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PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS VERY OUTDATED

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<<--[The Audio Portal itself]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [The Audio Forum]-->>
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The reason you want to submit your work to the audio portal is probably that you want people to hear your audio. As you probably noticed in the article about the audio portal itself, you get the most exposure by getting your track featured on the 'best tracks of all time' or the 'weekly best'.

Zerovoting

Unfortunately there are some obstacles on this road to exposure. Many people tend to vote 0 on other people's work simply for eliminating competition. This actually causes a 'zerobombing' war every Tuesday evening. It's been the cause of many pointless topics in the audio forum. Many people have offered ideas to solve the problem. A whole load of good suggestions too. The problem is that it isn't too easy to just change up the audio portal. Newgrounds' staff has other priorities than the audio portal. Voting 0 on other people's submission isn't going to help either, as that only makes the problem worse. So please refrain from doing that... unless a submission actually deserves a 0.

I encourage you to vote what a submission is worth by your standards. And perhaps refrain from voting your own music up, it doesn't help much anyway. One thing I can advise you is to not care too much about your scores. Care about helpful reviews, as they help you improve your composition skills.

Other ways to gain exposure

People tend to return the favor when you review their work. So, if you put some effort in reviewing around a bit, you'll most likely get some more traffic to your submissions too. Don't just go advertising yourself in your review though, that often does not work as intended.

If you're going to review a submission, provide some constructive criticism; explain how the submission could be made better. Point out what parts of it you liked and why, point out what could be better, and how it could be made better. This way you help the artist to improve, plus it'll be more likely he/she'll get back to you and review your submissions too.

Additionally, you can advertise your audio in the Audio advertisements thread on the audio forum. In the Clubs and Crews section of the forum, you will find the Review request club. On there you can politely ask them to review your music.

Another good idea is to put a link to your latest submission in your forum signature and be active around the forums.

You can gain quite some exposure from participating in contests held at the audio forum. Not every contest has actual prizes, but the honor is a great reward on its own. A contest that gets a lot of attention and is held periodically is the Represent a Country (RAC) contest. So it might be a good idea to participate in that.

Improving

As I explained above, good reviews help artists improve. It's good to be on Newgrounds to improve your skills, and to be helping others to improve theirs. This turns Newgrounds into a very helpful environment where we can all grow.

As said, reviews are mostly intended to help you improve future works, so this should be a good source to learn from. Read reviews on other people's music too, you can learn a lot of them. And then you have the Audio forum, where every now and then, some very helpful topics show up, and everyone can learn a whole bunch of new things; all from each other.

Of course you can learn a lot from your own experience too. Fiddle around in your DAW, try things you normally wouldn't. This way you discover new things, and perhaps you can share what you found out with others.

Additional links

[1] Zerovoting and Exposure
Some more information about the zerovoting issue, and some tips to get exposure. You also have the opportunity to join the discussion about these. Be sure to skim through the thread (and mostly read the first few pages well) before you post.

[2] Audio Advertisements
In this thread you can post advertisements for your audio work. Either on Newgrounds or outside of it. If you want to advertise your friends, or some band or so, you can do that here too. Don't spam up the place with links from everywhere though.

[3] Review Request Club
This is the place to request thought out reviews from people who have formed a club to do so.
Politely ask them to review your track, don't ask to get more than 2 tracks reviewed per week. Please note that it can take about a week before they get to reviewing your submission.

[4] The latest Represent a Country contest
This can give you an idea of how a contest is held on the audio forums.

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<<--[The Audio Portal itself]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [The Audio Forum]-->>
<<--[Back to overview]