JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Music Awards Discussion JPF Song Award Judges (Question)

Brian,
I understand there's usaully thousands of judges involved with each JPF music award event.
It's common knowledge that the three kinds of judges are...

1. Industry Professionals
This includes anyone making part or all of their living doing the following: Publishers, Producers, Engineers, Managers, Publicists, Venue Owners, Booking Agents, Media Professionals and Journalists, Entertainment Attorney's, Musicologists and Music Educators, PRO and other Music Organizational Staff, Record Label Staff, Music Retailers and Instrument/Gear Manufacturers, Internet, Radio and TV Music Broadcast Staff and any other Music Related Professionals earning income from your work.

2. Musician and Writer Peers
This includes anyone who writes or performs music of any genre.

3. Music Fans
If you don't fit into category 1 or 2 and you love music, you qualify to be a Fan judge.

So my question is...
How many judges from each category were involved with this year's award process?

For example:
Industry Professionals - 500
Musician and Writer Peers - 1,000
Music fans - 2,000
Total = 3,500

Obviously the actual (real) numbers are completely different, but this would be a good format to show how the numbers add up from each uniqe judge "type". I think you mentioned somewhere that this year there were about 4,000 judges involved, right?

How does this compare with other popular (well known/recognized) song contents? I don't expect other contests have nearly as many judges to "filter" the music, maybe only three or a few dozen.

Thanks for sharing the facts and any related details which explain how the JPF song awards are actually run.

Thanks,
Michael
P.S.
BTW, I posted these questions several months ago, but got no replies so far. Probably it was around the time you were busy heading off to the awards show and evidently no one else had the answers at that time.
http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/ubbthr...s&topic=0&Search=true#Post171003

Brian,
Got your email with details & discussion.
About 1/3 for each type is what I estimated.

Thanks!
Michael

Thanks for asking again Michael, I think a few of us were wondering. It's interesting to know!

I was just wondering how the initial nominees are selected ? There seems to be an incredible amount of material to go through. Unlike other awards where songs are peer nominated, I understand that you just send in a song. If there's 80 genres, is there a selection panel for each genre, and how is a determination made wether it's in or out ? Just curious.

Also, has anyone considered using the OurStage voting system ? As a community partner, and as a sponser, it would sure streamline the process.

cheers

We talked to them about doing something together on it but their process doesn't work for ours because you'd never have enough voters to go through 300-400-500K songs and choose genres etc. We may find a way to work with them on something in context of the awards, for example the video categories which are generally far fewer in entries and more suited for their system. They could also possibly participate once nominations were in and we may well test it out. I'd be curious to see how their results would compare to our own final results. Might be very informative for both of us.

We have a large number of screeners. Over 8000 participated last time. I expect it may be 10K or more this time around. All the steps of the awards are spelled out on the FAQ on this board. Check it out.

Brian

You mean 8,000 screeners or 8,000 final voters ? I'm just wondering how the nominees are selected. You mean 8,000 people go through 300,000 songs ? That would be 37.5 songs per person, so who gets what to determine the nominees ? Do you register for a genre in your field ?

cheers, niteshift

The numbers are different every year and also different for each category. A small category may have a small number of overall screeners. A gigantic one may have dozens of people screening it. At each stage there are notes and the selections gets smaller and smaller and whittled down. If there's a doubt on a song or album, it gets forwarded to see how it fairs in the next round. When we get to the end of the process, we often have 50-150 songs still in the running and 20-40 albums for nominations. Then we take all the notes and info and ratings from the previous processes and talk to all the screeners and whittle them down to final nominations. It's never an exact quantifiable thing because some genres might start with 20,000 songs or 1000 albums and others may only have 25-30 albums and a few hundred songs. Also some genres are more complex than others. It's tougher to screen long Classical pieces versus 2 minute punk songs. Or if we have something in another language, we have to screen for melody and production on one hand and then find someone fluent in that language to chime in on lyrical content. Then you take something like Indian music and it's tough to know what is classical and what is original. 2 identical pieces may sound very different from each other but be considered the same Raga.

The bottom line is that we use as many people as we need to get it down to the nominations. Then we open it up to a much wider number of people to vote to choose the winners. We don't often use fans to do earlier screening unless we find someone with a lot of knowledge on a specialized category (and in those cases you could almost consider them "industry" simply because they are experts in that type of music even if they aren't employed in the business).

We are open to adding judges who have some level of expertise in a specific genre. Educators, successful artists and writers, industry professionals and we also use some JPF awards nominees as we feel they've already reached a level that indicates knowledge and awareness enough to help out. Judging early is actually pretty easy. You could find nearly anyone off the street to tell the difference between a really horrible song and a really good one. As the numbers get smaller, the screening gets tougher and we do a lot of double checking to keep from missing something. When in doubt, we push it forward. Our system has a few other techniques and processes that I don't want to divulge simply because we've developed this process through a lot of hard work and we've figured out how to efficiently get through an enormous amount of music in a steady and effective manner and I'd rather not hand all the secrets over to the various contests out there trying to make money off our members. Let them do their thing, we'll do ours.

Brian

I agree with the early judging comment, it's fairly easy to determine a dud song wthin the first 30 seconds, and hence it gets put to one side.

I guess the basic question is, who and how many are doing the screening, in other words, how many sets of ears are listening to a particular piece.

With a peer nominated system, it's relatively easy, as no one is going to put their name to something which is not so good.

With an open system, it's really up to the integrity of the panelists to detemine what goes foward. Is there a nominated panel, or a publically listed panel of judges which determine the nominees. This provides both clarity and transparancy, and also gives the contest iself a hightened sense of credability.

I just simply don't know who is determining what is in and what is out, so therfor don't have an opinion on wether to put anything foward or not.

cheers, niteshift

When you see these contests who list famous names as their "judges" it's VERY misleading. Most of the time those famous names are listening only the a tiny handful of songs at the very end after all the screening and judging has been done. It's very misleading and borders on dishonest in my opinion. We've had a policy since day 1 not to divulge the names of judges. Most don't want their names out there and in some cases wouldn't do it if they were. Though we have a few "celebrities" who do heavy screening, I don't think fame has much to do with ability to screen massive amounts of music. We do use many of the same people to screen our awards as who screen many major contests. We use our mentors, award winning peer members, educators, media (radio, TV, Print) music folks, industry professionals who make their living full time in music and so on. That is as specific as I can be. I think the results of our judging speak for themselves. The material we call attention to is outstanding. And that is the goal in the end, to bring positive attention to outstanding music that might otherwise not get the attention it deserves.

If you want a list of famous names, spend 30 bucks and enter one of the "celebrity" laden contests out there. Those folks will likely never actually hear your music, but if the names make you feel good, go for it. By the way, when you list the names of who is judging what category, you open pandora's box for people to try and corrupt it all. No thanks.

If you're still not convinced, by all means, please don't enter anything.

Brian

Um, Brian, I'm not saying that the final nominees either don't deserve their place, nor are they there by accident. The final select list is of a very high standard, and having listened to the last round of the JPF awards, I can honestly say that each winner in it's catagory deserved to be there.

I'm simply asking an honest question. I don't want or need the celebrity factor, I don't enter contests for that reason, and I would never pay money to do so. I just have no idea who is judging my music, out of 300,000 entries, down to a nominee list of 480.

As I said, when it's peer nominated, it cuts out the 'who and what if' factor. There is no explanation here, so I'll just give it a miss and keep on writing the songs when I can. I'm just not getting a straight answer on how the nominees are chosen, and by whom.

cheers, niteshift