In October 1998 I sought views on the Film Music web site which did not seem to be as popular as I would have expected. A variety of replies were obtained, some of which were totally contradictory:

The original posting to: Film, Classical and British Music mailing lists, rec.music. classical, rec.music.classical.recordings and rec.music.movies If you know of others please email <len@musicweb.force9.co.uk>

Since the New Year, with the help of Ian Lace and Rob Barnett, I have been building a Film Music site to accompany my British Composer site. We have interviews, articles, recommended discographies, book reviews and CD reviews. We sit back basking in a glow of satisfaction of a job well done. Each month I circulate relevant mailing lists and newsgroups of our activities. I have received a number of congratulatory e-mails regarding the quality of our site and, in particular, the depth of many of our reviews where the music actually gets discussed. I have even had e-mails from the artists and producers themselves

The result?
196 of you looked at the September reviews and 67 so far for the October reviews. This is pathetic! I would expect more visits than that from the Isle of Wight. So I have to ask some serious questions; I need a lot of feedback so please do not ignore this request. Please visit the site at
http://surf.to/FilmMusic and give me your candid opinion.

1) Does the content reflect what you would wish to see on such a site and
is it of sufficient depth

2) Do you find the reviews helpful or have any other comments

3) Do you have any technical difficulties with the site (loading times etc)

4) If you have previously visited but no longer do so, please let me know
why.

5) replies could be direct to me or to the bulletin board on the site but
please do not clog up the mailing lists and newsgroups with your replies.

Many, many thanks for your anticipated help

Replies

Not as many as I had hoped. I have deleted the identity of  each sender. One immediate effect was a boost in the number of visits to the October reviews and the September as well . The counters have been removed from earlier months so I have no measure of those.

At least 167 people have now visited your site, becaue I've just had a  look, prompted by your plaintive message in the mailing list. :-)

Only had time for a quick look, but I've added it to my "Favorites"  list because I intend to go back.

Good points: I particularly like the inclusion of a few composers who *hadn't* composed much film music, e.g. Elgar. (Incidentally, it would  be nice to know if the music he wrote for the film "Land of Hope and  Glory" included the tune we know by that name, or if it is just a co-incidence). This inclusion of stuff that is not obviously relevant stops the site being simply a big list of film composers, and more of a source of reference, as it might be just as useful to someone researching a particular composer to know what they hadn't done, as what they had done.

You might also like to consider including links or references to relatives of these composers who are also well-known. e.g. is Rutland Boughton related to the conductor William Boughton? And wasn't Constant Lambert's son involved with the pop group, "The Who?"? There are probably lots more.

Bad point: Pages a bit too long, and if you add much more material, this will quickly become a big problem. It really needs splitting into smaller chunks, and the alphabet seems an obvious way of doing this, with some composers possibly meriting pages of their own. Although this requires more mouse-clicking by the user, psychologically it seems to make things move faster if the site responds with a short, *but complete* page within a few seconds each time something is selected.

.Or it's possible your counter at the site isn't working correctly, it's been
known to happen.
it's a great site, that number seems to be awfully low...
Check the counter compared to past months. (the counter is OK)
Here are some suggestions.

(1.) You might want to split up your reviews, new ones posted say once a week or twice a month.

(2.) Ask other sites to link to your's (we do)

(3.) Always list in your notices what new soundtracks are being reviewed.(we do)


I'll suggest to my listeners that they take a moment to drop by your site.

Greetings,

I have not looked at the site, but I would like to offer a comment as a web site builder myself (both for my own company - a site now sadly out of date - and others much more up to date).

It seems to me that almost 200 visitors for September is NOT bad for a site with a rarefied subject matter. Further it is now October 3 and you complain about 67 visitors? Please extrapolate that for the rest of the month (unless you posted October reviews in early September a la magazines...)(they are posted at the end of the previous month)

I fear though that the view that a Web site is some kind of magical incantation that will garner instant fame and fortune is rampant among web designers, the public and clients. I do my very best to remove superstition from clients before I agree to design their web sites. The Web is NOT a road to instant success. There are no such roads.

I applaud you in your work, will encourage it where I can and hope for its success. But, like the man and the pomegranates: he and your site need time.

All best wishes,



PS What's wrong with the Isle of Wight? :))

len,

i thought it was great; the reviews stand, in my opinion, as the best i've seen on the web so far along with royal brown's. it's also nice to see a site that is comfortable praising both golden age and modern composers like goldenthal - a somewhat rare occurence in my experience.

if i could make one suggestion, in the reviews summary by month, perhaps consider listing only the names of the albums, which each one on a new line to make it easier to read, and cut out the details of each score.

all the best, and i hope this helps.

Dear Len,
the film music site is excellent - but what on earth made you change the review format so one has to download 27 times to read them all?!!!
Please return to the original format where the reviews were on one "page". It's very time consuming to click on 20+ links every month ....
Once again, a superb and informative site.
Yours etc,

(I am thinking about this one. The original format had long scrolling pages with a number of large cover shots and were a problem to download. It might be possible to offer reviews in both formats in future)


Well I have starting visiting recently and very much liked the site and thought it was very good indeed, well done. It is rather a shame that you have had so few visits. I have actually been having second thoguhts about doing my site as I don't seem to get a great number of visitors any more and can't really think of anything much I could do. Perhaps you could
answer the same questions you are posing to everyone and answer them on behalf of my site.

> 1) Does the content reflect what you would wish to see on such a site and
> is it of sufficient depth

Yes and yes. It has plenty of stuff on it and the reviews are plentiful and up to date.

> 2) Do you find the reviews helpful or have any other comments

They are as good as any on the internet and often much better, and considerably better than mine.

> 3) Do you have any technical difficulties with the site (loading times etc)

None that I can remember.

Hope that is of some use.

I enjoyed looking over your site. Well done. I'm sure you have spent a great deal of time keeping it updated. I didn't experience any technical difficulties at the site, although the graphics did slow things down a bit.

My web magazine is almost graphics free to be more reader friendly. With or without the graphics, I share your frustration over lack of responses. I've gotten far fewer than expected. What I like especially on your site is that you include more than just strictly soundtracks - the Gershwin recordings for example. Even though I have strong disagreements with
several of Ian Lace's reviews (Newman's THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD and the Williams 3 score Film Score Monthly CD), his reviews are very well written and provide a great deal of detail. My reviews are much briefer, but I hope they are helpful as well.

candidly,

too wide (does this mean too wide a brief?)

bit slow

too much text

too many colours in text

text sizes disproportionate (I wish there was more explanation)

graphics too large

but still better than the HORRID scorelogue! presentation-wise.

I'd never re-visit unless someone specified a good article.

you need to keep advertising,

The Priest of Love Film music

The composers were in London last weekend for the recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra od their latest composition - Requiem after J.S Bach - and I was therefore able to show them a copy of your reviews. They were very pleased with the professional way in which these reviews have been compiled and thank you for the care taken over this.

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