Hello to all:

Depending on where you are in the world, Happy Mar10 Day (woohoo!) or Happy 311 Day.

Thanks very much to those participating in the 2022 application cycle, submitting new genre tag proposals, and providing feedback on site changes you’d like to see implemented.

Some of your proposals (e.g., “what if we had a nice shiny fire engine”) are unfortunately not in the budget (and this will come to bite us when the servers finally go out in a blaze of glory), but others were well-received when passed along to the one person who can make magic happen.

This entry will start with 2022 promotions, followed by a discussion of the community’s submissions for proposed genre tags (along with confirming that new genres will be added at a date TBD; current projections are late Q2), and then concluding with reviewing some of the consistent themes in your feature proposals.

My sincere thanks once more to all users for their participation in the community survey.

Part I: New Hires

First: congrats are in order to dmathias52, JesperL, Kompys2000, and Sunnyvale as the newest staff contingent, and a welcome to fogza and normaloctagon as new contributors, along with a “Welcome back!” to anat as well as ian b, who exercised their right to a grace application. Any former writer who stepped away because work/school/IRL responsibilities took precedence but would like to return can, provided that they don’t make unhinged threats about one’s spouse, children, and so forth. It’s like insulting Chef Gnocchi before he makes your meal. Why do that?

A common question is if promotions happen throughout Q1 and into Q2. The answer to this is that it depends, as some of the applications received were a bit peculiar (like skipping 3 of the 4 questions entirely — was this intentional?), while others are working on finding their groove and voice. I respect the sentiment shared regarding the murky ambiguity of supplemental hires (“ghost promotions”). We’ve had contributors get hired and then proceed to not do anything and find that amusing, and we’ve had staffers retire because, instead of getting paid by ~~exposure~~, they’re getting paid with real money. Either way, in the words of one application: “sputnik is the cockroach that mills around unbothered by nuclear devastation,” so if it means we can delay radioactive fallout with supplemental hires, we’re happy to do that. The best part about not having a vote is that I get to hit the shiny buttons. Hooray! Whether you applied this round or are thinking of applying, please feel free to contact any staffer you like or trust for guidance. It’s always my hope that the blog gets used creatively by staff and contributors, and 2022 has been promising so far.

Part II: Genre Tag Proposals

Next, we received triple-digit submissions for genre tags. Thank you for this!

In no particular order, some comments from users:

• An appreciable demand for Noise to be distinct from Noise Rock (“as opposed to having to tag every power electronic act as Noise Rock”);
• A similar request that Garage Rock and Garage be clarified (“Garage Rock is massively needed so people stop confusing it with the current garage tag which is for the electronic genre”), although it’s unclear if Garage in its current state will be renamed to ‘Garage (UK)’ or left as-is;
• Djent should be added “to separate boomer prog metal with scene kid prog metal”;
• We received 151 subgenres that had at most 3 votes (one of these was Sowingcore, with a total of one vote, confirmed to be “Not from Sowing”).

Unfortunately, the owner’s preference is to not be overly-encyclopedic because there are better sites for this kind of cataloging, but it’s been pledged to add at least 10-13 new genres at some point this year.

Without further ado, the pending additions are:

• Disco
• New Wave
• Screamo
• Noise
• Djent
• Trap
• Slowcore
• Synthpop
• Garage Rock
• Deathcore
• Dungeon Synth
• Vaporwave
• Krautrock

When will these be added? The current projection is Q2.

Apologies to those who were hoping for Folk Metal — you will continue to be stuck with dual-tagging Folk + Metal.

A common request/question was if we “can reset all the genre tags and start over”. Unfortunately not, as the infrastructure might self-destruct (and no fire trucks are in sight), but we can handle this on a case-by-case basis. ABBA and Boney M. fans rejoice!

In case you’re wondering about some of the one-off Rock votes:

• Butt Rock
• Cock Rock
• Clam Jam Rock
• Glam Rock
• Yacht Rock

Bizarrely, Noise Rock was submitted, but this is already an established genre.

Part III: Proposals for Site Improvements

Lastly, we received several ideas for site improvements. A lot of these fall outside of our control on a day-to-day basis, but in the spirit of transparency reporting, here’s a sample of submissions:

• How about user bios, so people can stop using their favorite bands sections for it?
• Maybe a fun addition would be a shoutbox-style comment section under an artist’s page;
• Allow reactions to comments, responses to comments and filtering to top comments and such. As much as I love the old forum feel, I think this would be the bare minimum to increase interaction on the site;
• “Add Dark Mode” and “AdD dArK mOdE”;
• Give us the “More” button in lists. Nobody can view threads from people with over 54 lists unless they use some stupid coding trick (“Would be fucking tite to be able to scroll back through a user’s lists more than three pages”);
• I would like to see longer lists for the historical genre charts. Possibly the option to give more than 200 results;
• Cross-genre searching in Charts, so if you wanted to search for the highest-rated Deathcore albums, you could input Death Metal + Metalcore + Hardcore, for instance;

Then there were some themes, including:

• Tagging albums in addition to artists (“Vote genre tags for specific albums”; “Individual genres for albums would be dope tbh”; “Albums being tagged rather than [or in addition to] artists”);
• Improved search (multiple requests for ‘Find an Album’) instead of just ‘Find a Band’ (additions: changing ‘Find a Band’ to ‘Find an Artist’ and having this text disappear when clicked/tapped);
• Consistent display of release dates (“this hasn’t been updated since 2013 lol”);
• Bring back last.fm integration!
• Bring back Musical Neighbours!

These requests were all deemed to be good ideas, but cannot be implemented as quickly given his time constraints.

There were also some requests/complaints about tracklists being ‘hidden’ by a pop-up window. This is a band-aid to help curb some of the redirects that we’ve been plagued with the past few years. It’s one of those “intentional but not by choice” deals.

Also: how many times do I have to tell you that editing sound-offs on mobile and getting a bunch of rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs is the latest “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” around here? If that gets fixed, then we lose all sense of pride and accomplishment!

However, the “most feasible in the short term” addition that will be installed at a time TBD this year stems from requests like these:

• Add a “To Listen” feature like on IMDb without having to use Lists;
• Some kind of “Wishlist” feature where you can essentially bookmark albums you want to listen to later. Right now, I have to screenshot them all — but obviously super inefficient! Would love to have my own Sputnik to-do list (public or private) that could be sorted by genre, release date, etc.
• The ability to ‘bookmark’ releases without rating them, as a log of sorts, without having to use the Lists for this;
• Make lists not delete themselves while you’re making them or stop timing me out;
• Hell yeah I love hitting [Add Another Item] 95 times when trying to make a 100-item list on mobile;
• I’ve gotten a few crashes after submitting a list, even if I try to go back to the submission page, all entries past 5 are deleted;

So: at a time TBD, in addition to the above-named new genre tags, Listening Logs/Wishlist/To Listen (or whatever the name turns out to be), separate from the List feature, will be implemented and the List feature will be analyzed for improvements!

While we’re at the mercy of owner availability, we know that these changes are on the horizon.

Thanks for your attention, congrats to the new hires, and thank you to all who participated in the community survey. All the best!