Hi Folks,

We have more and more JPF members on Ourstage every day. In the Newport Folk Festival Channel, our members are dominating the top of the charts. So I thought it might be interesting for folks to post how they are doing here and we can track.

Please tell us what category you are in, your song title and where it ranks currently.

Let the success stories (and the not so successful yet stories) begin!

Brian

Ok, 4-13-08

Folk It's a cold day in Bradenton 23
Newport Folk Fest 20008 Whut I learned at work 31
Radio922 Earthfest H'oponopono 41
Newport Folk fest 2008 Broken Shells 128
New age/World El Maskara,the luchadore song 170
Folk Depleted Uranium 267


PB

What is the Newport Folk Festival station all about? (I really wish they had a better on-line description of the stations, versus just the little bit in the FAQ).

My stuff:
Let That River Flow 162/339 in Folk (high of 44)
Sitting By The Fire 520/577 in Country (high of 282?)
Dark Recess 522/1199 in Alt Rock (high of ?)
Roll Daddy Roll 992/1164 in Indie Rock/Pop (high of 676?)

I guess I am not making much of an impact over there. The only one I am disappointed with is Sitting By The Fire. I realize it is an old style country waltz, but I thought it would so a little better.

Back to the drawing board.

Kevin

Kevin, I think the winner gets to play at the festival.

"These Old Shoes" 51st at Newport folk festival

Jazz: "I Remember Your Smile" is currently 38th out of 354.

My best month for it was February where it ended up at 17.

Once I upgrade the production quality for my AI songwriting submission, I'll set it in motion in the pop category.

At Our Stage:

"A Hot Day In Havana": Latin, #18
"Ivory And Steel": Jazz, #87
"She's Hot And I'm Bothered": Jazz #109
"Escuchar A Mi Corazon": Latin #117
"Boonoonoonous JA": Reggae, #130
"Blue Monday": Blues, #224 (This one has been up & down quite a bit"
"Nefarious Noise": Techno/Club Dance #365
"Joyous Insanity": #377


I have nothing at the Newport Folk Festival. I assumed by its title that it was primarily oreinted to Folk muisc Music, one of my least favorite genres. So, I have not checked it out. Maybe I should?

Al

Last months results....

'Alienlandscape' - 38th in Electronic
'Sad Song for Your Baby' - 68th in Blues
'Synthetic Salsa Blue' - 184th in Jazz
'Someones Got A Better Hand' - 195th in R and B / Soul

There were a couple of surprises, but I'm happy with the results. It's probably in line with a random audience sample.

Don't think I'll bother entering them again. Sort of know how the field lies, and I now have an idea about what a non-targeted audience thinks.

cheers, niteshift

Currently:

The Graveyard of Songs
40th in Folk
Played: 143 Favorited: 4


Solve My Problem
297th in Rock
Played: 39 Favorited: 0


Just Another Day
1407th in Rock
Played: 37 Favorited: 0

Kevin,

Do you get the Just Plain Folks Newsletter? (If you don't then you're not officially a member as that's the official member list). We covered the Newport Folk Festival channel in it last week. You can read the full issue in my blog.

Brian

Here's how my current entries are doing...

"Throwdown" - Electronic - 4th
"Antigravity" - New Age/World - 6th
"The Art of Zen" - Instrumental - 4th
"Breathing You In [feat. Jillian Goldin]" - Techno/Club/Dance - 45th
"Mindbender" - Techno/Club/Dance - 75th
"Warhead" - Electronic - 168th
"Drum and Bossa" - Instrumental - 263rd

It's interesting... "The Art of Zen" did pretty poorly last month, not even making it close to the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, "BYI" was #3 in the FINALS (#1 in semis) and Mindbender was #2 in the semis. This month, they're not even top 20.

Different judges and different head to head competitors should produce different results... if the results were the same every time, those folks who won would never lose. It should serve as an educational experience really. It shows how you can get rejected over and over and then suddenly someone "discovers" you and you're a big hit. And in the end, you are the same person and writer/artist you were before the success after it.

Brian

Some of my best recent enteries:

Indy - 18 in New Age/World, April 18, 2008 (still in progress)
Lion & The Lamb - 78 in Christian/Spiritual, February 2008
He Once For Me Did Bleed - 102 in Christian/Spiritual, March 2008


My "problem" is that I have other tracks that are just as good or better, but there's no suitable channel to enter them yet. For example, I have an instrumental pop/jazz fusion (Cafe Gourmet) which wouldn't do well in mainstream Jazz or Pop, but would do better in a Sub genre like Smooth/Pop jazz.

Another example is "Tower Of Bable" which is composed and arranged in a film soundtrack style. Other channels such as New Age/World, Instrumental and Experimental might work, but still not close enough to contemporary classical with a strong leaning towards Film score or maybe video game.

I also have some classic style hymns which are instrumentals, so they won't fit in the Christian/Spiritual channel which requires lyrics and vocals; and these won't do so well in Instrumental because everything gets tossed in there from folk, rock and jazz to bluegrass and hip-hop. There's a bit too much variety there now.

News Flash Update!
I just found out that now Covers are supported on OurStage. That's great news for me. I've got a few like: Adagio For Strings, Unchained Melody, White Bird, Be Thou My Vision, Carol Of The Bells, Claire De Lune, Good Tidings To Zion, etc.
Technically, only the first 3 qualify as legal (current day) cover tunes while the rest are already in the public domain.

If OurStage had these additional channels: Contemporary Classical, Children's Music, Film and maybe Instrumental Hymns, it would open more opportunities for much of my material.

I put up one to get the lay of the land.

"Arizona" is currently 32nd in Folk. It was at 130ish for ages, then jumped to 70ish. A few days ago it was 50ish.

Since most things naturally tend to oscillate, I expect it will start moving the other direction soon

Maybe I should probably put up a picture for it

Scott

Falling In - Music Video, ranked at 253 as of this posting.

Jody,

How come you don't have any of your songs entered?

Micheal,

You should enter those 2 songs into Jazz and Instrumental. They fit there and there's no reason not to. We have film soundtrack music in our instrumental each year and before we had Inst. Jazz, we had instrumental jazz songs in our Jazz category. If there's not a sub category yet, they won't add one if there's no evidence of people entering enough of that type of music to need a channel. So you're making a self fulfilled prophecy by not participating.

Brian

Definitely put up one of your cool photos Scott. It makes a difference... those generic Ourstage photos can confuse repeat voters into thinking they're voting for a different song (or against it).

Brian

One of our members is currently #1, 5, 6, 7, 11, 23 & 28 in the Newport Folk Festival channel meaning it's pretty likely one of our folks is going to get submitted for consideration to play there.

Brian

Hi Brian

I entered my song "Don't push my button" on "Ourstage" today, under country, I am a bit confused by it all, but I will see how it goes. One question I do have is I ticked a box that said do I want Ourstage to sell my song, and I ticked yes, should I have done that cause I don't understand it. Do I get money, or is that just if I win the competition?

Michele
Aussie girl from down under

My song Burning Down is currently #1 on the Newport Folk Festival channel!

I haven't added any other songs to OurStage yet, but I plan on it later today.

My song "Lonely Man" is 159th in Contemporary so far this month. It did terrible last month in the Alt. Rock channel. I just entered my song "Rivertown" today, 577th in Americana / Alt Country. It looks like no where to go except up for it right now, that is until more folks enter.

One person has that many highly ranks songs? That is excellent!

Aw, number 2 now... but the week is young!

Jack,

I meant that "one" of our members were ranked that each. Actually Seth Horan was both 6 & 7 at the time.. but they change a lot.

Brian

Darn Juliana! But I bet you'll make it to the semi finals and that's all that matters.. being number one in the early round isn't as important as being number one at the end!

Brian

Thanks Brian!
Ok, so Cafe Gourmet is now in Jazz channel (for all of April) but since it doesn't have vocals, it can't compete as well in this category.

So if I understand you correctly you're suggesting I try it in the Instrumental channel, right? Probably I should also try "Tower Of Bable" in Instrumental channel.

I think I'll wait till May 1st to do all my channel switching at the same time, or maybe I should do it now and get a little head start!

Michael

Hi Michele,
No need to be confused... look, it's simple:

When you elect to make your songs available for sale it has nothing to do with the monthly song contents. Selling your songs to "fans" for downloads is just like selling your music at SoundClick or any other place around the internet. It's just a .99 cent song sale which enables your customers to download a copy of your song, that's all.

This works regardless of whether or not you enter your songs into the contest or whether you win or lose, etc. Doesn't matter, they're two seperate things. Obviously it's in most artist's interest to win as many contests as possible and sell as many songs as possible. Why limit yourself?

Hope this clears things up a bit for you!
Please let us know how it goes.
Cheers,
Michael

OK .. well I just joined .. I just put on my first song to the Newport Folk Festival channel.
Now I better go back and learn my way around the site!
Lots of good music to listen too!!!
Joanne

I wish I could listen, but listening to high bit songs while on dialup is next to impossible.

I'm surprised. In the first week or so, all the standings changed a lot and quickly. This past week, things seemed to hold their ground more, and "The Graveyard of Songs" was holding steadily somewhere in the 40's in Folk.

It was #40 yesterday, but it's #14 today.

So, just to see what happens, I threw in a late entry to the Singer/Songwriter category, "Hold On Strong To Your Love".

Hey Mark,

Yeah, it takes awhile for them to get listened to enough to make a difference. Mine didn't show up much at all until it had been up for a week and now it's between 1 and 2 off and on.

Hi Juliana, and congrats. I love your song.

I've been monitoring this process with interest...it had 140 or so votes yesterday when it still hung in the 40's...now it's had 158. I think that has a lot to do with which songs it goes against at which time.

Are you changing strings in your avatar? Good luck to you, Juliana!

Yeah, that's a picture my boyfriend got of me preparing to play at the Bele Chere festival. I'm bad about changing strings at (nearly) the last minute, so I figured this avatar would remind me to do it.

Come to think of it, I have a show tomorrow...

I personally find OurStage to be one of the clumsiest and most user unfriendly sites around.

The doesn't appear to be any way to delete a song or video once it has been uploaded. The first time I loaded my video, it didn't play too well on their player. So I saved the video with a different codec and this new one played OK in OurStage. But I can't delete the old one. I've also remixed some songs previously submitted but can't delete the old mixes. Does this mean that our songs and videos become their property forever? I don't like that.

I wanted to have some of my songs available for free download but can't figure out how to do it. It is apparently possible as they have free song advertisements on my OurStage page all the time.

I'm getting spammed (like 2 to three emails a day by one jerk) by some "friends" from this site but can't seem to remove them as "friends."

These are just some of the many problems I've had with this site.

Ok I will give it a shot.
Trying to figure out which channel to put the song in seems to be the biggest challenge.
I opted to put up my song (This Would Be) His Last Time

I first thought it should be in the Hard Rock or Rock channel but I have decided it is probably more suited to Singer/Songwriter. Even though it has a more distorted guitar driven sound.
We will see how it goes. It is my wifes least favorite song. Actually she plain does not like it. So this will be a test.

Looks like a test for an impending divorce Bill ! Good luck. ( with the song, not the wife, that is )

cheers, niteshift

Andy,

I am sure if you ask to be removed from their site, they'll remove you completely. If you do and they don't, let me know and I will call them directly.

Brian

There are some probs for sure and I do not like the idea of having songs up there forever. I think we should have an option for editing our profile and removing songs. All songs should be removed from the boards after a month and it is up to individuals to re enter in the next months battle if they wish.
Otherwise categories are going to be unmanageable and voting will not work properly due to high numbers of entries.

I do not get the whole friends thing either. It is creeping into every site. I am getting Soundclick and Ourstage requests from folk who want to be my friend. Some of these folk judging by their profile have very little in common and I have never even heard of them. It's some form of networking idea that they are using to publicise themselves.

AWWWW! C'mon Big Jim
Don't be such a prude.
They heard you was a Scot and Scot's don't wear anything under them Kilts. The want to be your friiieeend.

Hey Nite
She just rolled her eyes when I told her which song I was gonna put up.
I said "well, I figure it's one way to find out if you are right about the song".
Then I ducked, LOL.

Hey Bill the latest was bi-sexual. Could not tell from the pic if it was male or female. Listened to some of its songs as well could not tell what they were either. LOL

BTW there is a way to remove songs I just found it out. It comes under edit profile when you have clicked on your name.

About removing songs...

Your song will only be entered in the month and competition that YOU chose...it will not be entered in any other month unless you do so yourself. The issue with "removal" is that your song does remain on the site, searchable and playable, and there does not yet appear to be a function to take it down.

I say YET. Danny Palmer has been very interactive and appears to be keenly interested in bettering the site in any way possible.

Hey, "The Graveyard of Songs", #10 and holding for two days now. This close to the quarterfinals I am starting to think about maybe getting a little excited. Not for winning, but for being in that smaller group of songs that gets so much play. Fingers crossed for a week.

I was under the impression that removal was from the site but I think you are correct. It seems to be a problem if you cannot remove songs altogether. My other question is what happens to songs that are flagged as being off topic or offensive or copyright violation? I have reported a few.

They review whatever has been flagged, and if they agree, they pull it from the competition.

First of all, read the terms of service of any website before uploading your music. You can't complain about them after the fact.

Second of all, if you DID read the TOS, you'd see OurStage doesn't own anything of yours. Your music and videos don't become "their property". Don't be so paranoid. It makes you look bad.

Third, how are you being spammed by anyone? They removed the "mass mail to friends" option. You can only mass mail your FANS now. So if you are that person's fan, you should remove yourself from their fan club (takes one click.) If they are actually messaging you repeatedly and you're NOT their fan, then you need to report them to OurStage - simple as that.

I'm with Big Jim on the "friends" thing. I like the idea of having real "friends" like people who I know from JPF, but a lot of people "friend" farm or "friend" fish for the lack of a better term. In other words I get requests from hip hop artists mostly, I check their site and they have thousands of "friends". Why do they need me?
I'll tell you why. As a networking tool it is a way to build up a sort of mailing list. The more "friends" they have the more announcements they can send out. Chances are someone will bite and become a fan. It's the same way on Myspace.
I don't have a problem with the "friend" system but it is not my cup of tea. I will only accept people who I know, or have similar taste in music. And I do want to know what my real "friends" are doing. Anyone else is a phony "friend" as far as I'm concerned. Ben

I feel the same way, Ben. Except sometimes when the spammer is kinda hot.

OurStage provides a "Block Sender" option in the messages console. I've used it a couple times now.

Brian & Andy,
Actually, it's NO problem to request to remove any song or video at any time. I did a little customer service (tech support) test and they got back with me very quickly. Actually, I just wanted to "weed out" a few songs and a video that I didn't need displayed anymore, so it was also based on a real need. They removed my requested files and then sent me an email to confirm deletion. I had one song which was still entered into a contest (which I'd overlooked) so they even reminded me to first remove it from the contest so they could then delete the file for me.

So there's really NO need to remove your whole profile and completely leave the site. Each month just upload the few songs you want to enter into a contest. Then, after the contest is over (or even before), you can request to have those files removed.

It would be nice if in the future they would allow us to do this ourselves, just like at other sites like SoundClick. It's very easy there to overwrite new recordings over existing song files and also remove them (completely) at any time.

With OurStage, they have to be careful about "overwriting" existing song files if they've already been entered into a contest and are being actively voted on. It wouldn't be fair to change the recording in the middle of the contest, so they don't allow that, though you could remove it from the contest, ask them to delete it and then upload a new file with same or similar song title, and re-enter into a contest.

So that's what I've learned there in the last month or so!
Michael

I've written a couple times about how I understand not letting you change your song due to the voting process.

But now that I think about it, I can no longer think of a good reason...if it was improved and began to do better after being updated...how is that unfair...? Maybe they should allow it after all...

The voting on the Newport channel has been fickle for me. My song was around #200, went down to #51, then down to #21 now it's back up to #140 all in a few days. I just reentered it for next month for another roller coaster ride. Ben

In my experience, if your song is jumping around it's because the channel has received relatively few votes. Thus, one vote carries more weight than it would elsewhere. Techno used to be like that two months ago, but this month has been quite stable.

