hey, i couldn't help but notice while I was rewriting the FAQ that the "Vote" tab is now gone from the top of the pages.. it used to link to the url: http://browse.bandamp.com/random_songs.html

i personally thought it was a nice idea, having random songs pitched at you for the sake of voting on them.

i can imagine a couple of reasons why this was removed, though I'll be honest and say that I'm not sure it was a good idea to remove it...?

if this is a matter of reviewing old long-and-gone songs and not newer ones.. then... how about we make the "random_songs.html" page only pull up songs uploaded within a given time frame?  That sounds reasonable.  I think that people don't rate songs enough as it is anyway... deleting this feature won't solve THAT problem.

for example...  the current battle for December 07.  here's the lineup.  tell me what you notice about the Rated : View ratio...

Aspirations     6    229    Oct 2007     
From The Day...    5    239    Nov 2007     
Rush (live)    6    240    Dec 2007     
The Challenger Of Salinger    6    256    Dec 2007     
Blue    3    308    Nov 2007     
Ariel    5    312    Nov 2007     
Silent Night    7    332    Nov 2007     
Lucile    5    378    Nov 2007     
Heartbeat Symphony    7    448    Aug 2007     
Bandamp Blues    8    686    Aug 2007     
Leave It All Behind    8    794    Jun 2007     


notice how my song, Aspirations, has only 2 votes less than Leave It All Behind (bottom of list), weighing in at a terrifying 8 votes.  I've got 229 views, and he's got 794.  His has been up 3 months longer.  For me, that's about a 38 views per one vote.  For GuitarKen (author of Leave it All Behind), that's a 99 views per one vote.

let's assume that 400 of thos views that GuitarKen has are just random passers-by, who maybe browsed into the page by mistake, or began listening, and then stopped and moved on.  Or maybe it was GuitarKen wacking the refresh button over and over   it doesn't matter.  so if only half (let's just say 400, to be approximate) of those views are legit, that's still only a one-in-fifty vote count.  that's terrible... absolutely wretched. 

So, i pose the question... how can we help promote the rating feature of bandamp?  If the community is all about helping each other out, rating seems like a good way to help that along.  I'm not looking for ways to make darn sure everybody knows i'm amazing or anything egotistical, really... I'm here to improve, but the rating feature doesn't seem to be holding water right now, especially when the random voting page was nuked.

i'll first interject some commentary on the subject of ratings...

i personally don't like the fact that i can't see how many votes I have on any of my uploads.  i'm not even talking WHAT the votes represent, numerically.  I'm just talking about the sheer number of votes that I have collected.   ... why?  it makes the vast majority of the info fields on my Music tab very open and blank.  ideally, i'd like to see what my average rating is as well, but i can see why this hasn't been something implamented into the visible info.

perhaps if my song ratings were only visible to me alone?   or something. i don't know.  i'm looking for suggestions and ideas.

(sorry if i came off as critical of whoever decided to have the "random" voter page redirect to the Current Battle page.. i'm not trying to throw a punch at you (whoever you are).  i'm just looking for some way to encourage voting on EVERY song!)

TLS

Another missing feature, well not in the sense TLS meant it, but one the would BandAmp good is a feature where you can favorite your songs and keep track of them.

For instance, if I really liked Flyer's song, but he's not done yet - it would be real cool if I can favorite the song itself, and keep in touch with it. So that if Flyer ever finishes the song, I'll be able to go on and listen to the finished version.

I mean... it's a cool feature, but probably a coding mess.

Yeah, dont hold your breath...

I stopped using the rating feature when I realized that on my music page I can't see percentages for what people have given me.  The rating is essentially irrelevant, and I make up with it in critique.

Oh, and in Internet terms, a 1-in-50 interaction-to-impression rate is phenomenal .

You'd have to hold your breath for a long time dude!
If I understand your idea you want to 'subscribe to this thread' but then not to a thread but to a song !!??
This would mean that every 'version' of any given song that a member uploads would have to be register under a main heading "mySong_MainThread", and every other version of that song the member uploads they'd have to register it into the 'MySong_MainThread' to which you could subscribe to be notified whenever Flyer makes a new version of that particular song!
It's not so much a coding mess, just a bit of a messy idea ! lol,
I'd like to see simple 'subscription to threads' implemented into the site ! Or more RSS feeds on mor pages. 

Is the 'Random Song Voting Tool Page' gone? Boo! it was a really cool idea!

In the end, that feature was put in by SlasherX, who reverted most of his work when he went away. Uh, I know this is an old thread but I followed TLS' link in tech support.

that's annoying.  It was never an essential feature anyway, and (with all the talk of how the battles are dying anyway) I guess it's not a pertinent issue at the moment...

I'm glad to know, though, a little about why it's gone.  Thanks for the post.