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

Bill,

The Founders awards are called that for a reason. (Remember, this has nothing to do with the Song or Album winners in the general awards.. we're talking the Founders Awards that are above and beyond those others). It's takes someone familiar with ALL the music who can take all the results, choose a small number of folks who are informed and open minded and whittle it all down to the final Founders Awards winners. We make that all 100% clear and we even NAME it the Founders Awards. No one else has heard ALL the nominees. No one else has spoken to ALL the judges. No one else has seen ALL the results at every stage and read every single judges comment. I do 3 primary things in the awards. I initially screen 100% of the entries to determine genres (and also to remove the bottom 10-30%), I then switch to overseeing the entire screening process all the way down to the nominations by coordinating ALL the judges, answering questions, double checking to make sure people are doing a thorough job and then compiling the judges results into the nominations. Then, after all the voting happens among the Fans, Peers and Industry folks, I take those results and combine them all into a manageable process so that a smaller group of trusted and proven judges (i.e. the cream of the entire crop) can determine their recommendations for the Founders Awards winners. Once I have all those opinions collected (and they rarely agree with each other) I have to make final judgement calls on those Founders Awards winners. This is the only way it can work without it simply being a popularity contest. In the case of the Artist of the Year winners, we ALSO have to consider if they are the right people represent the entire organization. So character and involvement with the org. is part of that. Usually I am the only person who actually knows these folks directly. Who else can make that judgement call? So we name those awards The Founders Awards for a reason. It wasn't random. We spend a lot of time figuring out how to make all of this work. It's not done lightly or carelessly and it's definitely not done with any level of bias. If it was, we wouldn't see such diversity across the various winners. But, one category HAS in fact done better.. Country. And that's only possible because I have no bias for or against anything.. I just pick the best work and if Country or Rap or Death Metal is what moves everyone the most, that's what is going to win.

Your comments are frankly deeply offensive by the way. You throw around false accusations based not on fact but on your "impression" with no facts at all to back it up. What you've done is no less offensive to someone who has dedicated his life to helping Musicians and Songwriters for no personal gain than falsely accusing a civil rights worker of being a racist or bigot. I really thought you were better than that. On that, apparently, I was wrong.

Now.. since you and Ben have completely hijacked this post about Ourstage so you could hurl personal attacks against me, I have to do something about it. I suppose I could start a new post and simply move this one off line. It's sad that you've screwed over a post that was about supporting and discussing a great new company who is helping make our awards and everything else here possible so that people can use it for free and participate whether they have money or not. I was going to create some new message boards for the Community Partners, so perhaps I will use this as the motivator to do that. If I do move this post off line, it's not because Bill and Ben have attacked me (which is why I didn't and never do remove posts where people attack me personally), but rather it's off topic and most folks want to talk about how cool Ourstage is or ask questions about how it works or how to use it.

Brian