JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum So Where Does Your Song Rank On Ourstage?

Andrew,

Daniel has told me multiple times that the number does not include the judging stats, but only the number of times someone has requested the song outside of judging. To me, that is actually a valuable stat. If someone is forced to listen via the judging cycle, so what. But if I know folks are actually seeking my song out to listen to again or because they like my stuff or because they want to hear more of my work, that has some value.

The reason (and in this case, I am speculating) for not posting the judging totals is that in some genres, people are judging a LOT. Popular genres are likely getting a lot more votes/matches than less popular. If they showed the totals, people would start bitching when tiny genre X only had X number of votes to get in the finals or win while giant genre Y had a huge number of votes to get to the finals. Then we'd have people bitching about that. In addition, it would aid cheaters to know exactly how many times they needed to get their friends to vote bogusly to manipulate the results. In the end, their voting system is proprietary. They don't want to give competitors and others inside info on stats to figure out how they are doing what they do. That's smart business. In the JPF awards, we give out a lot of info, but there are pieces of how we do what we do that we don't reveal because frankly, I have 10 years of development put into getting through a half million songs effectively in an efficient way. I don't care to give away 100% of how we do it so that someone else (the Grammy's perhaps) can swoop in and take it, like they took our judging criteria ("Music that moves you") and used it for their broadcast several years running now like it was their idea and criteria.

Now, as I said, that is my speculation, but if it was me, that's what I would do. There's value knowing if folks want to hear your music when they aren't forced to. There's value to keep the natives from getting too restless when their small genre simply doesn't match up to the larger or more popular ones (and to be clear, just because a genre is huge in entries, doesn't mean it is popular in judging. I know that one of the largest gets some of the smallest numbers of voting because those that enter that genre don't seem interested in voting on it or getting their fans to do so). And I wouldn't really want to divulge every little secret to how the system works (like how I am tracking and dealing with cheaters which some have asked they reveal.. that would be stupid as it would teach cheaters what to avoid).

Gang.. it's a free tool. And it's a very effective tool and service outside of the "contest" portion of it. People are desperate to get folks to hear their music. Even in a worst case scenario, people ARE hearing your music (even if they are forced via judging) and I know when I judged I found a half dozen new artists I really liked and have since tracked to see what they are up to. And that is in the middle of our own awards process and in those cases, they aren't even JPF members.

I am rather amazed at the continual sniping on every little possible nit picking issue when these guys have been so supportive of JPF and our members concerns. How about we reverse the tone a bit on our helpful suggestions to go from bitching to supporting for a change? I am sure most of you intend only to help, but sometimes this type of help become a bummer. How about some of you dig in a little and check out their chat systems. Did you know you can have your own listening party there where the leader of the chats can play songs for all the folks in the room for feedback or as a release party etc? It's a live critique possibility I am thinking of using for JPF. Let's view this as a helpful partner for a while rather than something to complain or be suspicious about.

Brian