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

Overall I think OurStage is a fun place to be. One can get exposure for their music and fans get to find artists that they may enjoy even more than the highly marketed artists that are signed to major labels. The competition aspect is one of the things that draws the fans to OurStage and benefits the artists. The monetary rewards and exposure draws the artists too. While OurStage has implemented designs to safeguard the integrity of the competition, they can not change unscrupulous artists - yes, the human factor.
Bands and artist who have developed a fan base and have a street team to help promote them have an advantage - and well they should. So OurStage should not be used as a sole measure of how good a song is. One needs to test their material by live performances and submissions to music industry people as well. Can artists fix the competitions? Perhaps.
Common sense reveals that the larger the competition - the harder it is to fix. Sheer numbers prevent artists from organizing their street team (hereafter known as PC posse)to vote in a way the would fix for themselves a spot in the quarterfinals in a large competition. Once in the quarterfinals though - only 20 artists - the pc posse can go to work by voting for their artist and voting down whoever they consider to be most competitive. Those who have a loyal fan base also are protected to a degree from those who would use PC posses to game the system.
Those who don't have a large fan base, but may have a great song, could easily fail to advance at this point. Therefore an artist shouldn't give up on a song if it doesn't win in it's genre. But what if a song doesn't even make it to the quarterfinals in it's genre. Does that mean that industry people would think it's bad too? Certainly not. Let me share an example.
I am an OurStage artist who has a song that I have performed for years. A couple of years ago, the song peaked at 200 plays per day at mp3.com (pre CNET). The song was my closer and was considered by some, my signature song. At a performance during a past Millenium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA, Matt Pinfield(at that time VP/A&R Columbia Records and of MTV fame) caught the close of my performance with this song. Upon finishing my performance I was able to quickly pack up and leave. As I was leaving, Matt Pinfield and his entourage gave me a second round of applause and yelled across the room, "You Rock!"
This same song “Up For Hanky Panky” was entered at the beginning of July into the Comedy genre which eventually had less than seventy total entries. At the beginning of July, there were only 13 songs competing. Right away this song fell to the bottom of the competition. Since I had not performed regularly for four years, I didn't have a fan base anymore or a PC posse. It stayed near the bottom as more songs were added. As I was judging in that category I noticed that some of the quality artists in that genre didn't fair well against certain artists, that in my opinion, were well below that quality artist's material.(A quarter-finalist who's a professional comedian was shown to have lost most battles with another artist who made the quarter-finals - the margin at that time was 3% for the comedian and 97% for the quarter-finalist who obviously must have had a PC posse) Other A&R people have observed that my song was "radio morning show material" - which is great for this particular genre. Incidentally, the song has been played on commercial and college radio. So this experience shows that while OurStage has made efforts to make their competitions credible, there are circumstances that they can't control.
I had a new song I’d just recorded this year entered into an appropriate genre. It was quickly voted down to near the bottom of that genre which had around 70 songs the first month it competed and around 170 songs the second month. During that same time period “White Collar Man” song made semifinalist in the UK Songwriting Contest 2008. The song has been played on commercial radio as well as Internet Radio.
For evaluation purposes I had decided not to recruit friends, fans, and family to go to OurStage to vote for my songs - providing a constant that may be of some value in interpreting results.
It would seem to me that an artist who lives in a metropolitan area with an association group for songwriters and artists would have the opportunity to muster their members to support their efforts on OurStage more so than an artist who’s asking fans at their gigs for support. Although in the past I’ve seen spikes in plays on Internet sites where my songs were, after I performed live and directed fans to that site, I doubt if most fans would take the time to judge the huge number of battles necessary in order to do their favored artist any good. Also the age of the artist and the age of the fan bases for a particular genre factor in on success with OurStage. It is noteworthy that most of the finals winners are young and probably single and are in genres that typically attract a younger fan base. Genres like Jazz, Bluegrass, and even Country are likely supported by fans, who don’t have as much time to spend on the computer voting for their favored artists.
I entered “Up For Hanky Panky” again in October, within a week of entering it, it was at #2. It held a position in the top 20 until the quarterfinals. The previous month I had entered “Big Busted Women Flat Busted Broke” in the Comedy genre. Within a week, it moved from about 70 to 30. It received more favorites that any other song I’ve posted on OurStage – including three that have made the quarterfinals. Yet after some apparent negative organized voting (See my post “Negative Voting on OurStage?), it did not make the quarterfinals.
In judging other genres, I’ve noticed that many songs that I think are great are well below the top 20 in their genre. Let’s take Indie Rock for example. I found what I considered a “great song” by Beautiful Criminal entitled “Run”. However it only made 415 in July. Yet I listened to the top 10 in that genre for that month and couldn’t find one song that I thought was better than “Run”. Even though tastes different, I doubt if any neutral listener could justify the disparity between the number 1 song and the number 415 song, “Run”.
I also had a couple of novelty songs that could crossover to Hip Hop. Knowing full well I didn’t have a prayer, I entered. After starting in the 670s, I jumped to the 370s. But then a week later,
I was back to the 600s. It ended up under 500. More than any genre, the Rap and Hip Hop genre are controlled by the “street teams”. I have heard a VP of A&R at a major label demand that any artist that comes to his company, have a working “street team” before they call on him. The artists who are in this genre generally are not going to win congeniality awards. In fact, I’ve been threatened by rap and hip hop artists in the past, at others sites for doing rap novelty songs.
The intricacies of each genre are different. I would suppose that in genres where the artists and fans are older and more refined, it is friendlier and more honest. Perhaps in those genres, an artist could use the voting results as a fair gauge of how good a song really is. However, my
examination of the OurStage has given me reason to discount voting results as a gauge of a song’s worth. It may rather be a measure of an artist’s ability to draw fan support – provided
they are indeed fans and not some association group organized for voting. Knowing what I know about Ourstage, if I were an A&R person, I would be skeptical about big claims of success at
OurStage – especially in certain genres. Sales of songs at OurStage however would be the ultimate measurement of an artist’s commercial viability.
So in conclusion I say to the OurStage artist:”Have fun”. “Don’t take negative results as the final
word on a song.” ”Use it as a tool for exposure.” “Give feedback to OurStage that may improve it.”
“Vote for the good songs that are competing against your song because it may make any good results you have more credible.”