Audio Products

The namespace for audio products seems messy at the moment. Current namespaces include:

• AudioPlay
• Podcast
• Radio

I think that all scripted audio products which tell a story with a cast of voice actors are of the same medium in any meaningful sense. Their current mix of namespaces reflect how they're published in different ways—aired on the radio, sold as CDs, available online for free. But I don't think that means of publication is a meaningful medium distinction. For comparison, a TV series can be aired on cable or be a netflix original. The way it's made available doesn't matter; the fact that its visual and episodic still puts it in the same medium category as other TV series which were published differently. Likewise, literature can be published in paperback by a publishing house, or self-published as an ebook—we still consider it of the literature medium.

When I asked about it in ATT, I heard that there's been talk of eradicating the Audio Play category. On the contrary, I would rather expand it. It's the best name we have for the abovementioned medium.

"Podcast" is a very broad term. It encompasses both scripted narratives of the above sort, and also recordings of friends chatting about a topic. I think those two things are very different, and I'd like to figure out some way to reflect that difference in how we sort things.

Edited by Eievie on Apr 11th 2023 at 8:02:04 AM

That's not what I meant. I was saying that there was brief talk about ''merging Audioplay and Podcast into one namespace". When it was last brought, people talked about Audioplay/ being the dominant namespace in passing.

Anyways, since we have been consolidating namespaces recently I am not opposed to folding Radio/ and Podcast/ into AudioPlay/

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 11th 2023 at 11:00:38 AM

Just to be clear, I'm not proposing merging all Podcast and Radio to AudioPlay; only the scripted narrative ones.

The more... talk show style ones, for lack of a better term — the ones where people who are not playing characters talk about stuff, like Radio.The Jason Ellis Show or Podcast.Potter Cast — those I propose stay where they are for the time being. (I can see a case for merging those two categories with each other, but I no idea what we might name that.)

Edited by Eievie on Apr 12th 2023 at 9:15:37 AM

My only concern with folding is that Radio and Podcast are more commonly used than Audio Play—which could lead to confusion down the line.

Yeah, I would prefer not to use the least-common name for the namespace. Everyone knows what a podcast is, everyone knows what radio is, but audio plays? I've never heard of them except on this site, where until now I'd assumed they were a special type of podcast.

I'm also concerned that the "person talking" podcast style is rarely tropeworthy.

I personally agree that they're rarely tropeworthy. But the fact is, the Podcast index lists plenty that have pages on this site at present. I think it might be considered rude to just mass delete them (although I would not object if people decide to do that).

I've also heard the term "audio series" used, and it seems rather more intuitive than "play" to me. Would that be better? Or I suppose maybe we could just use the broad term "audio"?

Edited by Eievie on Apr 13th 2023 at 2:56:47 AM

I mean, mass deleting them no, but we already have precedent for going through namespaces and clearing out the untropeworthy stuff.

I'd be supportive of that, if you want to do that.

About the scripted ones, though. Which namespace do people think is best:

• AudioPlay
• AudioSeries
• Audio
• something else

I also think that leaving redirects from their old podcast namespaces could potentially help smooth over confusion.

There used to be a more, uh, obvious difference between Radio/ and Podcast/. Like, Radio is that thing broadcast over radio waves and every car has one, and Podcast is that iPod + broadcast thing downloaded from the internet, but now you can, say, listen to a bunch of radio stations on the internet, so distinguishing them may not be that easy now.

So... maybe people are more familiar with radio and podcast media, but getting rid of AudioPlay/ and chucking the existing works into only Radio/ or Podcast/ doesn't feel to me like the right option.

Great, we're in agreement then! Cuz no one else is suggesting getting rid of AudioPlay/ and chucking the existing works into Radio/ or Podcast/ either.

What's being suggesting is the inverse: moving things from Audio and Radio to AudioPlay

Radio can mean two things. Broadcasting stations (Are in Creator/ namespace) and pre-Internet podcasts and shows.

