For a while now I've been considering getting rid of the "Other Music Forum" on this site and merging its contents with the others, as on average it only sees a few updated threads per month.  Here are the three options as I see them:

1) Rename the Game Music Forum the "Soundtrack Discussion" forum and include all film and anime soundtrack-related posts there, with other non-soundtrack, music-related posts going in the Open Topic Forum.

2) Keep the Game Music Forum as it is, and have ALL non-VGM music-related posts (including film and anime soundtracks) in the Open Topic Forum.

3) Leave things as they are.

Personally I'm not keen on option 2 as I like having a separate place for anime and film soundtrack discussion apart from all the other stuff that goes on in the Open Topic Forum.

I'm in no rush to take immediate action here but am curious what everyone thinks.  If I've missed some ideal option apart from the above three feel free to bring that to my attention as well.

I confess that for myself, the Other Music Forum has been a bit of an afterthought.  I'm all for option #1, though admittedly, it'd be a rare case for me to discuss a particular film or anime soundtrack without talking about the film or anime itself -- so I'd likely end up posting such opinions in the Open Topic Forum anyway.  But yeah, non-soundtrack music discussions appear so infrequently that they can easily fit in the Open Topic.

At any rate, it seems I'm about the only one who discusses film scores here with any kind of regularity.  Wanderer used to, but he's been on a pretty sharp decline as of late.  (Where are ya, Josh?  Would've loved to hear your input on a good number of soundtracks this year. )

Talking about non-VGM music has opened me up to some new stuff I otherwise wouldn't have discovered...

That said, even when I want to talk about music in general, I end up posting in the "Game Music" forum.

If you just want to have ONE music forum, compromising both soundtracks for games, anime, films, AND non soundtrack music, I don't see a problem with that...

nix it. i like message boards without unnecessary sub-categories more, they're easier to read. choice nr. 2 is the way to go.

I usually don't care about most of the stuff discussed in "Other Music", so I don't want to see it mixed in with the VGM discussions in the game music forum. VGM discussion has had very light volume, but I don't think having all music mixed into a single forum would work well when things are more active.

So either keep as it is or nix it and leave non-VGM for "Open Topic" would be my vote(s).

In THIS message board, I don't think it's too big a deal. The traffic is on the small side, and there's only five forums total. I hate all those message boards that have like three forums dedicated to what the site is about, and then 20 others for various other crap....this isn't like that at all. Having one only mildly used forum really isn't all that big a deal, IMO.

That said, I'd be for #2 over #1 if it came to nixing it.

I can honestly say that since the forums changed to the current format, I've never even once looked at the Other Music Forum, so I wouldn't shed any tears if it were to be OBLITERATED.

If there's hardly any activity in it, you might as well merge it with one of the other forums.

Honestly, since you can could post that stuff in "open topic" getting rid of it would be no real problem.

Well, whatever decision you'd like to make, I hope you'll make it soon; I'm rather wanting to discuss some non-VGM music, but I don't want to put a topic up on a forum that's about to be deleted...

All threads that are currently here will be moved to a different forum section if such a decision is made - nothing's going to be deleted so feel free to keep posting any non-VGM music topics here.

i think that aside from the commonality most of us share with game music, we all have seriously diverse tastes amongst our other musical preferences.
although goldfish and i share a fondness for old hair metal, i doubt anyone else really cares for it.
and even if we posted a thread about how much hootie and the blowfish sucks, eventually,, maybe 5 or 20 years from now, someone may sign up on STC who might care to refute it...

also, the fact that the majority of us STC veterans are 25-40 now (i made it 40 so I dont seem like at the tippy top of the threshold), we dont get so emotionally charged up or defensive about our musical tastes. Remember back in high school when fights would start over someone saying something bad about another person's favorite band? I think we've evolved past that.

Dude I'm hurt.

Likewise. I like WASP.

Even though I hardly ever post in the other music forum I was going to raise an objection here, until I remembered that sub-forums have disappeared before on STC - anyone remember the polls forum we had before the re-designing? At the time polls was removed, I thought it was a bad idea and that I would miss it, but I quickly forgot about it. It seems discussion and interest finds their channels when they need to, and that the structure isn't that important (as long as it isn't completely bloated like some places with 20+ sub-forums like mentioned above).

One thing I'd not be that keen on, though, would be to merge the discussion of game music and anime/film music into one sub-forum. I think most people would agree that the focal point and main event of STC, the one thing that unites everyone visiting the site, is discussion of the music and soundtracks of games, and that that topic should have it's own, independent sphere. If the other music forum is to go and no new substitute created, I would rather merge all of it with the open forum than with the game music forum.

But, eh. Whatever happens is really fine, I don't see a problem with leaving things as they are, either.

i'm hurt too.

Personally I vote you don't remove it. It provides a very valid section of music that doesn't really fit in the other forums.

Honestly as a reader I still fail to see how anyone could even care about what section a post is in? Why would people browse the root level forums when you have a "New posts" link that provides threads you haven't visited since last visit????? Bookmark that link, don't read anything you're nit interested in (by thread title) and then the forum it's in doesn't even matter.

The only time I even see the forum it's posted in is if I start a new thread and then I just make a quick judgement call to put it in the most applicable forum.

My vote: keep it exactly how it is, there's nothing wrong with the setup. People should change their browsing habits, if anything, IMO.

jb brings up a pretty good point. Personally, I always come straight to the "game music" forum and don't check the others, but then I always check the "recent posts" sidebar in case anything else sounds interesting. Maybe there's little point to any separation/categorization at all?

I can't agree with the suggestion that "people should change their browsing habits", though. Websites should always be designed around the user, not the other way around.

Arguable.  It might be applicable in this example but design trumps the end user in my book.  A well designed, intuitive anything leads to more meaningful use, smaller learning curves and more easily satisfied user experiences.  See: Apple.

Well after debating and delaying for a while the time has come to finally bid farewell to the "Other Music" forum.  With only a very few posts being made in it over the new year and only a couple pages of threads over its entire existence it's hard to justify keeping it around.

Pretty much all of its posts not directly related to anime music, film music, or other soundtrack-like music I've moved already to the Open Topic forum (with a couple going in the Gaming one and another couple, like the Ubiktune one, already going in Game Music).

The plan from here is to rename the "Game Music" forum link in the nav bar to "Soundtracks" and change the forum title itself to either "Game Music & Soundtracks" or vice versa.  The remaining threads in Other Music will be moved there, but each will be tagged "anime music", "film music", "classical" or the like so they should still be relatively easy to find.

All further soundtrack-related discussion, VGM or not, would go in the main soundtracks forum.  The anime and film music threads are few and far enough between that I think (hope?) even the die-hard VGM-only listeners won't mind them cropping up now and then.

Other music discussion like pop or rock that isn't clearly comparable to a major segment of VGM can go in Open Topic.

Honestly I don't see the above course changing (though I wouldn't mind opinions on the forum title as I'm having a hard time deciding) but I know that people don't like sudden changes so wanted to post once more here anyway.

Just a final notice that all the soundtrack-related topics in the old "Other Music" forum (anime music, film music, world music and classical) have joined the game music topics in the main Soundtracks forum.  Don't hesitate to post any further such threads there, while non-soundtrack-related music topics (pop and what have you) can go in Open Topic.