Well the reply rule would only apply to those actually posting their material..not those that are there simply for critiquing. At first you're going to have more people that are there to post songs than give actual critiques and if everyone is just posting their songs up and don't have to reply they may choose not to and again the positive feedback and critiquing that the forum would be created for would be missing. Some people have different reasons for doing it. Sometimes they want someone to reply to them before they give a reply to someone else and will only reply to the people who've given them a reply. For example..I also post at
www.undergroundhiphop.com and they have audio and text forum as well but if you take a look at the song section
here you'll notice they DON'T have a reply rule and as a result half of the threads have zero replies and will more than likely get no more than 5 total. Also there is only one page of threads...no one wants to post there. Because no one replies. I will say that the maturity level here at TFP is definitely MUCH higher than that of Ughh because we're all adults here so it may not be the same scenario but thats just an example of what CAN happen when you don't enforce a reply rule. If that happened it could become a dead forum on TFP and will make the Admin's regret creating it in the first place.
Yes thats exactly what I said before about the replies it's definitely crucial. Perhaps tags like over in the TB forum to describe the type of music would be good. There could be a punk tag to let someone know that you will find punk music in that thread, a throwback classic rock tag, a prog rock, hip-hop tag, electronica tag, etc. could be helpful...I've noticed that the TFP is a pretty eclectic musical environment though so they probably wouldn't really be needed just fun to use...Of course instead of those you could just simply describe it in the thread title also.
Ya know it would really suck if we're sitting here discussing this and coming up with ideas and then they decide not to make it after all

. Oh well...what can ya do?
Asta!!