Drooble announced new guidelines for the “Drooble radio station”. Drooble will now reject people from rotation on the ‘Drooble radio’ because of “poor quality”. This Social Network is no longer a Social Network for musicians if they do so.

Radio is a feature of the Drooble Network right? Rejecting people because they have made recordings or songs that are not up to Drooble’s standards (that is: standards for radio) is plain stupid.

People pour their heart and soul in to a song, upload it. Get applauded for it. Receive feedback and will get better because of that. And now, no one will listen to these “bedroom recordings” anymore because it’s “substandard” and will no longer be played on Drooble Radio.

Of course it is sub-standard! That’s the whole idea right? As the Drooble Mission says:

At Drooble we believe that music has the power to change the world for good. So our mission is to provide musicians with better opportunities for growth and networking [..] Imagine a community where you can connect with others to collaborate, exchange ideas and share knowledge. A place that unites all artists worldwide and offers them a revolutionary approach to promote their work. A place where music comes first.

Sharing stuff, getting feedback, getting better. Enjoying other peoples hard work.It’s almost impossible if they kill their radio station and only allow “radio ready” (a.k.a. “commercial stuff”!) songs. The rating system they propose now also doesn’t give any insights to what you should do to improve yourself.

This will only lead to people “applauding” stuff they don’t give a rats ass about to earn “Karma points” so they can get their song in rotation. This might lead to many leaving Drooble or frustrate them so much they won’t upload anymore. They will lose a lot of active members this way. If Drooble insist on this stupid new policy, it’s only going to lead to people using Drooble to “get plays” .. It won’t help the community. It won’t help musicians to improve.

Drooble has the following to say about it:

The songs you upload will no longer be automatically streamed on the Drooble radio. Instead, there will be an approval process managed by Drooble Team – your songs will receive different in text and colour labels, which show your songs’ statuses: Pending Review in yellow, Live on Radio in blue, and No broadcasting in red (Please, note that you can click on each status for more information. You will be notified every time your songs’ statuses change). These statuses will increase the overall quality and give a signal to those who need to spend more time on production – this is a good way to see if your production skills are on a radio-ready level or not yet.

In other words: they don’t want to play your bedroom recordings. They don’t want other artists to listen to your latest masterpiece because you recorded it using a smart phone playing on your old acoustic guitar. They want radio-ready shiny sleek produced stuff. So, we all know what this, in the end, will lead to. Hip Hop, Rap, commercial radio music.. “Bye Bye Talented and Aspiring Musicians – we no longer welcome you to Drooble Radio”.

BUT I STILL LIKE DROOBLE…
Despite the policy change I still like Drooble. The concept is good. They’re the new kid on the block and I’m willing to wait and see how these changes will effect me and the community. For now, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. But I’m afraid this move might cause them to be forgotten, over and done with, just like MySpace in the past (and many others before that).

UPDATE!
(November 2018)

So far, one of the SRBB songs was rejected for Drooble Radio. Other songs were accepted for rotation. And yes, those are more commercial sounding tracks, as we suspected.