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Features - Special Feature
 Spring 2008 Reader's Survey Results Special Feature by Sean Butze | June 7th, 2008
A couple months ago I decided that after a year and a half of running this site, it would be a great idea to get some real data on who our readers are and how they really feel about Sonic Frontiers. The survey consisted of some general demographics (gender, age, country of residence), none of which revealed very surprising results, but also contained questions pertaining to what people enjoyed most about SF, what they’d like to see more of, and what new things we should add. While participation was modest, the survey still generated some really great information on the identities and needs of our readers. Below I have included the results of the survey, along with my own personal reflections on each set of data.
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I. Gender
Male: 90.6%
Female: 9.4%
Not really much of a surprise here. Given SF’s all-male staff and a forum community comprised of almost all dudes, I’d say we’ve managed to achieve legendary “sausage-fest” status here at our site. I guess our prominent coverage of genres like metal, hardcore, and more experimental noise/ambient music doesn’t help much—but I can’t say any of us are really bothered by it either. Diversity in our content though is something we’re continually striving for, and I think that with the increasing addition of new styles and artists, we may eventually start to attract more readers of the opposite sex.
II. Age
14-17: 6.3%
18-22: 46.9%
23-29: 25%
30-39: 21.9%
Again, no surprises when it came to age groups. Most of our staff and readers (including myself) are university students, though we draw a significant amount of adults and younger readers too. No one surveyed said they were above 39 years old though, which merely confirmed my suspicion that the kind of stuff we cover here is probably all too alien to generations of Ye Olde times.
III. Country of Residence
United States: 37.5%
United Kingdom: 18.8%
Canada: 6.3%
Germany: 6.3%
Netherlands: 6.3%
Others: Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Finland, Romania, Trinidad & Tobago.
While the results for geographic locations confirmed our strong following in English-speaking nations as well as most of Europe, I don’t think there were enough responses here to really illustrate the widespread global reach of our site. The data in our web traffic reports show significant activity not only from the above nations, but also from places such as Australia, South Korea, China, Japan, South Africa, and Brazil, among many others.
Given these results, I find it extraordinarily encouraging to know that our passion for great music is shared all over the globe. Every day we receive emails and MySpace messages from record labels, promotion companies, and talented artists from every corner of the Earth, many of whom express their enthusiasm and appreciation for the work we do.
IV. Desired new features
Survey rankings:
1. Opinion/Editorial articles
2. Streaming samples of reviewed albums
3. Concert reviews
4. Content categorized by genre
5. Musician-oriented content (gear, techniques, etc.)
6. Content categorized by country or city
When I put together this survey, I came up with the above list of proposed features by collecting past reader feedback and brainstorming what I thought were the most essential features still lacking at Sonic Frontiers. Those who took the survey rated each proposed new feature on a scale of how important they felt it was, ranging from “Extremely Important” to “Bad Idea.”
#1 - Opinion/Editorial articles
I was happy to see that Opinion/Editorial articles were ranked highest in importance, mostly because we’ve already started running our first bi-weekly column since the survey was launched. Dethroned Emperor is a column focusing on death & black metal that began on April 18th, and is run by metal enthusiast Josh Haun. Having already published four issues of the column, we’re quite happy with the way it has been unfolding and expect all the best in the coming months. I fully intend to recruit more columnists in the future, and there’s even been talk about publishing some one-time commentary/“rant”-type articles that would be even more opinion-based.
#2 -Streaming samples of reviewed albums
This was the second most desired feature by our readers, and I think it’s something that would significantly improve our readers’ experience at Sonic Frontiers. It’s great to read about music, but it’s undoubtedly a bit annoying to have to load up MySpace or, God forbid, illegally download an album just to hear a sample of what you’re reading about. While I fully support adding a feature like this, it’s a function that will take time and effort to work out the details required for supporting it in an effective and fair manner. Don’t fret too much though—we definitely aren’t going to forget about this.