All the other sites I've posted music or videos on (Soundclick, MySpace, Songramp, etc.) I've been able to delete or update material myself. If the material was being rated or scored, the update would start from scratch (or zero, score for previous version not counting for new version) on most sites, which seems right. This is the first time I've had to request that the site creators remove old material. This seems kind of primitive.

I haven't received a message from the artist who was spamming me the most. I must have stumbled on a switch to turn him off, assuming OurStage management didn't ban him or something similar.

Well it seems like my song is doing pretty much what I expected.
It is one of those either you like it or you hate it songs. no middle, LOL.
It is hanging right around the middle in the singer songwriter channel. so I'd say its getting about a 50/50 split
But it has only been there for two days. with 17 views.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

Hi Tammy, I copied this from the "Terms And Conditions" sub-section "Posting Submitted Content"

No Illegal, Infringing or Abusive Message Content: You understand and acknowledge that you are responsible for your Submitted Content, and agree not to post any content that is unlawful, harmful, tortious, defamatory, libelous, obscene, invasive of the privacy of another person, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, racist, infringing, pornographic, violent or otherwise objectionable or inappropriate as determined by OurStage.

The words obscene, pornographic, objectionable and inappropriate are there but they are determined by OurStage. So bringing this to their attention seems appropriate. I wouldn't think that the artist in question could know who reported them. Maybe Danny can give a definite answer. Ben

Tammy,
It's Ok to report abusive/offensive things as well as Off Topic. I think the adminstrators will know which "judge" reported, but our identity will not be shared with the offending parties, so it's completely safe to offer any helpful & honest feedback.

I think it's important to immediately report anything offensive or off topic, etc. Let's keep on doing the right thing. It helps keep the site cleaner and operating more effectively for the great majority of artists and fans.

Michael

Thanks Michael, I thought I should but I thought they could see. Someone said they were seen for doing that. I will have to find where I saw that and show ya.

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

I uploaded a few tracks last week, in different categories. So far, Please Emmalene has fared the best. Last I checked it was #6 on the folk channel.
Plenty of time for it to plummet though!

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

I've seen some unexpected shifts in some categories in the last 24 hours including some songs that came totally out of nowhere to the top of one channel when I hadn't seen then even in the running (i.e. the top 100) all month. That seems very bizarre. I am curious if it's temporary or if they will stay. Especially in the cases where songs aren't that good and still rocket to the top.

I think it's really going to take some time for genres to clear up, people to understand what belongs where and of course for Ourstage to grow and adjust to that growth. I think they are very responsive and don't shy away from tough questions. Do they do everything the way I (or anyone else for that matter) would do it? Of course not. And I do things with JPF that few agree with as well. In the end, they've gotta serve their needs so they can move forward as a company. There are always going to be times where compromises have to be made and things can't be perfect. But as long as their heart is in the right place, I think they'd continue to be a more and more important and useful tool for everyone.

Brian

Brian,
What about this point that Tammy is asking about judges giving feedback to OurStage? The "feedback" in this case is for reporting Off-topic songs or Offensive words in the lyrics during the judging process. I'm pretty sure it's anonymous and only for the administration to have to deal with, otherwise everyone would be afraid to volunteer their honest feedback/reporting on these issues.

I'm thinking there may be other sites that do let everyone see the comments, but that sounds more like open forums and not a quality control tool that's used strictly on an administration level.

I'm pretty sure we'll figure this out and put it to rest. If not, we may need to ask Daniel Palmer for some clarification.

Thanks,
Michael

I don't know. But I have no problem with people knowing I reported them being off topic or violating copyrights. A fact is a fact. Now I am sure that some people don't really understand the genres and may falsely report something, or they simply may not like something and report it. For example, certain genres often include profanity (Gangsta Rap for example) and it would be pointless to report that. I think a way to solve this issue in general is to have a standard that it has to be radio friendly. If you don't have that standard, then I can't see how you can reasonably exclude songs for profanity. Frankly. some songs use it well.. others don't. Let's not get into musical censorship.

The genre thing is more straight forward. Every type of song should have a home in a genre and right now they don't quite have enought to cover everything. In those cases, they have no choice but to be very broad in their definition and tolerance. I listened to the Top 10 Pop songs... 7 of the songs are pretty decent, but only 2 of them really qualify as "Pop" as we would define it. Most were some variation of Rock.

I called Daniel about another issue earlier but he's likely swamped with it being a Monday. He's usually in meetings all day and it often takes us a week to connect via phone because one of us is nearly always in a conference call or some meeting.

I think if you're making a solid judgement, then I am not sure what you have to worry about in reporting something. Often folks simply aren't educated in what is what and it may actually help them define their music. Musicians are nearly ALWAYS horrible at choosing what "genre" their music fits into. That's why we don't let artists choose in our awards.

Brian

I don't think you're going to plummet, Steve...#3 today with only two to go for the quarterfinals.

Now I totally plummeted to #54 after hanging in there in the top 20 for all of last week. So did some others that were solidly in the top ten all month. Folk is an interesting one to watch, as it has fewer entrants...it's easier to see the effects of voting.

Good luck! "Please Emmalene" is a rock solid song.

I feel your pain, Lyle.

Mine was in the 30's and did a slow climb to as high as 23. Then a couple of days ago I blinked and it fell like a rock to number 59

Hope it sticks too, Steve!

Scott

It is interesting to see the songs rise and fall. Mine was at 20 the other day....then it dropped to 98 and now it had been in the 40's a couple of days. I just try not to keep my hopes up. lol

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2
www.tammyedwards.com

This is the last day of voting before the quarter finals.. we have quite a few JPF members in striking range. If any of you are going to do more voting, do it before midnight Wednesday to get those votes in before the deadline.

Brian

Thanks Brian for your input about the "Offensive" and Off topic issue.

And yes, tomorrow is the last day before we head into the quarter finals. It's an exciting time and then we get to vote for the top 20 in each channel we dedice to participate in. There's some tough calls, but it gets even harder during the semi-finals.

By the time we get to the finals it's fairly easy to pick songs because we tend to choose from among our favorite genres/styles, but even then some surprises may pop up!

Michael

Well I guess my wife was right. She never liked the song, Hah.
The song is at 962 out of 1442 songs. It went to 645 but has been on a steady decline since. But only 28 listens, don't know how many battles.
Is there a way to know how many have judged it?
Of course I doubt anyone went looking for it so most of the plays were probably battles.

Man, I'm kinda bummed. I was in the top 2 or 3 all month and now I'm #22 in Newport Folk Fest channel. Drat!

Juliana,

Better get some folks voting. I don't understand why you've dropped so much either. Your song is clearly better than most of the top 10. Maybe there's still a chance to pop back up.

Bill: Those aren't battles. Your number of plays should be fairly the same as all the other songs.. probably off by no more than 1 or 2 compared to any others entered around the same time as yours. I think they go through rotations of voting.

I am happy about a few shifts and disappointed by a few others (such as Juliana who's been at the top all month until the last 24 hours). I can't see how a song can be doing so well all month and then suddenly drop so low (down into the 40's). It seems a little odd to me.

Brian

Hi Juliana, I voted for your song twice because it was better that the other both times. My song dropped from #22 in Newport to #177 in a few days. I don't get it either. I'll try again next month. Ben

I still maintain that people are voting draws when there is a song clearly better. This could be just laziness, different tastes in music or possibly tactical. My song A waltz made for two is dropping and to be honest a lot of the songs placed above it are not deserved IMO. I fail to see the need for a draw. There must be something to separate two songs whether it be the arrangemnent, performance, quality of recording or artwork. I think the draw option should be stopped. I deliberately voted some songs the same to test this out and was surprised that a huge percentage agreed.

If I hear two really bad songs, I usually vote draw. Why give either song a boost if they suck? I bet some feel the same about 2 songs that are really good. The odd thing that has happened in my judging is I rarely get one of the very best songs against one of the very worst songs. It's usually one of the best against another of the best or 2 of the worst.

Jim, are there any songs better than your UNDER your ranking? If so, then you have to say it balances out. I do know that a JPF member, Bob Sima, is all the way up to number 10 in the rankings and he only posted 2 days ago. It will be interesting to see if someone who enters that late can hold onto a top 20 spot. That would certainly suggest that you can enter any time and still make the top 20. I am the most surprised by the fall of Juliana's song so quickly after spending the whole month in the top 5. It seems odd that 1 day of voting could drop a top song all the way down into the 40's and that people suddenly and overwhemlingly started to vote against it, unless it's people trying to trash the top ranked songs on purpose.

Brian

Brian,

I think it also might be a case of people really pushing their fans to vote in the last day. I'm guessing that people are voting "draw" or not listening to most of the songs that aren't the one they are looking for, y'know?

Maybe I'll still make my way back up. Who knows.

(Also, I vote the same way if both songs are equally bad. Draw.)


I'm curious about the effects of voting "by far" rather than "slightly more"... does that count more somehow with ranking? I wonder how that's calculated?

I'm also wondering why I've heard some songs more than ten times in battles when there are 403 entries in this channel!

It looks like that happened to a number of us. In my case, my song didn't get any additional plays over the time it fell - so it moved because people were voting on other songs. Makes sense - it's a bowl of jello

Let me repeat myself that Ourstage is the best system I've seen. But I also think that any system can be gamed. I suspect with a few months experience, it would be possible to do enough experiments to figure out how to maximize your song's chances. I won't do so because that's not where my interests lie. But I do think it would be interesting to see what effect, if any, the following would have:

(1) Don't let people know where they stand. Or, maybe let them know where they stand but not where anyone else stands. This would eliminate the temptation to score songs above you lower than those below you.

(2) Do not allow to vote "same". I think Juliana has a point. It seems to me that if you rate your own song higher when it comes up (as rare as that may be) and rate every other battle equal, then you can maximize your song's rating.

(3) Require listens of 30 sec rather than 15. For people who enjoy listening to music, this isn't asking much. But it would probably lower the effect of gamers.

Again, none of us are privy to the algorithm they use. But there is one. And if there is one, it can be determined empirically.

Scott

I think this is a great idea. 15 seconds can tell you some, but not much, about the overall quality of a song.

Ironically I'm making those exact suggestions today to Daniel. (i.e. not having the Top 10 listed overall... but I have a twist on that.. because if you don't list the top 10, then what do people see when they want to hear good music.. I have an idea on that). The 30 seconds also may be effective in some ways, but would also likely drop the voting... it's clear that when you have 1000 or more songs in the running, they need a LOT of judging to cycle through the system and get credible results. We were on the phone most of yesterday it seemed discussion a lot of these issues and how to address them and we came up with a lot of ideas some of which will start being implemented next month. This is still a young company with a young model. They are tweaking it constantly to fix areas that can be improved.

I agree, it's impossible to have a "game proof" system. They certainly have one that CARES if they are gamed and is doing what they can to stop it. And that's far more than other sites with rankings and contests bother to do. They really WANT to find the best music.

Brian

Brian I am sorry to disagree with you yet again. I am not talking a few dozen places I am talking hundreds.
You judge for yourself. Either I am way off beam here or there is a problem with the voting system when same is allowed. I suspect that the draw, to which you freely admit voting for, has a lot to do with bad placings. Think about it, if a whole stack are voted same same same then a heelava lot of song places are wrong especially in a large entry pool. I wish people would be honest and say that one song even marginally was better or worse than another. Or do only the really good songs count for anything. This practice of voting the same makes a mockery of the minor places and whole concept of the site. Everybody wants to see how accurately there offering is compared to others. It can be a great learning tool. But not if people do not vote fairly.
(Edit)
In the last two hours my song has dropped over two hundred places. That defies any logic except PERHAPS that all of a sudden a vote cast as anything other than same has had a devastating effect. I checked the first 10 songs and there has been a few changes as well. Some of these songs are in no way deserving a top ten place regardless of what method of voting is used. My forty years in the business tells me that. I have judged nearly two thousand battles and have heard most if not all of the songs. I know the difference between good and bad.

I agree with all of Scott's suggestions, and I might add one more: enforce the minimum listening time even though you've heard it before.

Example, I judged a lot in folk, and since there were only a few hundred entries I eventually heard them all. But once you've done that, you can FLY through the judging, without having to listen to them at all. This allows the competitive types to quickly do what Juliana suggested, just judge "Same" over and over until you see the song you want to vote up. You could whip through dozens of match-ups in minutes. And Newport is another sparsely populated channel...maybe this is what's happening.

Still, I do see Brian's concern: as many votes as possible is a good thing.

I've offered some serious adjustments in a call today to Daniel which would address 100% of the concerns of everyone involved. I think this open discussion is very helpful and I am happy that the site is willing to adjust based on real world usage. When you build a model for something you base it on how things SHOULD work sometimes without really understanding how things WILL work. It's hard to build in the awareness of cheating and intentionally bad judging to a system that is based on integrity and doing the right thing. But my years in the business and dealing with musicians in the US and Europe has taught me that there's a lot of desire to succeed which will allow folks to sell out their own integrity in order to win something or do well. Ourstage could be the perfect system ever, AS IS, IF and only IF people were honest. Then by the end of voting the songs that most people liked the best would succeed. But we all know that folks simply want to win regardless of how good their song is and just as much, don't want others to do well. So I have offered up a solution to that problem and a way to improve the enjoyment of the voting system AND to also bring more positive attention to the songs which win in a given month. We'll see what they think of those ideas. (I think Daniel is pitching them to the CEO as we speak).

The best part of all of this is that it's costing our folks nothing to participate and we're all finding cool new music and discovering artists we didn't know before. In addition, if you're smart, you're making direct contact (and personal, not generic form letters) to those who seem compatible with your own artistic visions. I think when you folks find an artist you really like, you should invite them to join us back here as well. Let's expand the network. We're bringing our people there, let's bring some of them back to us!

Brian

That's very cool Brian.

Life is good when we can all be a part of something like this. It's especially nice to see any sort of organization actually respond to...well, anything.

I'll try to pull some people in the fold. There are a lot of good musicians out there.

Yeah, very cool!

It would be fantastic if there was someplace one could go to get a realistic idea of where his/her music stood relative to that of other independent musicians. Ourstage comes closer than most and anything they can do to bring it even closer to this ideal (recognizing that it can probably never be fully met) is a good thing.

Thanks!
Scott

Wow, that's great Brian & Daniel!
Glad to hear that OurStage (which is already very good) still has room for improvement. I think that's a great attitude and will likely help bring even more success and respect over time.

Re: The top 10 - 20 songs that are at the top of each channel during each live contest month could be hidden & replaced by the top 20 (in same channel) from the previous month whose contest has already closed. That way people can always hear the best songs while not having it sway their current voting for the next month's winners.

Just my first impressions without having fully analyzed the rest of the implications, but something like that might work.

Michael

All kinds of JPF members in the top 20 and in the running for 5K still in a bunch of categories. Very cool!

Brian

Has anyone else experienced hearing the same song 20 or more times and never hearing others??

After 200 battles, one of my fans *never* heard one of my songs but said he heard others many, many times. How does that work?

Juliana,

I literally voted over 5000 times in the Newport Channel (we're in a holding pattern on the awards stuff, so I spent the day on conference calls and waiting for follow ups voting). Your songs came up quite a bit and certainly the appropriate number of times as any other. I think there's clearly some fan voting that is causing this.. people are intentionally trashing the top songs in order to move them down to give their favorites a better shot. So the fact you spent all month on top, you had a giant target on you. I did notice you finished in the Top 20 in another category. So focus on that and perhaps you'll win that channel. At this point, there's 190 possible votes in each category which if you finish, will match all the songs against all the others in the running. I've finished 2 categories already. In the Newport Channel, the entire top 6 are JPF members.

Brian

That's awesome.

Now that I think about it, I think some of the top 20 have probably been in the category for awhile, too. I re-entered for May, so we'll see what happens.


I'm really enjoying the judging, too. I've already gotten in touch with some great musicians about playing together. So it's not like it's all for nothing!

