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I just judged 30 battles in the folk genre. Was an interesting experience....

I'd place maybe 20% of what I heard in the folk category. I wonder if people enter there because its smaller, not because the song is a fit?

There were some instances where (all my opinion, naturally) a well written folk song came up against a nicely written pop or rock song. In these cases, the latter seemed to win with the large majority of voters. I don't think they were better (or necessarily worse) - it's just that with folk you have fewer weapons to knock people out with.

There are some parallels between this kind of judging and competition photography. There, judges have about 10 seconds to score an image, before going on to the next one.

We found that we had to judge black and white before color, because when they were mixed together, color images almost always scored higher. Not because they were better - but simply because of a physiological response to seeing an additional visual component. This is not a factor when time is taken to contemplate a piece - but most definitely is when you have only a few seconds.

Bottom line - I think it's more critical for some genres than others that the entries fit the genre. They have to be on the same sonic playing field.

Yeah, I know there is a "doesn't fit category button". I didn't spot it until I was halfway into my session and didn't think it was fair to start using it at that point.....

Guess this might read like I'm grumpy - actually I enjoyed it and plan to do more. No system will be perfect - in fact no system CAN be perfect. But this seems to work far better than most.

Scott