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

Bad vocals will pretty much kill your chances with the general public no matter how well written your song is. This is definitely not a case of "we'll hear past the bad demo" to find your great song. In fact, that's a completely bullshit lie that industry and those wanting your money will tell you. (There's a couple of exceptions, but they are rare and few). Your vocalist doesn't have to be a superstar, but if they aren't at least reasonably pleasing to the ears of the majority of listeners, it's going to be really tough to make headway.

As for people not knowing what is and isn't a cover, I think that's a little overboard. To the average music fan they don't even know the difference between a cover and an original most of the time. If they are country fans it's even more confusing because a lot of country artists do other people's songs in the first place. I bet some of the covers that are obvious to you Bill aren't even obvious to most of us, just as covers that are obvious to me may not be songs you've ever heard in the first place.

Certainly having a song that grabs someone quickly is a valid concern if you want to find any level of commercial acceptance or success. 15 seconds is an eternity if the listener isn't into what they are hearing. We have folks here (I think Big Jim was one of them) who said it was tough for him to even listen to 15 seconds of many of the entries. I also remember that for a while he wasn't doing well on Ourstage, but for the last couple months has been in the running to win the cover channel. There are songs that do well one month and plummet the next. That's because a different batch of listeners are judging so of course the results will be different. If they weren't, the exact same song would win every month. It's a bit of education for everyone to see that dynamic and how it can affect things. It's the same reason why every label passed on the Beatles and then someone finally "got" it and made history. Had they given up 1 person earlier, they'd never have seen the light of day commercially speaking. And guess what? We've lost lots of "Beatles" and lots of great songs over the decades for that reason.

Music should be fun. Getting feedback is a fun part of it. Even if you're doing REALLY badly, who is to say the next song you record, done so with the knowledge of the previous results, won't do better? After reading about he passing of Janell Rock today, I think there's very little for any of us to be angry or unhappy about when we're able to make music, post it for people to hear and discuss it. Even if nothing better than that ever happens, we're still light years ahead of many others.

As for pulling songs at the end of the month, if you aren't in the top 50% of a channel, the songs now get pulled anyway. Why you need to cancel your account, which suggests some level of anger or animosity, is unknown. If you're at least 1 song above dead last, that means you're still doing better than someone else. If you ARE dead last, you can take solace in the fact that someone always has to be dead last no matter how good everyone is or isn't. I'd take it as a fun challenge to see what I could do to move up a few notches the next time. That's a learning experience that will translate to success for any listening audience. I bet Bill, even with his vocals which he says himself aren't that good, could be crafty enough to pull off something that would do better. Come up with a really intersting first 15 seconds is a challenge that sounds like a fun activity to me. Isn't that sort of challenge a creative persons reason for being?

Brian