It's a fun way to pass the time at my day job while I work on the computer.

I can't access the judging while I'm at work .. IT'S KILLING ME!!
Joanne

My boyfriend's work recently blocked Pandora Radio (Why? NO idea.) so he's dying, too.

Personally, I can't work in silence.

"Better get some folks voting..."

I've not really investigated the ins and outs of the site and its workings, but one of the reasons that I even uploaded anything was that I was under the impression that the system didn't reward the whole "get all of your friends to vote for you" thing, since I'm not really interested in doing that. Am I wrong?

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

Post deleted by Steve Robinson

The system, if people vote fair, will always reward the best songs. The trouble is that humans will do anything they can to cheat anything. I offered some new ideas being discussed that if adopted, will further protect people from fraudulent (i.e. intentionally not picking the best songs) voting from working. These folks already do more to TRY and keep it honest.. but you have to stay ahead of the scammers and the idiots. It's a sad reality. But if you have fans who like your work, they should vote (and vote honestly) and it will likely help you out because any system of any type will obviously track people's preferences and if your fans are voting for you, you'll do better. The hope is that the other great songs ALSO do better.

I think if there were 10,000,000 voters in every channel.. then the fan thing would have little impact. But the site is new and growing and so I don't think it hurts to get fans involved. Hopefully they'll ALSO find other cool music they like and become fans of other artists. That's really the end point of all this. Finding great new music. I don't love ALL the songs in the top 20 or even agree with who made it, but I always find new songs I really like when I vote from artists I'd never heard of. Those are GREAT people for you all to network with and by voting, you'll hear them.

So, get out the vote.. for many good reasons.

Brian

By the way, I can't get the Ourstage site to load.. anyone else having trouble?

Brian

It's OK here, but someone else I know is having trouble. Probably a high server load.

Jillian and myself made it into the quarterfinals again with a co-write, "Red July", in New Age/World. We're very happy! I have a track in the Electronic genre as well, "Throwdown", which I think is really accessible.

Yes I have voted on nearly 2000 battles in rock and singer/songwriter and keep getting the same songs over and over. Some songs I have not heard YET. I make a habit of checking positions after I vote just to see their relevance to each other and whether I agree with the positions. There does not seem to be any logical reason for the same songs cropping up. I may add that some songs are way out of position IMO and are grossly over or under rated sometimes by several hundred places.

Here's what Brian Bergeron at MySpace is asking his "loyal" fans to do at OurStage:


Sort of a shame.

Kevin

Yep
If you can't win on talent win on a scam. Cool. Just the kind of folks we all want our kids to look up to. A great roll model.

Of course you could turn that around and spend the time to vote AGAINST him

If this is really happening they should be banned for life. They should start a campaign to expose cheaters on the Internet so everyone knows who they are. How would that be for a "career changing opportunity".

Ben: I don't know about a lifetime ban, but I think a disqualification for this month is definitely in order. While it doesn't seem to be against any actual rules (yet), it does destroy the spirit of what OurStage is trying to do.

Although, if he did get banned for life, I guess you can say he deserves it.

Kevin

I haven't researched any of the others but I would bet he is not the only one doing this. Word gets around pretty fast.

This is a great case for eliminating the "Same" option.

I understand that sometimes you can't decide if one is better than the other...but if you HAD to, you could. And that would take away the effectiveness of this cheap ploy.

I still don't understand the 15 second ruling.
If you are truly interested in judging I would think more time would be required. Some songs the intro lasts longer than 15 seconds.
I would think in the semi or quarter finals, even the finals more time should be spent.

Bill,

I agree. I have judged about 1800 pairs of songs. Unless it is really bad, I always listen to at least 30 seconds; often skipping ahead, afterwards, to the 2:00 and 2:30 spots, approximately. Sometimes a chorus or bridge can really add something to an otherwise decent but not special song. And, as has been poiinted out, most intros are close to 15 seconds...many much longer.

But, if the song gives me absolutely nothing but intro, or even less, for more than 30 seconds, I am done with it. Just my take.

Al

It's really terrible that anyone would ask their fans to "game" like that. I have asked people I know to vote, but I only ask them to vote honestly - if they like other songs besides mine, they should vote on them too.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt for me to ask the same of people here. I have a song "Throwdown" in the Electronic category, as well as a collab with my girlfriend Jill Goldin in New Age/World. You might not normally judge these categories, but if you enjoy music from either of us, I'd appreciate if you dropped in and did a few rounds (there are only 45 total). Plus there's really some great stuff in both categories, such as Stephen Brannen's "Lord of the Dance" in New Age/World.

I have to admit all this talk of cheating and the exposure of an actual case has turned me off from voting.
I'm a lousy judge of music anyways.

I agree Al, 30 seconds of intro is to much. But it seems some Genres that is acceptable.

There have been a few that I knew within 15 seconds that I did not like what I was hearing.

Andrew
There is nothing wrong with promotion. It is your job to promote yourself. It is expected.
Had you not mentioned it I would not have known you were there. So go ahead, Promote as much as you want. that's a good thing.

But asking someone to cheat for you....well...that's just wrong.

The intro to "Hotel California" is pretty long. But it's compelling and fully engages the listener. The boring two-chord lick that plays 8 times, on the other hand...

I am getting a lot of emails about this. Please hold off a bit and give the Ourstage folks a chance to investigate this and react accordingly. No matter how honest of a system you try to create, people sadly will always seek to get an unfair advantage, whether it's Major League Baseball (Steroids), the National Football League (The Patriots Spygate), NASCAR (Some Toyota teams trying to cheat), The NYC Marathon (where they took the subway most of the race) or any others. (Politics anyone?). Daniel is aware of this issue and I've made some suggestions I think could dramatically limit the impact of this type of effort. If the site had millions of voters, even this type of cheating would be fruitless, but remember, Ourstage is a new and growing site. You can build a great system but you can't predict how people will try to cheat it. All you can do is react to it when it happens and do the right thing then.

Let's give them a chance to fix this.

Brian

Brian Bergeron is at #2 in the Newport category!

Edit: It seems to be a pretty decent song, though.

Kevin

This guy Bergeron should be disqualified if it can be proved he asked people to deliberately vote songs down that were above his position. This will just encourage other people to do the same.

I am totally in favour of not knowing a songs position till after the contest to prevent this sort of thing. I also think voting songs as the same should be abandoned. In fact I do not agree with degrees either it should be a straight choice of which song is better one or the other. This would remove temptation to cheat and get fairer results. I know for a fact that a lot of people are voting same to lump many songs together so that a song voted far better jumps many places.

Big Jim: Go back to page 2 on this thread where I posted Brian's blog at Myspace. In it he says:

If he wins, it will be a major black eye for OurStage.

Kevin

Karma is a funny thing.. quite often those that have bad karma find it catches up to them before the end. Read into that anything you want. = )

Within the stuff presented to solve this problem was to stop showing the rankings. The rankings are an important part of their site, so of course they're hesitant to do so. They, for good reasons, feel that it keeps people coming back to check in on the stats. So I offered a solution for that as well as a few other things I think will improve the experience for voters and contestants alike. But we're musicians.. not tech people. We can't expect the tech minded folks to relent as quickly as we'd like. But I know Daniel is working very hard to get these points across. Feel free to email him with your thoughts as well.

In addition.. feel free to let the person in question know what you think of his attempt to cheat. (At least, that's how I see it anyway). If he realizes people are on to him, perhaps he'll see the light.

And remember... Karma.. Karma.. Karma...

Brian

Well I just checked his profile and no one is leaving any comments about it. Not sure what that means. Maybe it's not as big a deal as we think since no one has told him how they feel.
I figure there is probably a lot of other folks doing the same thing.

I think you are right Brian. Humans are basically a deceitful species.

Bill,

What profile are you looking at?

His Profile on Ourstage.

http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/brianbergeronandthelategreats

At least it looks like you can leave comments there. If you click a persons name under the song avatar it takes you to their profile.

If you tell people how they rank without telling them how anyone else ranked you could have the best of both worlds. If I only know how I'm ranked, it really doesn't help me game the system.

This guy's behavior is a little disappointing but hardly surprising. I suspect many others do the same kind of thing.

Scott

Andrew Aversa (my boyfriend!) is currently #2 in Electronic with "Throwdown," and our collaboration "Red July" is sitting at #1 in New Age/World at the moment. Michael Borges' collaboration is in #2 there! Glad to see so many people getting involved.

There are still some kinks in the system, of course, but I am sure OurStage will continue to improve. I was admittedly surprised at some of the tracks that made it to the Top 10 in New Age/World this month above so many others that seemed more deserving...

HI Jillian,

Nice to see you on the site and congrats on your win last month. It's clear that some really weak artists have figured out how to make the top 10. It's unfortunate because in every category there's far more deserving songs than many in the top 10's. Let's hope that at least some deserving songs win their categories and a truly deserving song wins the 5K. If they ever have a really weak winner, that will be a signal that there's a big problem that has to be addressed. Let's see how it plays out.

Brian

Hi Kevin I read your post and that is what made me respond by saying the guy should be DQd. This sort of behavious should not be tolerated. If steps are taken against him it would be a major black eye for him. I was trying to start a thread with a poll to see how others felt but could not get the poll thing to work. I think a lot of people are unhappy with the voting system and feel it should be altered. This latest BLATANT CHEATING has added fuel to the fire. Something has to be done otherwise people will lose faith in what has been up till now a great site.

Big Jim: He's at #1 right now in the Newport category.

Kevin

We've uncovered the same issue with another contestant. Nicole Berke is doing the same thing and instructing her fans to as well.

As for letting these folks know that everyone knows they are cheating, you should all send them a note to that effect.

Brian

Nicole -- that's too bad. I liked her song and I think she won one of the few battles I have been able to do this month. I think OurStage needs to place a front page comment that they have discovered that "gaming" is going on and that is giving a select few an unfair advantage.

I was wondering if OurStage could be sued if they suspended the folks that are doing this (since, technically it might not be "against the stated rules"). However, it looks like Ourstage says (in the terms and conditions) that they have the right to block/terminate anyone for any reason.

I did send a comment to Daniel about the "cheating", but I haven't commented directly to Brian B or Nicole. I probably won't.

Kevin

If they cheat and win, it will leave a bad taste in their mouths and every-one's mouth that know they cheated. The prize money is not that great and the prestige will be tainted. If they win fairly in the future, people will think they cheated again.

Kevin
"I did send a comment to Daniel about the "cheating", but I haven't commented directly to Brian B or Nicole. I probably won't."

You are correct not to comment directly. It is not up to us to start wars or get involved with individuals it is up to Ourstage to sort this matter out. The ball is in their court.

Everett
I am sorry but I don't believe that. Cheaters don't care. If they did they would not cheat in the first place.

Ahhhh! yes,
Not my job. Lets all sit back and let the Government (Ourstage) handle the problem
LOL

Bill You know me by now. If I think somebody is wrong I tell them. However it is up to Ourstage to take official action on this one. I am sure they know about the problem and comments from us to individual cheats will do little to stop the practice. It has to be nipped in the bud before it escalates.

This is precisely why I never mentioned this contest to anyone via my newsletter. I hated the idea of it being just another "Vote for me !" fest where people would go to the site and vote for me regardless of how my song stacked up to others. So silly.

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

Post deleted by Steve Robinson

Bill,

I rarely disagree with you, 'cept maybe on politics...rarely, however, on issues of music. But, this time, I'm kinda on the other side...with Big Jim. OurStage is their show. It is up to them to decide how to handle it...if they do at all. Since it is their site, their investment, they have to make the decisions. But, we as participants have the option to NOT participate if we are unhappy with the way it is handled....or NOT handled. In this case, our inaction (no future participation) would be far more effective than ranting to them. They are aware, so, as Big Jim said, the ball is in their court.

I am going to initially give OurStage the benefit of the doubt and see how it is handled. It cannot be done instantly. In fact, I am not sure if there is anything they can do for this month at all. But, if they do not address the issue before next month's contest, then that is a much different story. I would then be much less willing to participate.

Just my thoughts. Take care, Bill. Hello to Sylvia.

Al

Everett,

Bill is right. Those who choose to cheat rarely have any guilt aboutit. It is noble to believe that all men realize their transgressions and will atone for them. But, unfortunately, that is not real life. Win at any cost is very prevalent in today's society. But, I wish you were right!

Al

I had something else to bring up that I think could be improved on OurStage, actually. What do you guys think? Brian, maybe you would consider bringing this up with the staff?

I'd really like to see a public list of the people who are getting selected for all those various industry prizes offered each month. I think anyone making it to the finals would really benefit from seeing that information! Neither Andrew nor I were contacted despite having been in the top 3 for March. I'm not complaining, but it does seem as though the sponsor companies could theoretically get away with not following through.

Along with my cash prize last month, I was supposed to receive a wardrobe of clothing from a company called BC Ethic. When I hadn't heard from them after a couple weeks, I decided to give them a call myself to see what was up (also because they only do male clothing, and I'm a gal). The people I spoke with over the phone hadn't even heard of OurStage, and they connected me to an answering machine. I left a message to the company CEO, but he never returned my call.

Granted, I DID eventually tell Gloria Utzig from OurStage that I would rather defer the wardrobe prize to a high-ranking band that could actually get use out of it, since I don't wear grungy mens clothes. But I still never heard back, so it just seems a little fishy that they never got in touch...

Also, on a side note, Andrew still hasn't received his gift card for winning the Techno channel prize. Maybe things are just very slow?

Steve,

I think that is the eventual goal of the site. It's just going to take some time to determine how to deal with people being dishonest. Someone will always look for the short cut to success, especially those short on talent and long on desperation. The good news is that clearly the system is working more often than not as you made the top 10 (and it was well deserved). I found 4 very strong songs in your category, 2 middling songs and 4 weak songs. I think as time progresses (and the quality of music uploaded improves) we'll find that the top 10 songs are all worth of attention and in those cases, it's hard to find fault with any song that would win. I think the 4 strongest songs in your category would all be respectable winners. And when there's something out there that is bringing attention to great music that otherwise might not get noticed, that is far more positive than the actions of a few cheaters. If all the artists involved encouraged their fans to vote, the results would balance out and even the cheaters eventually couldn't succeed because all the other fans who would be voting honestly would put them in their deserved spot.

We do our awards based on the idea that we're bringing attention and recognition to a lot of deserving songs. Do we make mistakes? Sure. But in the end, if our nominees are all songs that deserve attention, then we've won the war we're fighting. It's very difficult to get unbiased praise these days. Magazine reviews are fixed and fake, (like the famous review of the latest Black Crowes album done before the reviewer at a large magazine had even heard it), Radio play is still paid for in a variety of ways and TV is a whole other world filled with back door deals and favoritism and schemes. Our awards I think are the best and most honest attempt to recognize music for no gain to those doing the work. Ourstage, in the context of a company trying to eventually make a profit, is clearly doing the right thing to try and do the same work. (I think Pandora net radio also is trying to do the right thing by the way).

We need to keep the honest people involved long enough to overcome the actions by a few cheaters. It's rare to find a company so responsive to the comments and opinions of their users (try getting MySpace to change something.. ha!). Let's all work together to help them get it all right because if they succeed, we all win.

In the meantime, we still have a lot of JPF members in the running in a lot of categories.. let's hope the most deserving ones win!

Brian

We are going to address the delete issue. We know its important. Won't get into all the reasons we aren't comparable with those other sites in terms of that functionality, but suffice to say, it's something we plan on addressing.

No Tammy. Nobody knows but us who is reporting material. We encourage our community to help police the content. So much to review!

Good folks of JPF!

I want to respond to every post, but I didn't know about this thread in time and it will take me WAY to long to do so and I've run out of my energizer bunny batteries. Finals week, as you all know. But let me try my best to make this as short and sweet as possible.

When humans are involved there is always risk for poor judgement. Either apathy, or otherwise. That said, we do a pretty good job, best I've seen, of real-time online ranking of content in a fan driven model. Sure you can argue there is better stuff that didn't make it into quarters, but that's a reflection of who is doing the judging. More people judge, more people judge by their taste, the results may very well change. Some changes you'd agree with, some, perhaps not so much. Its as varied as the people's tastes and connections using the site.

