links and scores here so feel free to listen along on your own time.

Scoring will be on a 10-point system (well, using one decimal place so you could think of it as out of 100). It's admittedly a bit arbitrary, but there's at least a loose basis of a score out of 5 for category fit plus a score out of 5 for my personal enjoyment/appreciation of the track. I'm trying not to overthink it too much lol


So far the first few categories have a lot of really strong submissions!! Really enjoying listening to what you guys sent in.

Hype.

Who's gonna be the world champion of music?

Looking into getting the live reveal set up on discord but the mods seem busy and maybe not enough of you guys would even be around for it(?) If I can't get it set up soon I'll just post in thread unless people feel strongly (in the walruses I've submitted to listening along in chat has been really fun but there have to be people there for it to matter )