Yeah yeah, no-one will admit to this, but judging by the lack of Likes and comments I get the impression people don't have the time or inclination to listen to other submissions. At the start it wasn't unheard of to see tracks with 4 or 5 Likes and a couple of encouraging comments, and yes there were more people taking part then.

Maybe the player not letting people skip through tracks is a barrier. I know that if someone uploads a long track I'll seldom get to the end (sorry!). Sometimes you just want the essence of a tune, especially if you're catching up on a load of tracks at once.

I try my level best to listen to tracks, but I'm not as diligent as I was, sorry to say.

It would be nice to try and foster some spirit of encouragement from everyone, although I know this is probably asking a lot.

It's a good topic! I go through periods when I can listen more, and others where it can be more difficult. And admittedly I use Safari as my primary browser, which doesn't like the embedded player. (Maybe two items for the future would be to resolve that, but also to turn on track-to-track auto-play.)

But you're right--listening and commenting, even if it's just an "I like it!" is a good thing.

It can be hard. I wasn't expecting people to drop everything and listen to stuff, especially my tracks, but I am aiming myself to at least sample some of the things being made and hopefully add some encouragement along the way.

I was listening to things more often earlier this year but lately I've totally dropped the ball on listening to other's material. I wonder if there's a system that helps encourage more listening/liking/commenting.

Something that works in Ludum Dare is a karma system where if you comment more on people's material, then your own material gets elevated to the front page.