The bottom line is we are always looking to improve and make our service to emerging artists better. That mission doesn't change. That's why we feel so grateful to be a part of JPF, a community that shares our values. But as we evolve its important to remember to support what we do and continue to suggest ways we can improve.

Also, remember, that yes, the cash prize is nice, but LOTS of opportunities, including festival slots, AOL promotion etc. go to high-ranking artists. And also the industry is starting to use us as a litmus test and evaluation tool. Check out some of our recent artist success stories: http://www.ourstage.com/go/artistsuccessstories

The choice is ours. Its up to us to embrace the platform and support it through its various evolutions and make OurStage a viable destination for advancing careers of emerging musicians. So yes, try to win your channel. But try to encourage your fans to be honest about ranking other artists as well. And yes, some will not. And yes, we will always look to improve upon what we do. But look at the positive too. Its free. Its making a difference in people's lives. You can get feedback on your songs (win or not). Its another way to network. Its another outlet to share your passion. And mine. Hey, a wise man once said: "We're all in this together".

On to the finals.

-Daniel

You make some good points Brian (as you so often do). I'm still not interested in campaigning for votes, but the bottom line is that my song "Please Emmalene" has had over a thousand listens so far. That's a thousand more than it would have had, had I not taken the few minutes to upload it; I have to be happy with that.

You're also right about them being responsive to feedback and suggestions--Danny certainly seems to be on the ball in that respect. One suggestion I might have is that maybe news updates concerning the voting (who made the next round in all of the categories etc) might be more prominently displayed on the home page. This may be a Luddite-like oversight on my part, but when I visit, I never know who actually made the next round. I do see the blurb announcing that the Finals voting ends tonight, but I don't see an announcement about who made it there. It's all a little vague to me. Like I said, this might just be that I haven't investigated enough to become comfortable with the workings of the site. I'll have to study more.

I'll leave the last word to you Brian...

" Let's all work together to help them get it all right because if they succeed, we all win. "

Cheers to that!
All the best then,
Steve R.

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

Great suggestion on promoting a link to the music finals on the homepage. We'll look into that. Also, I really like this quote from an OurStage artist that makes the points I made above even more succinctly.

"We do not upload our songs to this or any other independant music site to compete for prizes, rather we upload our music with the hope that it will be heard and perhaps gain some fans. Well, during April our song received nearly 3,000 plays and was favorited 32 times!!! That is more plays than all of our uploaded songs combined since we started uploading to OurStage nearly a year ago! NOW THAT'S EXCITING!!"

So, in regard to someone posting guidelines for gaming the system, is Ourstage taking any action on that, or simply letting it go?

Yeah and what about changing the voting system to disepense with "same" is this ever going to be implemented?

Our T&C's cover this I believe. Users of OurStage have agreed to refrain from the following behavior, else risk at our sole discretion, the deactivation, suspension, or termination of our services:

"Interference: Interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the OurStage site, communication between users on the site, or any other activities conducted on the site, including the ranking of entries while judging."

Individuals of course have the free will to vote as they so choose. And they did so in our April contest as in the previous contests. Again, we offer the most fair, free, fan-driven, realtime ranking system on the Web. As with any system, it will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our member community.

Its a interesting suggestion. The converse of that is even more volatility in the rankings for those judging with a specific agenda. That said, we do, and will continue to, evaluate ways to enhance our services and improve the user experience whenever possible.

Looks like they are letting it go
but the truth, we'll never know
I guess privacy laws and lawsuits
will stop us from learning
if someone got the boot

As for me, it doesn't really matter
my songs don't make anyone's heart go pitter-patter
I guess I just take the advice I heard
and be happy when my songs
make it consistently to the top third

Kevin

Danny, are you saying that item #4 above is not "Interference with the proper working of the Ourstage site"?

Folks, there are a lot of things a company can/cannot say, or will/will not do in a public way. Anything posted as a comment or declaration on this web page can and will be used against them in litigation, if that were ever to arise.

Remember Brian saying a little something without really saying it? Something about karma?

How about we take the longer view and see what happens? I wouldn't expect them to jump like a cat on anything we point to.

Maybe so Mark but there are unanswered questions and they may risk losing membership and angering the ones who play by the rules. Let's see what happens next month. Ben

If I'm not mistaken, Brian Bergeron didn't make it into the finals, so what does it matter? In my time at OurStage I have seen two instances of deliberate cheating/gaming. In both cases, OS took action - whether it was an automatic system detection or something manual, I'm not sure, but in any case the songs that were benefiting from these activities did not get far.

Hey Daniel, did you see this post I made before? I think this would be something that could be easily put in place, and really beneficial - especially to the finalists!

Hey folks,

The question could not come at a better time.
Currently, my song 'Stumble & Fall' won 1st (April) in Americana last night and has been in the top ten all day! I don't know what will happen with the 2 and a half hours left, but I can only hope that some real nice folks might pitch in here and there to get my song to the top. Thanks JPF for everything you do!
Dan

Hey Dan,

Wow! Didn't realize you were a member of the boards here. I guess I didn't put 2 and 2 together. I really liked your song - best of luck to you. I've been voting positively for it.

Dan, your song was a rollercoaster ride this month, wasn't it? I was really happy to see it prevail, and it deserves to be right up there. Good luck! -Mark

Yes. And we're working on something like that. We done so much its taking some time to compile.:)

Oooh, yay! Looking forward to it.

Awesome month. I'm really happy for my friend sgx, who won... another member of the OverClocked ReMix community taking first!

It appears another JPF member has won the 5K prize again on Ourstage. Electronic Winner SGX won the overall prize. I sent him a note and asked him to join us here, so hopefully we can learn more about him. I think it's the song that edged out Andrew Aversa's song in that category, so at least Andrew got beaten by the overall winner... if you're going to lose, might as well lose to the champion.

So now a new month starts. I spent a lot of time on the Ourstage site while waiting to move forward on our awards judging. But now that we're in full gear on that, I doubt I'll have as much time to check it out. So hopefully all of you will keep me (and everyone else) up to date about who is doing well.

We had a LOT of JPF members do well last month. I expect that trend to continue.

Brian

Mark,

Yeah.. Karma can be a friend or a real bitch. Looks like the right thing happened in this case.

Brian

My song Coactive ranks 1st in April finals.


...


Woo!


Hi! Brian sent me a very nice email congratulating me and suggested that I join the forums. So I came here and remembered that I already had a login from a while ago!

Hope you enjoyed Coactive!

Good to see you on for the first time since 2006! Hopefully you'll come and hang out. Congrats again on the win!

Brian

Congrats sgx! Very cool!

Scott

Congrats to all the winners. I think the site is going to be a good one.

Congratulations. Thanks for dropping in. Continued success!

Al

Congrats hope to see you active on the boards.

To Andrew and Marks posts earlier,

Thanks for the ongoing support and yes, it was an unexpected roller coaster ride, but a very positive one at that. I had know idea that I was even ranking until I got the quarter finals email from Ourstage. The most exciting part of it for me, was to see 10,000 views/listens/votes happen to the song in one day. We ended up taking 9th in the Music Finals! Thanks JPF.

Congratulations on the big win!
What a ride it was.
Dan

DIdn't know SGX was a JPF member too! Wow...what a lot of talent here. I was judging in the quarter-finals and SGXs track was one that I didn't want to stop listening to and thought was really a stand out. I'm pleased that it won the big Grand Prize. Not only is well deserving, but it shows that the fans DO get it right. And hats off to all JPF members in the finals and otherwise. You're helping to expand the JPF mission by supporting OurStage. Also, congrats to the JPF organization for creating such a great community of talented artists.

O.K, I'm taking the plunge and joining this thing monday. Being the simpleton that I am, anyone want to walk me through the process? I want to enter the Americana and Singer/Songwriter catagories.

Put thumb on little button. Move the little arrow on the screen til it hovers over OurStage.com (upper right hand corner of this page).
Click the little button.
Follow instructions. That's how I did it.

Hi Bob

I posted a song called "Indy" which won 3rd place for New Age/World channel in April! This song was done in collaboration with Martin Stoyonov. My contribution was some arranging, production and recording the violin parts. The song was entered on April 1st, so it did pretty well for only 30 days of contest exposure!

You can see our listing here:
http://www.ourstage.com/bestof/25-world
Look under April 2008, 3rd song down. Here's the lineup:
1. Red July by: Zircon/Jillian Goldin)
2. Cibola by: Red July
3. Indy by: Martin Stoyanov & Michael Borges

Most of the songs in the top 10 were all pretty good, for example I also enjoyed: Awakening, Lord of the Dance, Viva and Pure and divine.

Currently I'm working on some new projects to post later this month. One will go in the Cover songs channel and the other probably in the New Age/World channel.

Andrew,
Good deal... please send my congrats to your SGX friend Danny Adler! I also sent him a message at OurStage and would like to see if he'll be doing his own music publishing and licensing. I'm sure he'll do fine!

Michael

To my great surprise my song "Sour in the belly" is #4 in the indie
rock Channel!We will see how it bounces around.I had another song go as high as #9 and now it is at #509 or something.I don't really get how it works.

I don't ask fans to vote for me.If they ask,I tell them to vote for the best song.

Good Luck to everyone in May!

Dave,

Early in the month especially stuff will bounce all over the place. And even late, you'll see big swings. As more and more voters and artists get on board, I think you'll see slightly more gradual changes up and down. When there's less voters, a vote makes a much bigger difference and a string of 10 votes even more. So a patch of good or bad results for your song makes a big swing.

I think as time goes folks will learn to use it for more than just the ranking or prizes, but to test out new songs, to decide which songs might be more popular for an album project, and to gauge if they've reached a general audience or not. It's clear that a better song may not always win.. but a better song won't often finish near the entire bottom of everything either.

Brian

Good luck Dave, There's no problem with asking fans to vote for you. Just don't ask them to vote down higher ranking songs to help push you up.
If you have a large fan base and they all register to vote, they will most likely have to spend a lot of time on the site just to find your song. Once they do and they think that your song is better than the other they can vote for you.
Once they find you, they can do anything they want as far as the degree of favor. But never instruct them in how to vote in degrees ex: Same, More etc. Ben

I just tried to enter a song. When I clicked on the enter button a message said that as I already had an entry in that category I could not enter another one as you can only enter one song in each category. That is fine and I can accept that. Meanwhile whilst judging I come across countless people with multiple entries in the same category. WHAT GIVES? Is it one rule for all or do some have different rules.

One other thing puzzles the hell out of me I vote a song as being better than another and over 60% agree. When I check the respective positions the "better" song that most people agree with is way below the "poorer" song and remains there. This has happened a number of times. If a song is voted better than another by the majority then why do the positions not alter accordingly?

Well Jim

I don't get it, yesterday it said my song was ranking at 273, and today it's saying it's ranking 452 in country. I think I will look into entering my songs over here in Australian competitions.

Confusing!

Michele

Michele: It's early in the month, I wouldn't get concerned about its position right now. Plus I wouldn't get down if it doesn't get the rating it deserves. It's a good song -- just let it ride.

Kevin

Michele.... Kevin is right there is a lot of jumping about early in the month and your song should settle to its proper position. However I feel that there is a big discrepancy in some of the places going by last months final positions. As I already stated some of the positions do not IMO reflect the concensus of popularity. There is a glitch in there somewhere that needs sorting. Going by my judging opinions which in the main agree with most people I fail to see how some songs are way below others or way above for that matter.

Thanks Kevin & Jim,

I just a bit confused by it all, but I am only learning, and maybe I am just not understanding it. I don't understand about the Banners & all the other things on my profile page, also the box where it says, can you do better, I've not been ranked, what does that mean? Told you I'm confused. Any way I am not really worried about where it comes now, cause I know it is a good song.

What I couldn't understand how it could go from 273 yesterday, down to 452 today, maybe I was reading it wrong, I don't know, that's what got me confused. Hmmm! Golly gosh!

I'm cool about it!

I'm off to bed now, it's my cute hubbies birthday, so I am going to spend some quality time with him. So Goodnight, and thanks for the vote of confidence.

Bye!

Michele

Big Jim
I think that little banner that pops up and says how many people agree with you might be a little misleading.
It may be more specific than that. It might be tied to which button you clicked Same..Slightly more...More....By Far

If you pick "slightly more" and 70 percent agree but the other song got "By far" and only 30 percent agree the algorithm may place the "by far' song higher even though it had less people agree.
You see 70 percent agree. That may only mean agree "Slightly more"
My guess is the algorithm that computes the standings is a lot more complex than we think. I wonder if a simpler "winner/loser" system would be easier.

Michelle
I would not worry too much about this.
My song went from 120 to 480 in less than 24 hours and only 6 people listened to it. The only thing I can figure is if half the people like it and half the people don't it must have been the don't like it bunch that heard it.
Cause I like the song. HA.... So there.

I have never visited the site but I have a question. Does a rise up the "charts" there have any relationship to the quality of the song or songwriting? Soundclick seems just as likely to push a bad song to the top as a good or mediocre one.

Sam
I don't think there is any comparison to soundclick. It is pretty easy to manipulate the charts there. I have never paid much attention to them.

Ourstage seems to be more difficult to manipulate it. You do not choose what you listen to when judging.
Judging is what determines the charts. It is random.
If you have 1000 songs in a genre you would have to spend a lot of time waiting for a specific song to come up to judge because you have no control over the playlist.

I have a song called "These old Shoes" in the Newport contest. There is another song with the same title in the same contest. The other is Bluesy and mine is more upbeat. I like the other song as well. Would love to see them paired. Ben

Bill I think you may be right I have said that the same should be abolished. It is a cop out and can be used easier to manipulate results. I think there should just be a straight choice as to which one you think is better. Degrees should not come into the reckoning.
Here is a typical example to illustrate why. Take two bad songs but one is miles better than the other. Why should you be allowed to place then the same. Brian A Whitney freely admits that he votes this way. Is this fair on the song that is better AND how much is this song's RIGHTFUL place devalued by?
I have done a lot of judgements and can say with confidence that songs voted by the majority according to the stats as better are often placed well below. If 70% or more vote the same as you I would hope that the song actually places higher.

I think their logic is that if someone is not going to vote honest in the first place, it's better to have a tie where neither song gets an advantage than have them randomly pick a dishonest winner and damage the better song while helping the worse song.

WHY DO OUR SONGS JUMP SO MUCH?

Here's what I think. In these first days, when there are 1000 or so songs...remember that a great deal of these songs have not yet been judged, so they likely are placed in the order they were posted. Your song at #200 goes up against a song at #800, and if #800 wins...they're both gonna jump...drastically!

But after a couple weeks, things begin to stabilize more, and by the end of the month, I think it all gets very close to an accurate picture of public opinion.

I see your point BUT if someone is going to be dishonest then they can go for the worst song all the time. Either way it makes little difference if they are gonna cheat they need a lot of people working for them. I think it would be fairer to honest judging if there is only a vote for which song is preferred. The temptation for voting same all the time is removed.

I think you can easily vote honestly for a tie. I do it. There are clearly really bad songs that have no advantage over the other. If two songs are sung badly, recorded badly and written badly, I don't feel I owe either of them the excruciating time it would take to find some minor reason to vote one over the other. Now, if they gave me an option to say "both songs are terrible and don't deserve positive feedback" then I'd check that.. but I think that might hurt some feelings.. so I vote tie instead.

I don't think someone who spends little or no effort on their craft and offers nothing of value in their work deserves special attention. I'd rather spend that same time on songs that show some merit and deserve legit boosts.

If you were voting on the best painter and you had 2 people who turned in blank canvases, or two people who turned in canvases they'd simply dumped a can of paint on with no other effort, it would be pointless to say "that blank is better than that blank" or "that dumped can of paint is better than that dumped can of paint." The same goes for music. If it were photos and both photographers had not bothered to take off the lens cap, I don't think I owe it to them to determine which black photo was better.

