Monthly playlists

1. Gateway playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 12)

2. Horde playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: 8)

3. Infinite playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 8)

4. Revolution playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 32)

5. Sphere playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 24)

For the clans I've made the monthly playlists for (The Revolution and The Sphere), I've listened to the entire playlists! I'm grateful to Saxy and Daniel for their playlist works. I really dig the tracks I've reviewed in the Gateway, Horde, and Infinite playlists made by Saxy and Daniel, and I'm glad the playlists I've made have paid off. I recommend them to any fan of the clans' respective genres and anyone who isn't into those genres but wants to get into a great start in enjoying them. Thanks, Daniel, for accepting these playlists, and good work all!

1. Gateway playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 14)

2. Infinite playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 9)

3. Revolution playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 28)

4. Sphere playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 24)

For the clans I've made the monthly playlists for, I've listened to the entire playlists! I'm grateful to Saxy and Daniel for their playlist works. I really dig the tracks I've reviewed in the Gateway and Infinite playlists made by Saxy, and I'm glad the playlists I've made have paid off. I recommend them to any fan of the clans' respective genres and anyone who isn't into those genres but wants to get into a great start in enjoying them. Thanks, Daniel, for accepting these playlists, and good work all!

1. Gateway playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 11)

2. Infinite playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 10)

3. Revolution playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 29)

4. Sphere playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 25)

For the clans I've made the monthly playlists for, I've listened to the entire playlists! I'm grateful to Saxy and Daniel for their playlist works. I really dig the tracks I've reviewed in the Gateway and Infinite playlists made by Saxy, and I'm glad the playlists I've made have paid off. I recommend them to any fan of the clans' respective genres and anyone who isn't into those genres but wants to get into a great start in enjoying them. Thanks, Daniel, for accepting these playlists, and good work all!

1. Gateway playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 15)

2. Infinite playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 8)

3. Revolution playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 26)

4. Sphere playlist - 4/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 26)

For the clans I've made the monthly playlists for, I've listened to the entire playlists! I'm grateful to Saxy and Daniel for their playlist works. I really dig the tracks I've reviewed in the Gateway and Infinite playlists made by Saxy, and I'm glad the playlists I've made have paid off. I recommend them to any fan of the clans' respective genres and anyone who isn't into those genres but wants to get into a great start in enjoying them. Thanks, Daniel, for accepting these playlists, and good work all!

I've been spending a bit of time thinking about our playlists & how we can start to take them to a wider audience given that the number of likes on each is still so minimal. I've done a little bit of reading up on it this morning & one of the main things that comes up is that you have to get the name & description right or else people simply won't be able to find your lists in searches. I dunno if you've tried it but if I search death metal, grindcore or any of the artists or songs included in the latest The Horde playlist, I won't ever see my list coming up in the search results. What does come up are a list of playlists that have those exact terms in their titles (i.e. "death metal", "grindcore", etc.) so I'm wondering if we're missing a trick here. With that in mind, I'd like to throw it out to our members to come up with an agreeable playlist naming structure that will draw people to our playlists but one that still stands out from the crowd. Ideally, I'd like to use the same structure across all nine playlists if at all possible too.

How about titling them something like:

Metal Academy Radio's The Fallen Playlist: The Month in Doom, Sludge, Drone and Gothic Metal.

That kinda indicates we only include new releases though, doesn't it?

FYI there's a limit of 100 characters in the title.

Perhaps we could go with a play on the academic thing? Metal Academy Radio - Doom Metal Detention? Death Metal Double-Period?

"Metal Academy Radio - A Doom Metal Curriculum"??

I love the idea for The Revolution Andi. I’ll have a think about how to best implement that idea. It will have to include the full word “metalcore” though.

Hmmm... "Metalcore-riculum" doesn't have the same ring. Maybe "Metalcore Gym"? It fits well with the academic theme for a different reason, a common metal genre for people to listen to during gym workouts.

I find the academic references a bit corny if I am honest.  Surely you would want to maintain the USP of the clans in the titles of the playlists though?  They are the most unique element of the site (certainly by way of comparison to other review sites).  For what it is worth I would keep it simple:

Thrash Metal - from The Pit Clan at Metal Academy Radio

Metal Academy Radio Presents – Thrash Metal - from The Pit Clan

Yeah, I'm kinda with you on this Vinny. The clan aspect should definitely remain a focus in the title. 

I certainly get what you're saying gents. I am willing to options that I may not have in the past if it will see more people hearing these playlists though because I feel like we've missed an opportunity thus far.

In my online research to date, one thing that's been the unanimous message from successful playlist administrators has been that you need to have a well-defined niche & a clear differentiator from the opposition in order to stand out. I'm not sure that the clans are it as people likely won't know about those prior to our playlists coming up in their searches & it won't be possible to explain them in this format either. It's also worth noting that we're trying to advertise & draw people to our playlists here as our first point of call rather than the website. That will hopefully come later & we can use the playlist descriptions to advertise Metal Academy but the first step is to get people interested in listening to & subscribing to our playlists. The playlist names need to leave the potential listener intrigued or satisfy a niche requirement they have such as a study accompaniment or music to have the COVID to or something like that. We want every person that puts "COVID" into their search to see our playlist come up first for example. If our title is "thrash metal" then you're competing with a zillion much more popular playlists that will obviously come up first.

So, the first question must be, what is our playlists well-defined niche if the clans aren't likely to be a recognisable draw?

I've never been into marketing and I don't really have the kind of mindset that is good with slogans or buzzwords, I'm much too literal for that, so I'm not really sure how much help I'm going to be, but I'll do what I can.

