Dream progarchives features

Both would be good, and many have called for, but the second is the one I care most about. I so wish we could label albums, and multi label them a la rateyourmusic and that we could easily do searches of albums using multiple genre tags from a drop down menu (click any and all that apply).

Edited by Logan - October 10 2020 at 20:50

Neither, they make so much sense should have been done eons ago............Lost cause now.

Hi,

FatherChristmas wrote: Logan wrote: Both would be good, and many have called for, but the second is the one I care most about. I so wish we could label albums, and multi label them a la rateyourmusic and that we could easily do searches of albums using multiple genre tags from a drop down menu (click any and all that apply). I agree. I think that SEBTP is definitely symph prog, for example, but I think Duke is better classified as crossover prog.

Agree. To add, though, not only do I not think labelling a band under one genre often to be sufficient, but also not on the album level. Ideally we would have multi-labels for albums. In that case, Symphonic Prog and Crossover are sufficient descriptors. At rateyourmusic, Selling England by the Pound is labeled as the genres "Progressive Rock, Symphonic Prog" with the added descriptors "epic, satirical, medieval, melodic, complex, philosophical, progressive, uncommon time signatures, technical, male vocals, pastoral, political, concept album, playful, spring, mythology, warm, poetic, passionate, quirky."

There the "Progressive Rock" label itself becomes more important, although considering how many albums in PA are not Prog, especially due to complete discography policies, I would like that as an album label too. At rateyourmusic, Duke is described as "Progressive Pop, Pop Rock" as the main highlighted genres followed by "Progressive Rock, Art Pop, Symphonic Prog." Crossover Prog by our standards, and as descriptors "lonely, breakup, male vocals, concept album, passionate, atmospheric, rock opera." From Genesis to Revelation is described as "Pop Rock, Baroque Pop as the main ones followed by Acoustic Rock, Progressive Pop, Baroque Pop"..

If we had the ability to label albums by multiple genres, then we wouldn't need Crossover Prog or Eclectic Prog as genres. With Crossover Prog we would have the pop label, and with Eclectic Prog we would have any relevant labels to take it's place, such as, "Krautrock, Jazz-Rock, Psychedelic".

I hardly every use our database to discover albums because I can't easily search albums by genres let alone by multiple-genres, and because I'm interested in far more than Prog and find a more general database to be more useful.

Anyway, changing it now would not only be a huge amount of work (I think it would have to be open to all members helping out), but the architecture of the site would need to change. It would entail a large amount of expense. Improvements were made when the owner started up Metal Music Archives and Jazz Music Archives. This is an old site that went online back in 2002. Still, one can dream.

Even if we could change it, I'd still quite like to keep the categories we have as master band labels. At rateyourmusic the Genesis band itself is labelled by the genres "Progressive Rock, Pop Rock, Progressive Pop, Rock Opera, Symphonic Prog, Adult Contemporary".

For me this site's draw is the forum since I have been a here along time, not the database. If it weren't for the community here, I might have migrated to reddit. Variety is the spice of life, and even at the forum here I tend to favour the non-music discussions.

I vote "Neither" - I like ProgArchives just the way it is now and I wouldn't want to see anything changed. There's an old saying in Texas, it could be in Tennessee:- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Edited by Psychedelic Paul - October 12 2020 at 15:05

The fact that there are no half star ratings on PA is one of my greatest frustrations in life.

Symbolic by Death in the top 100 

^ I agree that there's no need for half stars. Don't break the stars!!! 

Seriously though, there's no "need" for that. It would go further to rate out of 100. You know? If you get nuanced, half stars will not be enough either.

chopper wrote: I'm not really interested in genres. There are enough arguments on here about whether a band is neo-prog, symph prog, prog-metal or whatever so I dread to think how may arguments there would be if we had to decide on individual albums.

To me there's a whole world of difference between, say, a 4 star album and a 4.5 star one.