Really bad music doesn't deserve people's time. Music with some effort and demonstrated craft deserves that time. It's not like there's a shortage of deserving music.. why spend a lot of time on the stuff that hasn't deserved it. When I first started writing songs before I knew anything about craft or writing or recording something well, I don't think that work deserved equal attention with excellent recordings where people have worked hard to improve their talent and demonstrate it via the recording and writing.

So I guess we'll have to differ on this. But I think forcing me to pick a winner among two very bad songs would result in my clicking one slightly better over the other in a fairly random fashion.

Brian

You know Brian you are onto something there. I do not think we differ on opinion, maybe just about the degree of what is not very good or what really sucks. I am of the opinion that if somebody is really bad then they deserve to be told it is really bad and to some extent know how it compares to other bad stuff. I think it is a valuable part of their music education. As somebody once said how can you fix it if you do not know it is broken.
I think all people of all levels should be encouraged but there are some people who should think first and actually listen to what they are going to enter before they do. I have heard some hum dingers. I often wonder is it a bad joke or are they really that bad and just do not realise it. I listened to ninteen seconds that is all it lasted of some blond drunk bimbo saying, not singing happy birthday la la la several times over. I reported it as off topic and offensive. I said it offends and is an insult to anyone who appreciates music in any shape or form. My biggest bug is the people who send in an unlistenable recording of what is actually a fairly good song and performance.
All that effort gone to waste. Perhaps with the Ourstage tie in some of these people will join JPF and better themselves.

I am sure there must be something that makes one entry choosable over the other even if it is ONLY the photo or artwork. As I say pity some people spend more time on photos or artwork than on writing performing and recording a song. LOL

Nice chatting we should do it more often. I would really like to meet you and shake your hand. Maybe if I win the lottery or sell one of my songs to Rod Stewart. LOL

Jim,

Sadly, I suspect a lot of people DO vote for (or even against) the photo supplied. That's a pretty terrible reason as it's not relevent to the song or recording. It's exactly what labels learned long ago.. i.e. most of the challenge is the quality of the marketing, not the quality of the music. Oddly enough, I'd have thought you of all people would be vehemently against the notion of someone voting based on the photo.

Brian

What's an EPK?

Electronic Press Kit

Case in point regarding my last post: an hour ago, "The Graveyard of Songs" was at #11 on the Newport Folk Festival channel, after debuting at #2. It is now #99. D'Oh!

Thanks Brian.
I've got one at 147 in New Age/World and one at 170 in Reggae.

Are you folks registering through the JPF link? I want to make sure they understand how many of our members are joining, but I get a feeling that many are just going to the site domain instead.

I didn't register through the JPF link (didn't see any link).

Hey Brian have you seen my avatar? LOL
At the end of the day artwork is part of the package. I remember people buying albums in the seventies just for the cover. I never did that (says he lying)
Seriously though if everything alse cannot be separated then yeah go vote on a photo of a busty blond.

Brian, I tried to get to the ourstage site via your link but it takes me to their registration page. I'm already registered. If it brought me to my home page then I wouldn't have a problem. maybe you should talk to them about the landing page. Ben

My one photo is pretty obscure there. I posted a song titled, "The Fields (of Balbriggan)" in New Age/World - an instrumental based on a short visit to the small fishing community centered between Dublin and Belfast. I spent a lot of time with kids there. One of the things I did was "clowning," so I posted a pic of me putting my makeup on. Has nothing to do with the song really, but it's from the trip.

Hi All

My song today, is ranking 385, I will keep checking on it, to see how it goes.

Bad songs, I just vote the same, if one is a little better to me, I vote little more, some I have voted more as I think its a good song, but not quiet there yet, and the songs I really think deserves it, I vote by far.

I think they need to sift out the worst songs, cut back the songs, cause it takes ages to vote, there is no way I have the time to keep voting all day. It is very frustrating to keep listening to bad songs, and it detours me away from voting, cause of how long it takes.

Thanks

Michele

Brian,

Reference you comment about voting based on graphics.:

I have about half a dozen times. Why? When the songs are equally bad or equally good musically, I look to see if there is anything else that might separtae the two enough to avoid the "Same" vote. Why the graphics? It suggests to me the pride and attention they pay to both their music and their careers. No, it does not make their music any better, but it strongly suggests to me that these are folks who truly are seriously interested in furthering their careers. I am inclined to favor someone who takes his/her career more seriously than someone whom appears to not be as attentive to the details of their musical career. Those who take pride in their overall presentation in every way deserve the benefit of the doubt, as far as I am concerned. But, as I said, I have done this but half a dozen times or so out of over 2,000 judgings.

Al

Post deleted by TAMERA64

I am talking registration.. as for the link on our page at the top right (are you not seeing it Tom?) I have told Daniel multiple times to change that page so it takes registered users to the site, but he (or his tech team) haven't changed it. So we're leaving the registration link up so at least we capture the registrations that are new... better than nothing.. I am not as worried about using that link to get to their page, though I'd rather it worked for that too...

The truth is that their membership has exploded since we partnered up and both months the winner has been a JPF member. I think Daniel realizes the value of it all, but I know that corporate folks are often only paying attention to a number on a hits page and not neccessarily reality...

Brian

Hi Tammy. Whilst it might be reassuring to think that a high percentage of people agree with your decision to vote songs the same think about why some people would do that and how people feel who have entered a song that is in the bottom half of the positions. They want to know realistically where it stands so will compare it to similar placed songs. So their song is not as good perhaps as the crackly recording of the guy with the lisp yodelling. I adopt the principle that if we judge songs we are duty bound to give an honest and proper decision. If everybody votes same then songs could be hundreds of positions out of placement. A bit unfair IMO. I would urge everybody to think and try to vote for the slightly better song rather than just say they are the same because they do not like either that much.

If you vote "same" then a song doesn't move up OR down.. so it would be in the position where the voters put it. Your theory doesn't hold up Jim.

when it says how many times a song has been played does that include how many times it has been judged?

Sorry to keep harping on but if you vote a number of sames and so does everybody else what happens then? Nothing moves up or down THAT IS EXACTLY MY POINT I think you will find my theory does hold up. I have experienced it with my songs a Waltz made for two and Just another day. Both finished way way way below where they should have. NEITHER MOVED MUCH FOR DAYS.

well back to my question about the number of plays.
My song has not been played for 36 hours but it is still jumping around.
So, do number of plays include number of times judged?
Because if it has not been judged how can it move?

Bill the number of plays has nothing to do with the number of times judged. It is just how many times someone has chosen to play the song either by visiting your page or playing it from looking at its chart position. The number of judgements is an unknown factor. It would be interesting to find out this info however. It might answer some of the questions about voting anomalies

So nobody is listening to my song?
I think I'll go sit in the corner and sulk.

Jim,

You have to be willing to accept that it's possible people didn't like your songs as much as you think they should. But I don't think you are willing to even consider that possibility based on your comments. So you'd rather people randomly choose one song over the other which may well result in you ranking even LOWER than you do now.. which would make you even MORE unhappy. On the other hand, if they chose your song instead, then someone else may be ranked lower than they deserve. That's not good either. By voting a tie when you have no opinion of which is better than the other, you don't harm or help anyone who doesn't deserve it.

Brian

Bill,

Number of times played is totally separate from judged. Judging numbers are not included. The number of plays you get indicates the people who chose to just listen to your song for the sake of listening to it outside of the judging process.

Brian

Brian Please do not think I do not know my place or worth. I have been in this business too long to have delusions. I can accept better songs than mine are plentiful and know where my songs should place after hearing the opposition. What I have difficulty accepting is songs that really suck being placed better.
Re the randomly judged songs above each other. I cannot accept that you of all people cannot judge two bad songs against each other and come up with a proper winner. I would like to think that most people with any music background can assess each song regardless of how bad it is against another and pick the best one. As for people with no backround in music I would rather take my chances than just let them be classed as all equally bad.
I thought judging was meant to be judging ALL and not just looking at the best.

At least you guys get to play, I can't. Boo hoo.

I have not posted any of my songs on "OurStage" and truly wish all who have the very best. I'll be lurking in the wings listening to some of my fellow JPFrs songs. Everett... we've gotta do something to get you better "net" service. I know how frustrating dial-up can be.

Dave

Here's the one thing I do not understand...No one is required to post anything at OurStage. You post there, enter "music contests" there, participate in whatever activities they offer, exclusively by your choice. It is an opportunity to have your music heard by hundreds or thousands of new listeners at absolutley no cost to you. Why are you complaining? If you feel the judging is not fair or has too many flaws for your comfort...don't do it! You can simply load your song onto their site and not participate in any of the other activities. Or, you can just not do anything there.

It's their game. If we want to play, we play by their rules. If we do not like their rules, we should find a different game! You certainly are not getting ripped off in any manner. Your music is not being inappropriately distrubuted or misused in any manner what-so-ever. You are not being being denied any just royalties according to current law. They are not doing anything with your music that you have not given them permission to do.

It's kind of like me inviting you to dinner...I purchase, prepare and serve the food...then you complain that I have ugly china and that my salt and pepper shaker don't match!

Come on guys and gals. A friendly recommendation to them would serve the same purpose, and in a more gracious manner, than constantly beating them up here on the boards. They cannot tailor the rules and the contests to meet the wishes and wants of thousands of people. If they implemented everything that you wanted, they would have a thousand other people complaining whose ideas are different than yours.

There are several things I do not like about the way they run their "contests". But, I choose to play knowing what their rules are. So, I shouldn't complain too much.

Just my thoughts.

Al

PS: Other than a contract, what do we want most for our songs, once they are ready? Exposure, right?? Guess what, at OurStage, you get LOTS of exposure. One of my songs has already been listened to 600 times. Only "favored" twice, though...can't have it all! But think about that.

Brian - I saw the Community Partners logos, but I guess I never realized that they were links to their sites. I just discovered that last night. When I lclicked it, it did take me to the registration page as you pointed out.

And my one song "The Fields (of Balbriggan)" has moved up into the top 100 in New Age/World. I posted some songs just to see how they'd do. I haven't listened to them in a long time, and when I did, I kept thinking, "Why did I mix them like that?" I continually hear ways to improve them, and it's really hard to release anything. I'm not thrilled with my own stuff, but I'm not in any position right now to be able to record them "right." So I only posted stuff as a whim.

Al you are correct the minute wads of cash are involved the competetiveness of everybody comes out. It can sometimes be pretty ugly. My comments are only designed to try and improve what I think is a great site. I enjoy listening to all the great music. I would post stuff regardless of cash prizes. I admit that I sometimes have a good laugh at some of the not so good stuff as well. Shame on me.

Big Jim,

This wasn't aimed at just you and you alone! Yeah, you've been pretty vocal...but it applies to all who participate and then get upset with the process. We simply need to apprecaite the opportunity for "new ears" the site provides and just go with the rest, if we choose to be there.

No need for shame, Big Jim. You have spoken your opinion and I just offered mine. You will always be one of my favorite JPFers. Heck, it wasn't your fault thay you were born a Scotsman!

You ugly? With an adorable face like that...never!

Take care, Big Jim. All the best.

Al

Shame on me too Big Jim. I do get a chuckle out of some of the songs. You should hear the one where the guy is verbally introducing the song. I should have voted him better for his shear nerve to bore me before the song started.
But what the hell, people might be laughing at me too. Ben

Re: Use of photos/images to effect song judging.

Problem:
I think sometimes a "bad" or off-topic image could hurt a song more than help. And other times, a really great photo or image could maybe help a song, even though it's not that great or well produced.

Possible solution:
One possible solution is to take the image completely out of the judging criteria. That would be very easy to do and might also speed things up with the song loading for each battle between two songs. All that's really needed is the song title. They already strip out the song description, so that doesn't effect the voting. I'm not sure, but maybe they could also strip out the name of band or songwriter to provide for a truly "blind" vote.

The result would be that the music would have to be judged only by these two criteria:
1. The song itself.
2. Name of song. This is fairly mute because a least some reference is needed to identify the song.

Again, ideally there would be NO images displayed during the judging/voting process and possibly NO songwriter, band or composer identitity as this could also influence the vote based on the popularity of the artist.

Currently I bet many fans are voting for their favorite artists based on their image, name and past contest reputation with other songs. For example, they may have heard a great song by an artist and then later vote for the artist again in another contest or channel because they're already familiar with that artist.

If OurStage was purely a marketing & popularity contest, it could work like that. Just encourage every artist to bring in droves of friends and fans from MySpace, SoundClick, PureVolume, Garageband, Broadjam, CD Baby and JPF, etc. and then see who's got the biggest crowd of fans and loyal supporters.

It would be a "no brainer" to predict who's going to win these kinds of popularity contests. Boring, boring... but that's how real music marketing often works. The artists/labels with the biggest promotion budgets and fan clubs will normally win because they know how to play that game.

Yes blind contests do work. They have been doing this for years. For example the Telluride bluegrass festival has a blind guitar contest. The judges are not allowed to see the performer, know his or her name etc. Their only job is to listen and judge accordingly. Ben

Thanks Ben!
I think that would be a great idea for OurStage to do. It would be very simple, they need only "hide" the artist image and name. The song description is already removed from the voting "battles", and all that's needed is the song title to accompany the sound track. This would also help good songwriters that don't have the talent or resources to prepare great looking images to represent their songs.

Michael

The judging is based on talent alone and no one can use flashy clothing or dance moves and attractive people have no advantage.

Hey Al I did not take it that you were referring to me alone.
I just answered your post as honestly as I could. Whilst my opinions may be misconstrued by some as sour grapes or perhaps delusions that I think my stuff is better than it is my real intention is to help improve the system which in itself is great but could be better with a twaek or two.
Al if you keep prasing me like that you better watch out you may turn into a born again caveman.

Ben,
Ok, good "tongue in cheek" point, but of course real show biz does depend on ALL factors being in place: Great music, stage appearance, clothing, dance, choreography, talent, image and marketing, etc. Again, in the real marketing world every advantage needs to be exploited to gain fan favor and beat the competition.

But if OurStage wants to be a "venue" to help the public find the best songs, they might decide to eliminate a few secondary criteria such as the artist's image. The image would of course still appear on their personal profile and on their music player, but not in the voting chamber, that's all. This forces people to judge the song's audio track rather than external things like a pretty or "sexy" photo.

If they want to judge images, they can vote in one of the video channels. For example, the music videos would be a good place to vote for the best "looking" and "sounding" bands. A bad video could ruin a great song and a bad song could ruin a great video production, etc. That's a whole different "ball game" than just writing and producing a great song for a music contest.

And I bet that's how every major song contest judging is done including Just Plain Folks, John Lennin, USA Songwriting Competition, and all the rest. None will give any points for having an attractive image on the song cover. That's Ok for marketing but NOT for judging in a serious song contest. If artists could win song awards at JPF (or anywhere) by having great images, they would simply hire the best graphics money could buy.

Michael

The world pipe band championship judges stand in small tents so they cannot see the bands and are therefore unbiased. However it is worth noting that this is a pointless exercise as they are such experts they can tell what band it is just by hearing them play.

No bagpipe jokes please !!!!!!

Good point Mike and I agree, but we need to differentiate a "Song" contest from a "Talent" contest. In my opinion, a song contest involves the lyric and melody of the song being judged and not the attractivness of the writer/artist. A talent contest is of the performance of the song weather the artist wrote it or not and the attractivness factor comes into play. The dancing also is judged in the talent contest. Ben

A bag of pipes?
is that like a box of hammers?

I wonder if people really are influenced by the pictures or graphics? I suppose they could be but I can't believe it would have that much impact.

Of course my song has a picture of a spoon....hmmmm maybe I should consider some nudity. Maybe that would help.

Whoa.. announcement...I just looked and I got favorited...Woo hooo...
Ahhhh I bet it was one of you guys....trying to make me feel special.

The only reason that I don't agree on the graphics thing is that I listen to the song and the song only. Anyone can make a pretty picture. But can anyone produce a good song? Ben

Bill,

You ARE special! That said, if you go the nudity route, I hope it's not a picture of you! Sorry, but.......!

