Great post.
By someone who first joined in 2007, no disrespect, but 98% of all posts in this thread are by people who joined in the past three, 4 years max - how would you know what is missing when you weren't around when FP was at its best? Again, no disrespect, there are some great ideas actually, but FP can't and won't anytime soon be the place that it used to be. It really could be the owners. To me, FP now looks and feels like just every other mainstream music production site/forum/portal, while back in the day it was probably the most distinctive and coolest place for producers/beatmakers on the web. Can't really explain it, was it members and discussions, was it moderation, or owner, or that
green and later (cca 2008) dark/grey layout (my personal favourite) that felt so underground and grimey... BiggRome had a perfect description for FP back in the day, can't really quote it word by word, but something along the lines that when he is at work and logs onto FP, people at work look at him like he belongs to some dark, secret, terrorist group, cult or whatever, not talking to others during lunch break, but got his head into that dark website and planning the next shit to go down... we had some great and interesting members too, can't remember all the names but already mentioned BiggRome, jtroup, that kid who had rich parents and could get any hardware and software he wanted, brokenfriday dude, then that guy who used to do album covers for everyone, dj nice was his name, then beatbustent, dabeatdoctor, Justin Rockwell, not sure if that dude who had fat tony from simpsons as his avatar still posts, anyway can't remember them all but you know, it was a great time for me and great memories. Not saying you can't make it better, you can, but it will never be the place it used to be. Because
world evolves, music evolve, hip hop evolves, people
evolve. I wish you all the best, like I said, this place became generic music production portal ever since AudioFanzine took over as they are not interesting in ordinary people but only in profit, and I don't know what we/you can do about it but I wish you all the luck.