I think this conversation can go easier if works at Radio were analyzed for what they are, a non-visual Series, real people discussing things, or something else.

I don't think the content of a radio show really matters when it comes to categorizing it, since we don't separate by content for any other medium- Saturday Night Live (people discussing real-world events in a humorous way) and The 100 (a sci-fi show with a narrative plotline) are both in the same medium (episodic live-action television) and are sorted together. The same goes for radio.

"we don't separate by content for any other medium"

• Advertising/, Film/
• Western Animation/, Anime/, Animation/
• Fanfic/, Blog/, Literature/
• Manhwa/, Manhua/, Manga/, Webcomic/, Comic Strip/, Comic Book/
• Visual Novel/, Video Game/

Actually wouldn't mind merging Audio Play, Podcast and Radio into Audio, now that I think about it.

• Western Animation, Anime, Animation, Manhwa, Manhua, and Manga are all separated by the country of origin of the work, not its content
• Comic Strip, Comic Book, and Webcomic are separated by where the work is published (self-contained book, serialized strip, or online), not content
• Advertising is flat out not the same thing as any of the other namespaces, especially not film
• Blog, Fanfic, and Literature, you got me there, those are all fundamentally the same thing since we include web novels into Literature
• Video Game and Visual Novel- the fact that Visual Novels have no gameplay means they can't be lumped in with Video Games, the same way that a stand-alone film isn't lumped in with a serialized TV show, even though they're both live-action.

I'm not entirely convinced we need Blog/ as a separate namespace, as most of what's there could be filed under Fanfic/, Literature/, or aren't tropable to begin with. Similarly with Visual Novel/, which can have a limited degree of "gameplay" that makes them at least as deserving of the title of "video game" as Follow the Plotted Line works or other games with heavy Railroading, which makes it seem like it falls in the same category as the former Light Novel/ namespace as namespaces that only exist(ed) because of weebs insisting that they're totally spechul and different because Japan.

As for Fanfic/, this post summarizes my thoughts on that (and see also the surrounding thread).

Edited by MorganWick on Apr 16th 2023 at 6:04:53 AM

Well, visual novels (Kinetic Novel) that has no gameplay elements are closer to books than a video games as the only thing you do is read. It's not exactly the same as LightNovel/. Also, LightNovel/ only existed because Eddie unilaterally created it. People were moving light novel works to Literature/ before Eddie told everyone to use LightNovel/ for them.

Anyways, talk about other namespaces and what they should cover should probably go on the media namespace questions as this thread is specifically about audio works.

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 16th 2023 at 9:23:26 AM

Circling back to the topic of this thread: does anyone object to coalescing all the scripted audio narratives under a single namespace?

And — if people are in general agreement on that — what specifically should the namespace be? AudioPlay? AudioSeries? AudioFiction? Audio? Something else?

Edited by Eievie on Apr 18th 2023 at 10:22:43 AM

...if it appears no one has any feedback on that, can I just go ahead and do it, or...?

Er, this is the sort of thing that requires a crowner and more people involved in the discussion.

I would love more people to participate, but it appears people don't have much to say. If I'm the only one who wants to make this happen, is there nothing else I can do to get it off the ground?

Well, you can try advertising the thread on Ask The Tropers.

And we can advertise it in Trope Report, though IDK how much that works.

While this is not a terrible popular medium and not a lot of people want to contribute to it, aren't there precedent that can be drawn from other things? Like "Literature" is... not the term I would probably use off the bat when talking about written works. Yet it's the word used here, presumably to avoid "book" vs "novel" vs whatever else.

Heh... well, Literature is it's own can of worms ^note specifically because if we're being consistent, fanfic should be lumped into it, but this is a debate that has been going on for a decade but yes the reason it's broad is because it also counts online stories and essays and novellas and stuff.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 21st 2023 at 4:27:15 AM