Al

I have had a number of songs make it into the quarter, semi, or straight-up finals using nothing more than a picture of my album art; the text "zircon - Antigravity" with a green design, an upside-down iguana, and some bamboo. It's really not that amazing. sgx, the April grand prize winner, won with nothing more than a shot of his album art too, and while it's quite cool, it's not so amazing that it would have propelled him that far.

Having the album art shown is a great idea. It makes judging go a LOT faster, for one thing, because it's easier to see an image and associate it with a song than to actually read the smaller text underneath the image.

I don't know Andrew. Are we judging audio or a vision? I would assume that we are judging an audio sound. Adding visual only complicates things. Some people, me included don't care to add an audio effect to our music. The song should be judged on it's merit alone. Ben

I have to agree with Andy... and I was going to say it before I even saw his post, I swear! I think that having images is a positive thing for two reasons:

1. It helps to vote more quickly when the contest is narrowed down into the quarters, semis, and finals. I find it much easier remember a given song by its image, and then I don't have to spend hours and hours getting through all the possible match-ups when I've become familiar enough with the pool!

2. I would also look on the picture uploading option as another opportunity to market yourself. People are more likely to remember you as an artist if you have some sort of visual that identifies you. Pixelated or poor quality photos do lack a certain appeal, but serious musicians should know to always put their best foot forward.

Ha!!!
And then there's

Ben, Andrew & Jillian!
I totally understand the benefits of using some nice pictures, and I'm really not against it. Matter of fact, I work very hard at finding nice images to go with the "mood" of my songs; or sometimes I use one of my own cover images such as "Michael Borges On Violin" featuring a still photo of a violin, notes, bow and candle to highlight the romantic mood of my musical style.

Anyway, I was just commenting that some songwriters/composers will not be "image experts" and sometimes a bad picture could hurt more than help. If OurStage wants to hide the images, then we'd have to go with their rules, but probably that won't happen so not much to worry about.

Meanwhile lets enjoy the music and yes... also the images which can help us connect with some of the great songs we are hearing!

Michael

Jillian,

I agree with both of your points. In your second point, you did a much better job of explaining my view than I did. I performed/played for over 35 years. During that entire period, I have repetitively heard it: "Always put your best foot forward...always. You never know who is in your audience". I think what you said pretty agrees with what I said, just different terminology. The care you put into your presentation of your musical package, which includes graphics for any public display of your work, says a lot about your approach and attitude of how you want to be perceived as an artist/performer.

Perhaps it all seems rather insignificant to some folks; but I feel it is an important part of your entire musical package. I truly believe that producers, A&R folks, labels, etc., do look at the whole package. I am 61 years old; so all of it means little to me as a performer. But for younger folks looking to move their careers ahead, I say leave no stone unturned. It certainly won't hurt; and it could help. Your insignificant item may be an important consideration for the guy or gal that has the ears of the publisher or the label. You have no way of knowing. So, why not cover all bases?

Certainly, one should NEVER vote for or against a song simply because of the graphic arts. My point was that when all else is equal, that might be ther difference.

And a belated congrats on your win last month!

Al

Thanks Micheal, and Jillian, I think that visual effects have their place. But not in a song contest. Period. What are judging anyway? The song. Not the writer nor the performer. The only thing that is at stake is the song itself. There is no reason to enhance it with a visual display. The song should speak for itself. Anything else is bells and whistles, and that's not fair. Ben

So.....
Has anyone been judging in the singer/songwriter channels?
They have them separated Male and Female.
I have had to report several being "Off Topic" Male in the female
and female in the male.

Anyone else have this happening?

Ben

I cannot disagree with you on the judging. The music speaks for itself 99% of the time. The main point I am trying to make in my comments is that IN ADDITION TO THE JUDGING, you have an opportunity to catch the eye of someone in the business with the benefit of nice graphics. Why not help yourself out with this indirect opportunity. Somany times, folks aspiring to success get the break the need/want in a most unconventional and unexpected manner. Why not be ready for the unexpected.

We as judgee should vote on the music. But, at the same time, the artist might be the benefactor of some ancillary factor. The people with the ears to the "big boys" can be pretty quirky sometimes!

Alan

Well, for anyone graphically challenged, you could always create an "image" that is nothing more than the song title, and maybe some text about it. If you save it as a graphic file, then we could READ something about the song as we're listening.

I have said this a few times and nobody seems to have picked up on it. I have been impressed with the artwork generally. Some people have gone to great lengths to produce a pro picture or graphic to accompany their music. It is sad however to see a great picture or image and then listen to some of the worst recorded stuff I have ever heard. Perhaps they should have spent a bit more time writing, arranging, performing and recording their music than worrying about image. Some songs are almost unlistenable because have been recorded so badly.

Some examples of the things I hate most.
Several seconds of hiss pops and clicks before the intro.
People talking to each other before the song starts (ARE YOU READY. yeah lets go for it. DO YOU THINK IT IS GONNA BE TOO LOUD. no 123.)
No sound from one side. (How did they not notice that one.)
A white noise snowstorm with a faint sound in the background (is that music they are playing)
Distortion Distortion Distortion everything recorded on max volume possible.


Do some of these people actually listen to what they have recorded before posting it?

Jim,

Yeah,I have encounteredall of that. You would think, given this opportunity, that they would do at least a little bit of clean up before posting. And, how hard is it to cut 15 seconds of silence from the beginning.

The ones that really get me arewhen the vocalist or someone in the band takes 36 seconds to introduce the song...before we hear one single note!

Of course, all of that is professionally unbforgiveable errors of the artists, not OurStage. I think my overall biggest heartburn with OurStage has nothing to do with the judging per se. They just need to have more relavant genres/categoroies/channels. In Jazz, one of my most prolific genres, you will hear everything from, fusion to smooth jazz, to latin jazz to straightout jazz to beautiful vocals to cheap sounding lounge music to rap etc.

Perhaps a good analogy might be in the rock genre where you could have The Carpenters, ABBA, AC-DC, Grand Funk Railroad, Pink, The Stones and Maroon 5 competing against each other. They're really not very similar; but all are classified as one sub-genre of rock or another.

Other than that, I think that the judging is about as fair as we can expect. Take care Big Jim!

Al

I entered my tunes for May... I'm wayyyyyy down in the stats

1) Lady's Mist - New Age/World (287th out of 289)

2) Space Station Sunrise - Instrumental (I would prefer to be in Orchestral, but they don't seem to have it) (340th out of 695)

http://www.ourstage.com/epk/vikkiflawith

I haven't read beyond this post yet, but if you vote SAME in a contest between the #1 song and the very last song, doesn't it stand to reason that this vote would boost up the bottom song and pull down the top?

Regarding photos, I think that judging a bunch of songs with no visual to look at would be more boring. Yes, more fair...but not as random and colorful.

Rather than get immediately flushed down the toilet by posting bad pictures of myself, I've opted to do a quickie Photoshop piece on each of mine. I'm hoping it gives a visual cue they can remember, but hopefully not too "homemade". Here are a couple:

Yes Mark I agree. There is another way of looking at it if you vote a bunch of songs the same and most other voters do like wise then there is no way of telling which song is slightly better than another. Then some, not many, come along and do not vote same but vote better by far. That can make a huge difference on positions especially if there is a large entry.

No.. it's a zero sum game. Think of it this way... a vote for "Far Better" would result in +3 points for the winning song and -3 points for the losing song. A vote for "same" would result in no points for or against either song. It's like the vote never took place.

Brian

Mark,

I like the first and fourth images. The bomb going off and the superimposed car look a bit cheesy and typical of home mage graphics. At least that is how I see them.

Brian

Thanks Brian...considering they are ALL cheesy homemade graphics, I'm very pleased to hear that!

Here's the songs I've entered for May:


Claire De Lune - Solo Instrumental


Flower Duet (aka Aria) - Cover Bands


New Every Morning - New Age/World


Walking In The Rain - Guitar Solo

Michael's Profile on OurStage

I also posted this in a new "MAY OurStage Contest Entries" topic in the General Message Forum, but evidently Brian wants us to post these here. That's fine, but it's probably a bit early to discuss rankings for May since they will keep changing until the last day. Might be better to discuss May rankings at end of May or in June when all the votes are final.

Michael

Ben,
Good points, and generally I can't disagree! For one thing, I DO upload some nice images. It can be very time consuming to find the "perfect" image to go with each song's theme.

I'm not a professional photographer, so I have to license royalty-free images from places like iStockPhoto and ShutterPoint, etc. This is of course an additional expense, but I don't mind for general promotion purposes. I can license standard web-size images for .99 cents a piece which work perfectly fine on OurStage, so it's really not a problem, and if I wish, I can also add some text. But I've seen other artists post pure images with no text which also makes a nice impression for certain kinds of music, especially for instrumentals and certain channels such as New Age/World.

Beyond that, nothing needs to be changed except that the OurStage management could "gray out" images during the voting process. I've judged JPF song awards a number of times and have never seen any images, so if it's good enough for JPF, John Lennon, Great American Song Contest, USA Songwriting Competition, Unisong and all the rest, why not also for OurStage? Because the FANS decide! So you'll have to talk to the management... ha ha!

Anyway, interesting discussion!
Michael

Hey, buddy! The art on my Coactive track is not album art. It's a screenshot from the interactive remixing flash toy I made also called Coactive: www.sgxmmusic.com/coactive.htm

I do think good art is important if you are trying to win. People are affected by superficial things. You wouldn't show up to court in shabby clothes, so why enter a competition and not put up a good appearance?

I do a little graphic design and I've been using ourstage as a little exercise for myself: every time I add a new song, I do a quick 15 minute design for the track's ourstage image that I think will represent how the track sounds.

Of course, not everyone is a graphic designer, but not having a quality image or album cover kind of just suggests that you're not serious about your music enough to present the whole package well. Ideally, the music should speak for itself, and it does to an extent, but in reality other aspects affect perception too.

Other things I think helped me:

People are impatient. Your song needs to get awesome or sound like it will be awesome within that first 15 seconds of required listening.

My winning track Coactive is actually 5:30 long on the album. I entered my 2:30 edit on Ourstage and won the grand prize. I am SO glad I did that. This short edit gets the point, keeps your interest, and concludes itself in a tight, effective package.

Having fans that are willing to spend time voting for you is helpful also. I've got folks on a couple of message boards, visitors on my website, and people who've signed up for my mailing list that I asked to visit ourstage and vote for me. I think I would have done well, but maybe not won if I didn't have the help. Some people may not like that some artists with a following might have a bit of an advantage, but to that I say:

1) Ourstage encourages this. They sent an email (or was it a message on the site) to all quarterfinalists in March's competition suggesting that we do things like that to get fans to sign up and vote for us. It gets them traffic which is what they want. This is how Ourstage expects it to be played.

2) I earned those fans and I will use them. I didn't happen upon my listeners by luck - I've worked hard on music for about 7 years having a continuous online presence with a website I built myself, lots of free mp3 downloads, lots of online community participation, answering emails asking me advice on gear and technique, and most of all, making what I would call good music. Dues have been paid, I think


Oh, also remember, that it is probably futile to try to vote for yourself or get others to vote for you before the quarterfinals. Your song won't come up often enough in such a huge pool to make it worth anybody's time. Just hope you get into the quarters, but that's often a crapshoot since you'll only get maybe 10 listens. I had a track (which was a collab with a rap vocalist) in the hip-hop genre finish something like 2715th! The song doesn't suck, but I think the five people who listened probably hated the electronic sound in there and the track got buried to hell!

Hey Andrew and SGX,

You guys should help me expand the Electronic, Techno and Ambient genres in this year's JPF awards. We have a HUGE amount of Electronic based music this year and I think we may want to expand to other sub-genres (house? trance? bass and drum? etc.)

Since you guys live and breath this world, you're likely a good resource to hash this out with. (Perhaps Ourstage will then take the lead as well).

Brian

Brian, I'd be happy to help in whatever capacity you need. Just let me know what to do or where to go.

Danny; Whoops, sorry for misrepresenting the Coactive pic, it's been awhile since I used the Flash "game" (which is still just as slick as it was when you first made it!)

It's cool, andy

Brian, I'd be happy to help.

SGX,
I agree with your insights and experience. They are pretty much proof that one of the important factors to winning an OurStage contest (besides good song quality) is the fan/popularity support factor. Your fans are not likely to vote for me (different style & genre) and my fans are not likely to vote for you for the same reason. In the end, every artist has to build up their own fan base to get the kind of support that's needed to sustain the "wins" all the way to the top in the finals.

Nothing wrong with this, because this is how it works in "real life". Ok songs and acts might get ahead of great songs just because there are other factors involved such as: fan base, popularity, image, entertainment value, marketing dollars, connections in "high places", blah blah blah, you get the picture. There's always more than meets the "ear" and artistic beauty is in the "eye" of the beholder.

So the message is, build up your fan base and don't be "ashamed" to get tons of support because if even one artist is doing this, then everyone has to do it to be able to compete. Am I saying song quality doesn't count... No, because without generally good music quality, it's harder to build up a fan base in the first place, but once you have a strong fan base, you can get support for relatively weaker material that can still get you pushed to the top.

There's nothing new here... keep improving your writing and production skills, but that's "dead in the water" without some great marketing and promotion to back it all up.

Michael

Seems like this post has been abandoned
BUMP

What's up with Ourstage
I had my song entered in singer/songwriter/male and was watching it slowly make it's way higher each day.
then;
I log on and it has been switched to a new channel Singer/songwriter
Now my song is clearly Male and I am the only singer so who and why was it moved.
If I move it back I lose all the ground I have gained.
They should have to at least warn you if they are going to move a song so you have a chance to argue the point.

I took the plunge today!...

www.ourstage.com/profile/bobcushing

Here are my contest entries..

C'mon Big Brother---Male Singer/Songwriter

I Need a Lover{Not a Mother}--Americana/Alt-Country

The Next Best Thing--Bonaroo

Middle Aged Crazy--Indie Rock

Send Daniel a note.. I know they are working on cleaning that channel up.

Brian

Go Get 'em Bob

They won't know what hit them.

Good luck buddy

Brian..which Channel are they trying to clean up?, for I will probably sully it even more! {LOL}? Thanx Bill!

O.k, Now that I'm up and running, any advice on how to increase traffic?

Bob I don't think you can actually increase traffic on the judging. It is completely random. If your fans are willing to sit there and work through the judging until you pop up they can then give you a great vote but that's about it.
Of course you can get the number of plays to increase by just listening to your song but it does not seem to impact judging.

The Blue Island Beer Club jumped on the bandwagon (or Our Stage) today and posted one of my instrumentals....

Stocking Island

I am a little confused about where we are suppose to post our good happenings on the OurStage site. But I just wanted to say THANK YOU!! To all of those who have voted for my song. I know some of you have been doing that. Follow Your Dreams has been hanging in there at #6 on the country channel. I know it is still WAY to early to tell what will happen. My goal at this point is to make the top 20 by the 25th. I have a couple others that are creeping up there. Thanks again everyone! I wish you all big success on the site there! It really is fun hearing all the talent!

Happy Mom's day to all you moms!!

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Hey 'Folks...

Just signed up....right now they're dredging the river for where my songs are...I could use some extra love if you have some to spare

http://www.ourstage.com/music/channel/67-americana/WRXUANRMPDYH-run-mary

http://www.ourstage.com/music/channel/19-country/HPXHUWNPLVGU-long-grass-and-the-tall

http://www.ourstage.com/music/channel/81-folk/SVULNFAXBNVO-when-that-water-comes-running

how did you find out nicole berke was cheating on ourstage? i saw she had some banners up on her myspace, like "vote for me," but i think ourstage gives you those to put on your myspace...was she doing something else to get votes?

She was giving instructions on how to rig the system to vote for her no matter who she was competing against and to ALSO vote "same" on all the others without fairly judging. Another artist used a similar tactic but told everyone to intentionally vote the leading songs as losers (even if they were better) every time they came up to hurt them in the rankings, thus raising his own. Both are sleazy tactics in my opinion and violate the terms of service on Ourspace which says something to the effect that you can't do anything to harm the fairness of the voting.