#3 -Concert reviews
We started publishing live concert reviews well over a year ago at Sonic Frontiers, but a difficult decision was made during last winter to temporarily discontinue the articles due to a lacking supply of writers for them. Fortunately, since the launch of the survey we actually did bring back live reviews, as those of you who have been paying attention have probably noticed. We’re still very short though on writers who are willing to write these concert reviews, and we’d love to publish more. If you think you might be interested, don’t hesitate to contact me via email: sean@sonicfrontiers.net.
#4 -Content categorized by genre
The issue that always inevitably comes up whenever dealing with many types of topics in one location is “to categorize, or not to categorize?” We definitely cover many different kinds of music here (and increasingly so), and as a result the question has remained in my mind as to whether or not our site’s content should have some sort of categorization filter to separate the different styles. I know that there’s people out there who are interested in lots of different styles that we cover, but I’d bet that the majority usually only come here looking for music in one or two specific genres.
On the other hand, the inherent conflict with this idea comes from the fact that most of the music we cover tends to “defy” genre boundaries, making it all the more difficult to separate and classify based on genre. It is for this reason that we’ve stayed away from implementing any type of categorization, but it still strikes me as something that could have potential for the site. I guess it will just take more time to figure out what is best to do.
#5 -Content categorized by country or city
Most people didn’t really like this idea, and I’m not even sure exactly what I meant by it. I think I was envisioning some kind of system where you could look up articles on bands from a specific region of the world, or something like that. Scratch this one for now.
#6 -Musician-oriented content (gear, techniques, etc.)
As an avid guitar player, this has been an area I’ve often wondered about trying to incorporate into the site. I know that a good amount of our readers are also musicians, so it seemed like it could be a cool idea to try to combine content for music fans with content for musicians. This was the lowest ranked feature though, so I think we’ll give this idea a rest for a while.
V. Desired user abilities
Survey rankings:
1. Rate reviewed albums
2. Comment on articles
3. Post info & mp3's of your own projects/bands
4. Rate "helpfulness" of album reviews
5. Submit live photos
6. Write & submit your own album reviews
7. Submit videos (from YouTube)
In addition to the proposed new site features, I also came up with the above list of what I thought were important abilities for our readers to have for interacting with the site.
#1 - Rate reviewed albums
A while back we decided to abolish our numerical rating system for album reviews. A number rating generated by the opinion of just one person seemed way too unfair to the hardworking artists we support. One solution that has been proposed is to allow all registered users to rate albums. I can’t say for sure if or when we’ll move forward with this idea, but it’s one of the more promising features for the site in my opinion, and clearly the most desired by our readers.
#2 - Comment on articles
Commenting on articles is one of the most widely used features on content-based sites, and I fully intend to make this possible ASAP. I believe it’s absolutely essential in an internet culture to allow users to respond and give feedback to the content being generated. Right now commenting is only enabled for News articles, though users must create new account separate from the forums in order to do so—yet another issue we’re working on fixing. Stay tuned!
#3 -Post info & mp3's of your own projects/bands
I’ve wanted to pursue developing a system for this kind of feature for quite a while. I’m still not sure what direction we’ll take it in, but it would definitely be great to allow record labels and artists to post info & free mp3’s of their albums.
#4 -Rate "helpfulness" of album reviews
This is a system made popular by Amazon.com that sort of helps sort out “good” reviews from the not so good ones. While it’s a cool idea, I’m not sure how likely it is that we’ll consider implementing it, especially since not too many people expressed a need for it.
#5 - Submit live photos
Who doesn’t like concert photos? Maybe something like a collaborative photo-gallery system could work for this…suggestions are welcome.
#6 - Write & submit your own album reviews
A feature like this goes one step above commenting and allows people to write their own reviews of albums. This would be a huge commitment and time investment in terms of planning and coding, so I don’t think there’s much hope for this anytime soon. Maybe next year.
