The Pube Muppet - Audio Portal

Audio Portal

The Audio Portal is a place where artists can submit all types of music. When an artist submits their first song an administrator or audio moderator will have to review it before it gets listed. All the music is free to use (under a BY-NC-SA 3.0 Creative Commons license).

Uploaded files must conform to certain requirements:

• The file must have the extension .mp3.
• The file may not exceed the given capacity of 15 MB (Megabytes).
• The file must be sampled at 44.1 kHz.

Since the 2007 redesign, the Audio Portal has become more flexible and allows artists to edit their submissions or remove them providing they haven't been used in a submission to the Flash Portal or haven't been listened to more than 3000 times. Icons can also be added to audio submissions. Unlike the Flash Portal, audio submissions do not face Judgment from Users but instead appear directly on the Audio Portal Main Page.

The main purpose of the Audio Portal was to prevent users from breaking copyright laws; users were using copyrighted songs in their submissions, thus breaking the law and running the risk of being sued. Therefore, the Audio Portal was introduced so that users could submit their own original work. Animators looking for music could pick a song from a list of many different genres ranging from drum and bass to jazz, therefore all users had a good chance to get the kind of music they were looking for without breaking copyright laws.

However, over the years the Audio Portal grew from simply being a resource for the flash portal to draw music and loops from to a full blown portal with a life on its own - with notable users using it as a nursing grounds to increase their talents and then set off in the world under major record labels. Kingbastard and are two examples of this.

Over time however an issue of "Zero-Voting" or "Zero-Bombing" began to occur. Users would "zero vote" other members in order for their own songs to rise to the top. This issue was magnified with the arrival of the 2007 redesign, which allowed users to vote every day in the art portal on submissions, whilst before the redesign they could only vote once on a submission ever. This also had the unexpected backlash of users fiving up their own submissions, which resulted in a neverending loop of users needing to five their own songs to counteract the massive amount of zeros that were being dished out to their submissions by others. This led to an extreme depression across the audio portal, with many high-ranking musicians leaving the portal in disgust, claiming only to return when the "system was fixed".

Currently many users await the much anticipated 2011 site redesign to see if these problems do indeed get resolved.

The Audio portal was shut down three separate times early in its lifetime, and is now a permanent feature. Wade Fulp has stated that this experience had a negative impact on many audio contributing users. This incident is cited as one of the reasons Ross was hired. Audiences can rate songs from the audio portal and send them to other users, too.