Brian

My masterpiece, "Hey, American Dream" is only 593/917 in Rock. I guess the listeners have a different concept than I do of what a masterpiece is (LOL!). One of these days maybe I'll be able to write/record a tune that will resonate with the listeners of a OurStage channel.

OurStage: http://www.ourstage.com/music/channel/17-rock/KBYRGWFKJGKT-hey-american-dream

Kevin

Kevin
You are being voted better than 314 songs.
My song "His Last Time" is being voted better than 405 songs in the male singer songwriter channel. Ha!

nightcandy - 11th in Guitar Solo

the ipod, xbox, cellphone, laptop blues - 88th in JVC Jazz Festival Newport

sexasaurus - 94th in Blues
Played: 110 Favorited: 0

over my head - 151st in Alt. Rock

moolah be praised - 211th in Indie Rock

if jesus wore shoulder pads - 231st in Folk

l.e.o. ain't high enough - 265th in Music Videos

sunset - 274th in Pop

fut the shuck up - 293rd in Rock sponsored by First Act

darwin's rosary - 344th in Hard Rock

viva la cerveza - 355th in Experimental

what's mine is yours - 389th in Christian / Spiritual

slide in slide out - 600th in R & B / Soul

funkyjooze - 1640th in Hip-Hop

6 feet away - 321st in Rock sponsored by First Act, August 2007

angel of death - 519th in Hard Rock, April 2008

rock on,
r.

Currently hovering in the twenties in country and about 150 in the folk category. Highest finish was 2nd in country last year before most JPF folks knew about the site. Only entered those three songs so far.

Brian,
Minor point, but in your last post (see quote excerpt above) you said "Ourspace", but you probably meant OurStage!

Michael

Brain,
Everyone here agrees that those are sleazy tactics, but the job/challange that OurStage has is to program their sytem so it's virtually impossible to "bypass" their fair judging process and ranking system.

All kinds of scam, phishing and virus emails are outright sleazy and evil, yet these can be almost entirely eliminated with good computing practices and server measures. The weakest chain in the link will always be attacked first, and I'm sure OurStage is aware of this problem and continue to tweak their system to avoid all attemps (ranging from "Jr. High" to High-tech) to compromise their ranking process.

Here's another potential "hole" they might need to plug. A band of 4 guys could share the same band profile (login account), but then each could also register their own personal "fan" login account. So now all four (plus their managers & street teamers) could work as a team to bump up their song rankings in any given contest channel. As might be expected, they could vote on a "curve" against competing songs while giving their own songs the highest "By far" votes.

I don't think there's an easy way to plug this hole, but the best way is to have literally thousands of fans whose collective votes would way outnumber the attemps of any artist or band to "bump" their own songs. Only problem is that some bands might have a very loyal fan following, so it will be difficult to get them to vote for other competing artists or bands.

But all in all, OurStage is probalby still the best online voting alternative around, so we might as well use it and make the best of it!

Michael

No idea where I rank now at all. My computer at home is down (no internet) and can't access the Ourstage site here.

Maybe you should not have a chance to vote for yourself, just let fans do the voting.

None of my songs has moved an inch for about 3-4 days. I miss the volatility I've come to expect.

There is one thing that I wonder about. And that is, if you do vote your own song better than the one against which it is paired...are you penalized for doing so? Here is why I wonder about that.

During the month of May, I have been presented with the opportunity to vote on my songs paired against another five times...once on one song and twice each for two other songs. On the song which came up only once, I actually voted the other song better than mine, because it was. On my other two songs, each of which came up twice for my voting, I voted one of them "slightly more" and "more"; and for the other one of mine that came up twice, I voted "more" both times because I thought that was legitmately true.

The song for which I voted against myself, because the other song truly was better, has stayed, more or less, at the same position...up and down less than ten positions. On the two songs for which I voted myself a more favorable vote, "more" or slightly more"...both to of those songs took an immediate and severe nose dive within 24 hours.

I had a similar incident in last month's voting. When I voted against my song, it maintained a fairly steady ranking. The song for which I voted myself a better rating dropped dramatically the next day.

Is this simply a matter of coincidence that repeated itself, or is there really a penalty if you do vote yourself higher higfher than the song against which it is paired?

If the other song is better than mine, I will vote it accordingly. I have done that twice already. However if I honestly feel mine is better, I feel I should vote it that way. But now, I am very reluctant to vote for my own song. I am inclined to vote "same" when one of mine came up.

I have been a very vocal supporter of OurStage, so there certainly is no axe to grind on my part. But, I am now a bit suspicious. Should I be?

Al

Al,
No need to be suspicious. I think the best policy for OurStage would be to simply NOT allow anyone to vote/judge their own songs, period. This is how all other song contests work including the JPF awards. Volunterr judges can NOT judge on their own stuff, period.

I've had the same experience with my songs coming up against others, but it's a real dilema for me as well. Technically, this shouldn't even happen and there's no excuse for it. They know when artists are logged in and artists should not have their own songs pop up in the voting process to be "tempted" to vote on, period.

I thought it was an error or that maybe they're still working on this. So if this is not a "bug", and their policy is to allow all artists & bands to vote on their own material, then they might want to review their voting policy. It's a huge numbers game so maybe the votes those won't matter much in the final outcome, but maybe they do. It all depends how many artists vs. fans are voting.

Maybe Daniel Palmer can fill us in about their voting policy.
Michael

So far my song has only come up a few times and I have voted it by far. Most people agreed but it is hardly surprising as the songs against me were pretty bottom of the pile in ratings and. Interesting to see what happens if I ever get to vote my song against anything in the top half I wonder how many people would agree. I am currently in the low twenties however JMO I should be a lot higher there are several songs I feel are not as good and are undeserving the position. Nice to be positive. LOL

Thanks Jim for sharing... and see, again there's my point which I can phrase in a question: Why does OurStage even allow artists who have entered songs into contests, to vote on themselves? I thought that the cardinal contest rule was that artists and songwriters can NOT vote for themselves and best NOT AT ALL in the channels they have entered songs into.

This month I have four songs in four different channels, so if I want to vote, I could vote in all the other (approx.) 30 channels, but maybe NOT in the ones I entered. It would be a very simple thing for the software program to monitor.

Quit simply, if they know you entered into Folk for month of May, you can't vote anything in that channel, period. Because if you cold vote in that channel, even if your song doesn't appear because it's blocked out, you could still vote artifically low against all your competitors, see?

So I think we should bring this point up to Brian, Daniel and the OurStage management team to make this basic point very clear:
There's NO need for OurStage artists & bands to be allowed to vote in any channel for which they have entered a song for any given contest month. Note: they should also monitor additional account profiles that artists & bands can set up using other email addresses, etc.

Before a song is entered or after it has been withdrawn, it's Ok, to vote/judge in that channel again. I know JPF follows this same high standard, and if they didn't, their song awards would be compromised and would not be nearly as valuable or meaningful.

Well, let's see where this might go, but I think if they did this right, it would elminate such potential conflicts of interest.

Michael

I've been voting, but so far haven't seen our songs, although just entered two today, (Two live performance songs), "You Girl Only"", and London's Ferris Wheel".

My question is: How do you get to see all the songs in any channel?
I have clicked on "Charts", and just the top ten for each month come up. Is there some secret code I don't know yet?! Or don't they have the list as before, with page after page of the complete rankings?

Thanks, John

It would be silly to tell people not to vote on their own songs. The cheaters would simply log in as someone else, so the honest people would be faced with becoming cheaters or being punished for being honest. Instead, let everyone vote on themselves. If the system is built to prevent (or at least significantly decrease the value in) cheating, it shouldn't be relevent. That said, I know there are people on there voting day and night all month long. I was one of them for about 10 days while I waited for our own awards database to become available and found myself with the very unusual dead time to do so. I voted in over 5000 matches and got every single song dozens of times if not more in the category I was voting on. I had every song notated so I knew where I ranked each by the end. (Of course my rankings had almost zero to do with the end result once Bergeron and the other cheaters got done). BUT.. by doing so, I learned about a lot of other artists and some were JPF members that I didn't know or hadn't met before. I have to think there are many artists, especially who aren't gigging or don't have families to deal with, that are voting constantly (honestly or otherwise). Why punish the honest people?

As for you voting against yourself Al, I am not naive enough to think that most people, when no one is watching, are actually voting against their own song. Everyone can SAY they are.. but I've been doing this long enough and have known too many artists to think that would be the normal behavior regardless of what song is better. If you build the site knowing that artists will vote for themselves and still keeping it fair, I think you're far better off. And if you don't have time to invest in voting at all, then it's your loss, but a fair one since those that do help keep the site going. If you removed all the voting done by people using the site for their own songs, I bet you'd lose the majority of all votes at this point. That's just the real world. But I know a lot of folks who vote in channels they have no songs in, and that is valuable input into the system. In our own awards, we don't let people vote in their own categories, but we also don't have 50K people voting on thousands of songs. When we open the flood gates in the final round, we very carefully control what genres people access and vote in and we watch closely for irregularities (which we've found and fixed in the past). Ourstage can't possibly do that. So they have to build the system with reality, and not pure honesty, in mind. In my opinion, I think they underestimated the lengths people would go to try and cheat. The reality is that people can be evil and selfish and obnoxious and until you've dealt with them one a wide basis as those of us who do so with large communities that we interact with over a long period of time, you just can't understand it to the level it happens. I think they are learning a few hard lessons quickly and it appears that in most cases, they are adapting to these lessons where possible. Staying ahead of dishonest people isn't easy sad to say. That's why there will always be crime in the world no matter what efforts society makes to keep it in check. Best, in my opinion, to accept certain global truths (such as artists voting for themselves) than to punish only the honest.

Brian

Michael it all depends on how many people are judging. If there are thousands then 1 person voting for their own song will not make much if any difference. It would be interesting to see just how many people are judgeing in the categories. It is not like normal voting on other sites where you can vote for you song sometimes multiple times. It is very hard to jack up any song just by judging one song against another. I think the biggest thing that causes problems and unfairness is being allowed to vote same. This should be stopped. I am sure that there is always something that can influence you to vote on a song being better than another. Whether it is tune, arrangement, lyrics, performance, recording or even artwork there is always something to seperate each entry.

The people that excessively use "same" are generally those who don't really care in the first place. All you'll do is force them to randomly vote one over another. With "same" it has no effect on either song.. it's like the vote never took place. That's far better than thousands of false randon votes you'd get instead.

Brian I am puzzled by your logic. You say that voting same has no effect. I have spent many hours voting and it is clear that I get the same songs over and over yet other songs appear infrequently. So if a merit point is scored each time I vote a song better the fairness of the system is totally dependant on EACH song appearing and being voted on the same amount of times as all the others. This is almost impossible to achieve allowing for the random factor and also that some people may only vote a handful of times. I suspect that the system is more complicated than you imagine and certain that voting same does have a profound effect. Logically it has to have an effect regardless of what points or positioning system is in operation.
Do you have this opinion that voting the same has no effect on overall positioning on good authority or is this just your own personal opinion?

I am also puzzled at the false random votes statement.

You are also assuming quite wrongly that thousands of people have no judging ability and are unable to express an opinion other than random. If this is the case why bother voting in the first place. Provided people are fair and honest I trust them to pick the better song most of the time. Obviously personal opinion and tastes differ.

I have one song in folk that entered at 400 plus and as of yesterday is 78 on about 90 votes. Is this good or bad? I can't vote because on dial up it is like watching paint dry waiting for the songs to load.

I get to be at both ends of the spectrum...... No7 in electronic, and No 218 in blues,..... is there something I should be learning here ? Oh, I got it, no one likes a sad song I guess ?

cheers, niteshift

well I don't vote that often but I have yet to see my own songa. But there is over a thousand songs on my channel.
All I know is so far it looks like I really suck, LOL.

Big Jim, Brian mentioned before that "Same" is calculated as what he called "a zero sum game". In other words, it is not the case that the bottom song when judged against the top song will pull both closer to the middle. Instead, a "Same" vote does nothing for either side. Brian, please correct me if this is incorrect.

This seems pointless to me, and I still have trouble believing it. In essence, it would mean every "same" vote adds nothing to the contest...and I would venture to guess that "same" is probably the most selected option of them all. However, if "Same" counted for something, then there would be some significance when a new song arriving at the bottom of the heap is heavily voted "same" as top ranking songs.

Brian, did I understand you correctly?

Mark that is my point. I understand Brian's theory. However it is flawed because each song must have the same amount of fair judgements for the system to be fair. Put another way a song with few contests voted on the same has lost potential votes to boost it or lower it so it has little chance of moving. A song that has more contests has a greater chance of picking up votes whilst neither gaining or losing ground if votes are cast the same.

I think the system is based on percentages. If a song has a higher percentage voting it better than another song then it moves to one above that position. Therefore positions are constantly changing. even this system cannot be completely fair as some songs get more contests or only contests against the lower ranking songs whilst others come against the top or have fewer contests. Just to throw another spanner some people only judge a few contests anyway. How does that affect the judging.

Let me simplify this.

A song can get +3, +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, -3 depending on where the scoring ends up. If you vote a song By Far better than the other, you give one song +3 and the other a -3. That's fine if it's a true vote. It really sucks if it's not. If someone is on there simply to vote until their song (or their friends song) comes up, and they are voting SAME.. it's 0 points for or against either song. If they are forced to vote one way or the other, then some song is going to get screwed over and drop in the standings simply because people were forced to choose one or the other and if they aren't really listening to the songs in the first place, they'll be doing it randomly. It's reality.

In a perfect world, people would listen to the entire song each time and make an honest vote. But we know people won't do that. Jim himself has admitted that some songs he can barely make past 15 seconds. That's not a thorough judging evaluation at all. I come across really good songs all the time that would never do well based on the first 20 seconds of it. But I understand the reality of mass judging.

So, if you had it your way Jim, the voting will be even worse than it is now with even more cases of good songs losing to really bad ones. And so you know, I once felt the same way as you do.. but in talking with people involved in Ourstage, it became clear to me that the SAME vote serves an important purpose. That's about as much as I can say on that matter.

Brian

I knew the competition was tough but I just checked the comments of the song currently leading in the Americana group and the dude had Richie Furay sing backup vocals. I mean rock and roll hall of famer, lead singer of Buffalo Springfield and founder of Poco. Yikes.

I think Ourstage gives good insight into how tough the task of an A&R person, music publisher or Taxi screener can be. Here are my 'average Joe' (or Steve) observations on the Ourstage submissions I've 'judged' or listened to:

- Most intros are too long
- More emphasis is placed on musicianship on most songs than the vocal
- Folks are using way too many effects - on the voice, on the instruments
- Not a lot of attention is being paid to recording quality by some submitting - I'm not saying a recording has to be studio quality, but the listener should be able to hear it clearly
- Really strong songs (lyrically) are few and far between

With that being said, I enjoy the Ourstage process and enjoy listening to the various songs and artists.

Steve V

Interesting!
So OurStage is starting to attract some pro-level artists! That would be more like the JPF song awards which gets a good "mix" of amateur and professional artists and songwriters. Good thing for everyone... certainly raises the bar and could attract a wider public!

Michael

I thought I'd try an experiment. I uploaded my May entry into the soft rock category almost two weeks ago. When I entered it, I didn't upload a picture to go with it, just let the default OurStage "no picture" logo come up. For nearly two weeks, the song settled slowly toward the very bottom of the pile. Then I uploaded a colorful, unusual looking picture. In less than two days, the song jumped 347 places.

You need the whole package.

Mike

Yes, that foot is such an attention-grabber!

I am afraid my song "Hey, American Dream" is flopping in the Rock By First Act category. it seems to be in the bottom third - waaaaahh!

Kevin

I uploaded "His Song" in Instrumental as my experiment with OurStage. I was pleasantly surpised to see it go from the 30's to the 20's. Disheartened to see it fall to the 40's and now laughingly shocked that it is in the low 300's. I know my simple piano improv based on a theme i wrote that day is not perfect, and I know from my judging that there are clearly some outstanding instrumental pieces.