#7 - Submit videos (from YouTube)
We’ve been featuring videos here at SF for quite some time, beginning with Video of the Week and more recently the SFTV video library. Neither system was all that great in my opinion, and I’m currently working on a more streamlined system for registered users to submit videos.
VI. What do you enjoy most about Sonic Frontiers?
Survey rankings:
1. Album Reviews
2. Interviews
3. Forums
4. News
5. Compilations
6. Hear it First
It’s nice to see that people enjoy our album reviews and interviews the most, seeing as that’s what we invest the majority of our efforts in. Our forum has also developed quite a bit, though it has remained a relatively small yet close-knit community.
VII. What would you like to see more of at Sonic Frontiers?
Survey rankings:
1. Interviews
2. Album Reviews
3. Hear it First
4. Compilations
5. News
6. Contests
This question was given with the ability for multiple selections, so the majority of people actually selected all 6 of the above options. The general consensus I get from that is simply: MORE. People seem to enjoy our site, but we’re admittedly still growing and have to catch up in terms of content volume. Our staff is growing each month though, and that has led to noticeably more articles. I think it’s a trend that is going to continue well into the next year.
VIII. What kinds of music would you like to see covered more at Sonic Frontiers?
Survey rankings:
1. Instrumental / Post-rock
2. Metal
3. Progressive Rock
4. Ambient
5. Hardcore / Grindcore
6. Electronic (IDM)
7. Trip-hop / Hip-hop / Urban
8. Punk
Write-ins:
Noise, Doom/Drone/Experimental, Experimental Jazz, Avant-Garde, Sludge/Stoner/Noise
Most of the highest ranked selections here are actually genres we already cover frequently, but there’s definitely a lot of areas we’ve yet to dig into: Prog-rock, Punk and Trip-hop/Hip-hop being some of the most notable. I think this is really just a matter of getting more writers involved with diverse interests and taste, and it’s something we’re continually working on.
IX. Comments
“Love the site for lots of reasons, but mostly to introducing me to my favorite band since Frodus; Zozobra. I would like to see it updated daily, though.” - Anonymous
“If it was possible, id like the reviews to be updated more regularly, perhaps every couple of days.” – Anonymous
We received several write-in comments such as these from readers who expressed wanting to see more frequent updates on Sonic Frontiers. This is really the primary goal and challenge of most content sites, and it’s likewise our top priority. While we haven’t quite reached daily updates of all content, we have definitely come a long way in the past couple years in terms of the rate at which we publish articles. As it stands now, you can usually expect to find something new in at least one section about every day (Reviews, News or Features). There’s usually a new review every few days, and we try to post at least a couple of news items per day. Features are currently being published at one per week, but that will hopefully increase in the future.
“The compilations rock! Keep them coming at the pace you have them coming. Too many will make it cluttered. Right now, it seems like you guys put thorough thought into what was on the first two compilations. Keep it up!” – Anonymous
It’s great to hear that people have been enjoying our first two compilation releases, and I think this particular reader really understands our strategy. We definitely aim to release the compilations at a slow and steady pace, probably around 2-3 per year, in order to put in the amount of time and effort required to keep the releases as high-quality as possible.
I also really have to thank the people over at The Silent Ballet for paving the way with their instrumental compilations—they’ve been enormously successful so far and provided the inspiration for me to initiate SF’s own compilation series. I think thus far we’ve been successful in applying the same great concept to other kinds of artists and styles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more sites start doing it in the future.
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That concludes my analysis of the Spring ’08 survey. Thank you to all who participated—I will be sure to conduct these surveys at least once per year to keep the reader input flowing. It’s been an amazing journey for SF so far, and I have nothing but the highest hopes for the years to come. Thanks to all the readers, writers, bands, musicians and record labels who have helped make this site into what it is today. We could not have done it without you.
Discuss this article: http://www.sonicfrontiers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=745
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