How about "Metal Academy Radio - Doom and Stoner Metal to Get Wrecked To"

Or "Metal Academy Radio - For Hard Drinking Doom Metal Connoisseurs"

Or... "Metal Academy Radio - Doom Metal Study Hour" (I know it's two hours, but that doesn't have the same ring to it).

I feel like you're on the right track there Sonny. I'll spend a bit more time thinking about this topic on the weekend but would appreciate it if everyone kept throwing out ideas. We obviously won't be able to list every major genre that's included in the playlist title for a clan like The Fallen but do you think it's too limiting to say Doom Metal for that one, Heavy Metal for The Guardians, Black Metal for The North or Thrash Metal for The Pit?

I feel like you're on the right track there Sonny. I'll spend a bit more time thinking about this topic on the weekend but would appreciate it if everyone kept throwing out ideas. We obviously won't be able to list every major genre that's included in the playlist title for a clan like The Fallen but do you think it's too limiting to say Doom Metal for that one, Heavy Metal for The Guardians, Black Metal for The North or Thrash Metal for The Pit?

It is a bit limiting to be sure, but I can't see a way around it if you want a snappy title, plus the 100 character limit is a problem too. Once you have caught the searcher's attention, you can list the other genres for each clan in the description, so assuming the title is as I posted above, in the description we explain that The Fallen clan encompasses  Doom, Sludge, Stoner, Drone and Gothic Metal. Obviously if we thought doom wasn't the biggest draw, we could call it "Metal Academy Radio - Sludge Metal Study Hour" (or maybe "time" would be better than "hour"). If we then  decide which genre is most likely to be searched for each clan, we could name them accordingly. Personally, I think Black Metal for the North, Death Metal for the Horde, Thrash Metal for the Pit, Progressive Metal for the Infinite, Alternative Metal for the Gateway, Industrial Metal for the Sphere and Metalcore for the Revolution would work fine, or if you wanted to cover more bases an example would be "Metal Academy Radio - The Horde: Death Metal and Grindcore Study Session" (61 characters without spaces, I think). I think it would be a struggle to list more than a couple of main genres without making it too clunky.

Is there a possibility that the title Metal Academy Radio is maybe no longer the best. Perhaps "radio" doesn't resonate with people, especially younger people, than it once did. How about Metal Academy Monthly? Also, do you want uniformity across the clans, title-wise, ot tailor the title to the clan. For example, The Horde, Pit and Revolution could reasonably be titled something along the lines of, Metal Academy Monthly: The Thrash and Groove Metal Workout, whereas the same wouldn't really work for The Fallen or The Infinite. Just throwing a couple more ideas out there.

I was thinking the same thing about the Metal Academy Radio thing. I think the Metal Academy brand needs to be in the titles more than the names of the clans do though. I'm also thinking that the titles should start with the genre rather than Metal Academy because it's more likely to be the genre that draws people in initially & I'd ideally like people to know that it's a monthly playlist just by reading the title. I think we need some form of uniformity but are open to ideas. Currently I'm thinking something like "Heavy Metal Homework - A Monthly Metal Academy Playlist" would work. If you search the term "Homework" on Spotify you'll find that all of the playlists that come up have hundreds (if not thousands) of likes so I think that sort of differentiator might work for us.

1. Gateway playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 13)

2. Infinite playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: 9)

3. Revolution playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 29)

4. Sphere playlist - 4.5/5 (number of songs commented: ALL 24)

For the clans I've made the monthly playlists for, I've listened to the entire playlists! I'm grateful to Saxy and Daniel for their playlist works. I really dig the tracks I've reviewed in the Gateway and Infinite playlists made by Saxy, and I'm glad the playlists I've made have paid off. I recommend them to any fan of the clans' respective genres and anyone who isn't into those genres but wants to get into a great start in enjoying them. Thanks, Daniel, for accepting these playlists, and good work all!

I'm thinking that a good way to move forwards with the monthly playlist name change concept might be for me to develop a new tenth playlist that I can use as a test case in order to see if I can draw a wider audience to it. That way I can avoid fucking around with our established playlists. I've started to program one already but will take my time with it because it's important that it's of a very high quality & is programmed in a way that will attract an audience if it's going to make for a valid test case i.e. people need to be wowed by it if they're going to commit to subscribing to it & I'm not sure I've given that idea enough care in the past. I also need to do more research on how to name it well because most experts seem to say that changing the name of your playlist is a bad idea as it confuses your audience.

Some more tips from the web are that a) it's best practice to start your playlist with the five strongest tracks as a majority of people only give a playlist a maximum of five songs to win them over & b) you'll draw more hits if you include some classic songs in each playlist in order to draw in the less educated market segment. It's also worth including some of the more popular bands that reflect the overarching sound of your list in the playlist description in order to jag some additional search results.

Good tips, Daniel. For the past few months (March, April, May) and other different times, I've started my Revolution/Sphere playlists with an introductory song for what to expect in a playlist followed by 3 to 5 tracks that are melodic, classic, and/or from one of the more popular bands (Revolution band examples: Sonic Syndicate, As Blood Runs Black, War of Ages, The Amity Affliction, As I Lay Dying, Bullet for My Valentine, Killswitch Engage; Sphere band examples: Godflesh, Dodheimsgard, Rob Zombie, Nailbomb, Marilyn Manson, Fear Factory, Samael). That way, I can get listeners hooked for each playlist before it gradually gets darker, more chaotic, and experimental, all ending with an epic and one or two solid closing songs for a sense of closure. I'm not highly strict about it though, I sometimes mix up the order a bit every now and then to break up the monotony and not bore long-time listeners. I won't spoil too much of my upcoming June playlists, but all I'll say is, expect more modern/dark tracks to start those journeys...