Hi, I would like to formally invite you to join the Romulus pre-beta. The site will be a multimedia cultural database to the likes of RateYourMusic, Discogs, Backloggd, IMDb, etc. with a greater focus on ease-of-use for those who enter data, as well as the general user experience. All the previously mentioned database sites lack tools to effectively enter information in mass or auto-import from external sources without additional extensions, reinforced by outdated approaches to sorting and searching large amounts of data, which only shows its age with webrot constantly increasing.

The site is currently being developed by me on the backend and CaptainMocha on the frontend. I am self-hosting the server out of my house (specs and photos can be found in the Discord server below). The plan for the site is to begin with only a genre queue to transition RYM's tree into the new object model, and the target launch date for the queue is **April 1st** at the earliest. From there, the plan is as follows:
- Add Language, Culture, and Region tree support as a supplement to auto-generate Regional Music categories.
- Flesh out the account and profile systems.
- Add support for artist profiles, items (songs), issues (albums, EPs, etc.), and distributions (CD, vinyl, files, etc.). These objects will be independent from each other to cut down on data duplication, such as when multiple distributions share the same tracklist/issue.
- Begin importing from external databases.
- (Eventually) begin to cover other mediums, prioritising films and games. The process for these will be the same as above, repeat ad nauseum for any media type.

From this point, the beta will expand to a larger pool of testers to begin integrating the database in a consistent manner.

A summary of the genre objects:
- Movements can now apply to more media types than one without data duplication, ex. Psychedelia has applications in Music, Film, Fashion, etc. and will be a single object with subpages to describe each of its specific applications.
- Divisions are a new object that represent high level multimedia divisions, such as Popular, Folk, and "Art" Art.
- Scenes are now context-free objects that are not under any genres. Instead, which genres they are mostly aligned with will be populated based on how they are tagged. Ex. a Japanese Noise scene does not have to make Noise music, but rather the Scene will naturally gravitate towards genres that incorporate noise as they are tagged together.
- Metas are a new object that represent formal groupings of Styles that are not singular Styles themselves, and will have special voting rules (more info to come). Examples would include Rock, C-Pop, and Southern Hip Hop. Metas are not inherently top level genres, but many will be.
- Styles are the replacement for Genres. Unlike RYM genres, there will be an *experimental/trial* property that will allow adding Styles that cannot be well-sourced, seeing how they are tagged in the wild to give them time to prove themselves viable and useful. There will also be a set of checkboxes that will allow a Style to be defined as Sonic, Lyrical, or both, though in the future Lyrical Styles may get their own Oral Tradition tree separate from the Sonic tree.
- Trends are a new object that exist underneath Styles. These will be used to specify waves within Styles that are not distinct enough to warrant their own Style. Examples would be 70s-inspired under Hypnagogic Pop, 2000s Bubblegum under Pop, and Pierre-style under Trap.
There are many other quirks and new properties that distinct these objects from their counterparts on any other database site, such as the ability to bypass strict inheritance (A can be under B, B can be under C, but C does not have to be under A), and ranked influences which will be used to generate a music map where related genres are closer together as well as some machine learning experiments (recognising genres from a sound file).

Though the site will have an official genre tree, users will be able to create their own custom objects that only they can see and tag on releases, but other users can "subscribe" to them to participate in tagging, like favouriting a list. Object submissions can use someone's custom object so that their release tags will automatically carry over if approved.

For this genre queue beta, the invited users will break up into "domains" in which they will have nearly full control over how the new tree will look. There is no strict assignment, but those that participate in a tree's construction are expected to collaborate with their fellow users.

If you are interested in a joining the project, there is a Discord where regular development updates are occurring: https://discord.gg/pPRPHKZZpZ

Thank you for your consideration and I hope to see you on the team.