My challenge in Instrumental (not based on my song) is the difference in judging compositions which are musically based versus those that are looped based (and often one chord throughout). When I hear something looped based, i will randomly click ahead in the song and score lower if I hear the same thing over and over no matter where I advance. I'm also amazed when judging and seeing how my vote compared to others. It's been eye opening.

I'm not sure if I will enter any vocal songs. The jury is out on that one. I'm confident in the song, but not confident in my productions. The singer/songwriter competition for April was amazing.

it's been addictive and fun.

Dave

Is anyone else having trouble getting the songs to load on the judging site? I haven't been able to do it for days. It just shows the spinning disks without the pictures or music loading. I was just wondering if it is my computor or not. Thanks!

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Hi Tammy Yes sometimes I have to refresh or come out and go back in. It only happens intermittently. I think it is just down to excessive traffic.

One thing I find bizarre I voted my song as better by far against another and 97% of the people judging agreed with me. Now that is conclusive by anyones measures. Yet the song that 97% think is far worse than mine is still 18 places higher. How can this be? I thought that it might take a few hours to sort out but no a day later and it is still the same. Personally I do not think the system is as accurate or reliable as we are led to believe.

OK - I'm really stuck. I can't access Ourstage from here (it's blocked). At the place I stay when I'm in the Philly area, I don't have internet access, unless I can tap into someone's wireless network, which doesn't last for very long.

I think I'm the only one here that entered a song in the Reggae category. My song "Many a Man" is not true, traditional Reggae arrangement, and I use some weird instruments and vocal harmonies that are not common in Reggae. So if anyone wants to listen to a different style of music, let me know how I'm doing. THANKS!

Tom,
Your song is currently 118

Thanks for letting me know!
Of course, there's probably only 118 songs in that category.

I have now on several occasions voted my song as better by far and each and every time most people ranging from 60% to 97% agree however all of these songs are still many places above me. How can this be?

Most likely because those only represent opinions of a small percentage of the total songs competing against you.

Say you vote on songs 1, 2, and 3. Maybe most people think those are weaker than your entry. But there are 700 more songs on top of that. The other 700 could have public opinion leaning in the other direction.

My song "Sour in the belly" is #36 in indie rock.I do not think I have the strongest song in this category but I have listened to the #1 song and I feel it is much weaker than a lot of songs I have heard.This seems to be a common sentiment from what I have read here.

I'm floundering in all categories this month. However, I anticipate a much better result next month when I reveal my new picture:

Sorry Andrew You have lost me I do not understand what you are saying. If 97% think my song is better by far than another song then it should be placed higher regardless of what other people have voted on other songs.

I put a song in folk last month and was surprised at how well it did - 52nd out of 400 entries.

This month I put a song in the same category that I think was better and it is getting clobbered! 350/400 last time I looked.

Gonna do some experimenting with genres and pictures - this really can be useful in learning how to present yourself, I think...

Scott

I'm at a bit of a dilemma here, because I entered 4 songs in 4 different catagories. 2 are doing really well, and 2 are languishing at the bottom of the pile.

What I think, doesn't correlate to what the listeners think.

I think that's the difference. What a musician thinks, doesn't have a great deal of bearing upon what the public thinks.

I think it's a very good tool to seperate yourself from your own pre-concieved and sub-concious views of your own material, and is a good tool in the tool kit to decide which tracks you are going to persue further, and which should be given lesser attention.

We do, after all, write for an audience, and it's a good indicator of what a general audience is looking for in their listening tastes.

I'm quite surprised at my own current rankings, ( good and bad )and personally have different views on the matter, but as a fair system, will take in the opinion of the audience. The same audience who either like or dis-like what we create.

cheers, niteshift

I think the jury is still out as far as I am concerned. Yes it is a great place to showcase your music. However like Niteshift and Scott I am not sure if the discrepancies are down to my own judgement, flaws in the voting system or perhaps bad/unfair/corrupt judging of the kind that has been hinted at in previous threads. What I do know is that in most cases I agree with most of the others judging sadly this agreement does not appear to be the case when it comes to actual positions.

I am beginning to think there is some odd things happening with the judging.I can rarely judge because the site won't let me. And a song I have had in the top 10 for 3 weeks straight has suddenly dropped and may not even make it in the top 20 by tomorrow. Somehow I sense some kind of fowl play possibly. It just seems odd that within hours of making the top 10 where I have been since May 5th the suddenly I am dropping quickly. I just wonder if people are on there purposely voting against some that have been in the top 10. Hmmmm just rather odd for a last minute thing right before the semi finals tomorrow. Any thoughts on this???

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Tammy, I'm with you. I've noticed this since I've known about Ourstage. I'm ready to just write it off as just another web site. Good bye Ourstage. There's too much crap on there anyway, It takes way too much time to download. I don't need all of that junk. Bye Bye. Ben

I stand by my word and took any song that I had in competition off.I'm not mad at Danny or anyone else associated with Ourstage.
I think that they have fallen prey to manipulation and cannot have a fair and balanced contest as they claim.
I tried to give them a chance. And they deserve that.
Something just ain't right, and when you get that feeling the best thing to do is run away, and that's just what I'm doing. Getting the hell out of there. Ben

Hey Tammy,

I had a similar experience, with the top 10 in 2 diferent channels, Electronica and Instrumental. Dropped like a stone in both to high teens from single digets.

Then I noticed that the quarter-finals have started. It makes sense, that since there are only 20 songs in each voting category, they will bounce around like yoyo's once voting gets under way. ( I'm guessing they reset the counters here )

Don't know if they'll settle down, but the next 4 days should be interesting. I would expect a slower movement as the voting numbers increase.

cheers, niteshift

Well my cover song The letter made it to number 19. However I too have noticed discrepancies. I checked the last couple of months positions and there are songs placed in the top ten that do not deserve their position based on my judgement and comparisons to other songs that did not make it. I too believe that something is wrong. Either the system is flawed or people are cheating or abusing it.

I agree with Ben there is a lot of crap to wade through and some sort of audition process is needed to weed this out. I also see songs running for months on end AND EACH MONTH THE ENTRIES GET LARGER sooner or later meltdown will occur with the sheer numbers. Perhaps songs should be removed from competition after a certain period and entry numbers limited on a first come basis. The whole thing needs an overhaul. I also do not like to see songs entered midway through a judging period as this must have an unfair effect on the judging system. Some songs were only entered a day or two before the Q finals.

However I do not believe that running away is the thing to do. I would rather keep chipping away at Danny to try and improve things. He is a nice guy and is receptive to suggestions and Rome was not built in a day.

My song in Country was also bouncing between position 9 and 13 for over two weeks and all of a sudden dropped to the mid twenties.

Hey Jim,

I see your song is coming in at No6 on the covers channel. Of course we all know it's the ladies playing the system, on account of that god awful, but true to life mug shot !

cheers, niteshift

Hi Guys! It is strange trying to figure this out. I am growing more frustrated. I keep getting spinning disks. I can judge like two songs and then the next ones won't load. I have been in the country catagory and the same girl came up 3 times in a row against a different person each time. I just thought the songs would be shuffled better. It's all still a mystery to me. And you can never think your song is safe or locked in because the next thing you know it drops out of nowhere. Hmmmm...

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

A flawed system...You can't really believe that..can you? Ha!

I don't know how it works.
I have yet to see either of my songs when Judging. But I don't spend much time there.
My guess, If it is a random thing and no one controls when the song will pop up.....well, your song might not come up for judging for two weeks then it might come up every couple of hours.
It would be like spinning a roulette wheel with a thousand numbers on it.

One of my songs did not move for a week then it moved UP 100 places in a day, then another 50 places later that same day. then stopped moving.
My guess, it did not even appear for judging for that week then it did and somebody liked it. So it moved up. If it comes up again and somebody likes it it will move up more, if they don't it will drop.
My other song.. It doesn't move more than a couple points either way every day. Either it never gets judged or it is always getting judged the same.
In either case I don't put much stock in any of this.

I get more listens and action on My Space than anywhere and I never talk to anyone there.

Hmmmmm....

Let's see if we have this all straight. Cost to participate on Ourstage: Zero. Requirements once you enter to win: Zero. Rights you give up to your songs by participating: Zero. # of JPF Members who have made the finals in the last 3 months: Over 100. JPF Members who are message board users who have won the $5000 grand prize the last 2 months: 2. (i.e. BOTH winners). And.. Ourstage is now a JPF sponsors, helping make the entire organization possible.

And here we have Big Jim among MANY other JPF members in the finals for THIS month. And the BIG problem is WHAT exactly?

If this company/site is the enemy here, I sure wish our friends were as supportive of our grassroots community.

Have they had problems? Yes. Have they worked for fix them? Yes. Have they shown good faith and good will towards not only ours, but the entire grass roots music community? Yes. Find any other site out there who is doing more for less in return. And here everyone is biting their hand because of what exactly? Because you don't like how people have voted? And that is THEIR fault?

People here spend day and night complaining about how terrible pop music is. That is ALSO controlled by fans. You realize you don't agree with their choices there.. but you expect to agree with their choices here? Remember all those deluded idiots who audition for American Idol who can't sing at all but are positive they can? Those are the same people who are posting the horrible music on Ourstage and they and their friends and family who have told them they are amazingly good are the same people who are voting. What do you all expect? When you make a system "fair" for the Democratic masses.. you get these types of results. Look at the US political system. Ever wonder how some of the complete idiots and liars and cheats get elected? It's the same people making the judgements as are voting on Ourstage. THAT my friends is an open democratic voting system. The music industry has long tried to take it out of the hands of the public and artificially control what music we get to hear and people scream bloody murder because of it. So here we have the masses voting for whoever they want and you guys aren't happy with that either.

Why blame the messenger because the message is not what you hoped? Ourstage has been gracious to every complaint and problem and comment made here. I am pretty disappointed to see them attacked unfairly.

Who else out there is doing more for less for the community other than JPF? And who is one of the sponsors of JPF? Right.

A few things.

1. If you are having trouble judging songs it is very likely a problem with your computer, your web browser, or your internet connection. The site makes use of a lot of Flash and advanced coding. I've been on it since early February and it is pretty rare to see an actual site technical problem, except in the middle of the final round, where thousands of people are voting on the same songs at once. You cannot blame them if you are having a problem with your computer.

2. Before the quarterfinals (eg. any day before today), foul play is simply NOT possible. There are hundreds of songs in even the smallest categories, and thousands in the biggest. If you wanted to somehow vote down a high-ranking song, you would have to vote hundreds or thousands of times to even see it once - and then when you do, it's only one vote that you contributed!!! Considering all the votes that songs get throughout the month, one vote simply doesn't make a big difference at all. The only way anyone can even attempt to cheat the system prior to the quarterfinals is using an automated system. Jill and I know people that tried this two months in a row. It didn't work; their songs were reset to the bottom of the pile.

3. For those of you complaining about your songs dropping, excuse me for being blunt, but you need to get thicker skins. In a contest like this your song is NEVER locked in. OurStage is a very popular site with a ton of users, and a flood of new people coming in all the time. It is not as if everyone votes within the first ten days and then stops. There are constantly new people voting, or old people that only choose to vote towards the end of the month. I for one didn't vote at all this month until yesterday, at which point

4. Why would you ever withdraw your songs from the site or stop participating? That is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. There's NO cost of any kind to enter. It requires no maintenance, no time investment, nothing. You just upload your songs, enter them, and check towards the end of the month to see if you made it into the quarterfinals. Even at this point, you're not required to do anything, though it's advisable that you take the 5-10 minutes (wow!!!) to send an email to your fans or post on your site asking your friends & fans to vote for you. By removing your songs from the contest you are literally doing nothing except hurting yourself. Even if you only had a one in 50,000 chance of winning, it would still be worth entering, because there is no risk or cost to doing so, only the possibility of massive gains.

5. Both myself, Jillian Goldin, and our friend sgx are proof that the site is fair and that it works very well. That is not to say that all of our songs are always in the top 10. This month, many of our songs did not make it into the quarterfinals. In fact, none of mine did. I am not complaining. I know that the voting population shifts and changes every month, people might get sick of hearing the same song, etc. But Jill entered a couple new songs this month in new categories (including some highly competitive ones) and DID make it into the quarters.

The only time OurStage's voting system is at all exploitable is at the end of the contest when there are very few songs left. This is the part where unscrupulous artists can ask their fans to "vote down" competing music. We certainly do not endorse this practice and encourage our fans to vote for us, but vote honestly. More importantly, those who rely on voting down never seem to get very far. After all it didn't hurt Jillian or sgx when they won the grand prizes.

6. It can be surprising when your songs that you think are weak or merely average rise high above those you entered that YOU thought were amazing. But again, this really has little to do with OurStage. Artists are notoriously bad judges of the quality of their own music; no offense to anyone here, as it's true for me as well. Several songs that I am quite fond of that I enter each month continue to not make it into the quarterfinals. I'm finally beginning to accept that maybe, after hundreds of votes, the average listener on the site just doesn't like it as much as I do. You can't accuse that many people of being biased or having the "wrong" opinion. If nothing else, as Brian once pointed out, OurStage is a great way of testing the waters with a song to see what the average reaction is to it.

Edit: It appears that Brian beat me to the punch by three and a half minutes

I do not see a problem in pointing out weaknesses or flaws. Otherwise how could these be corrected. Every business and service relies on feedback to iron out flaws and make improvements to make it better. That is a fact of life.

I am positive about Ourstage it is a great site. That has never been in question however I think that THERE ARE FLAWS in the whole system that need sorting. JMHO

If people have a problem with that then I think it is them that are thin skinned SHORT SIGHTED or not facing reality.

Brian I do not understand your attitude on this one. Just cause a thing has flaws or does not appear to be working properly does not make it an enemy. I rather adopt the approach that Soudstage is a friend. If it has problems then it is up to us to identify that problem through advice and feedback.

I am in the finals. However I still identify some operating problems with the engines and software this site uses. It is a fairly easy fix but impossible to even diagnose without people like me pointing them out.

If you've got it flaunt it as they say. Song is now at number twelve must be the mens turn to vote and they hate voting for a guy more handsome than them.

Well, I won't be joining in on the bank run...I saw "It's a Wonderful Life" after all, and I know how those things work.

Since fowl play is suspected, I'm going to enter my new song, "Twenty Chickens for a Saddle"!

Seriously though, voting volume intensifies just before each of those deadlines, and songs shoot up and down. One of mine that was floundering all month shot way up...not enough to hit the top 20. Is that foul play? Nope. Just a bunch of voting joggling the status quo.

This isn't the KGB we're talking about, it's a legitimate website. No need to tear it down in public and smear its reputation out of paranoia.

I'm not being Hasty, free or not, It's turning out to be just another music site as I said. Nothing special. The more crap they add on the longer it takes for the page to open, just like MySpace. I don't want the aggrevation. Ben

So if you enter a song halfway through a month, is it doomed because other songs received many votes earlier in the month, or is everything prorated in such a way that the time in the contest is not relevant?

I entered two songs partway through May but have them scheduled to compete throughout June......(Blue Island Beer Club)

Colin

Jim,

I wasn't addressing people pointing out problems. But the site is FAR different from other music page sites out there. Do you really think MySpace could give a crap about ANY grassroots artists out there? Do you think they'd EVER listen to a single comment you had to make? Do you think they'd come to a site like ours and individually answer concerns and take action? Ha!

There's a big difference between pointing out issues and tearing something down or suggesting they are no better than anyone else. That is simply not true on any level. I get approached by similar sites literally every week. All of them say the same things, but in the case of Daniel and Ourstage, I could tell he was actually LISTENING to what we were saying in return. They are actively seeking ways to create more opportunities for artists.. all sorts of performance opportunities, all sorts of mentoring opportunities etc. Plus there's the money.

What's the worst possible thing that can happen on Ourstage? Your song gets listened to several thousand times in a given month and doesn't rank very high at the end. That's the worst case scenario. From there, it can gain fans, it can be discovered by any number of people, it can rank well enough to get in the finals, it can then help you be chosen for a performance opportunity, it can win a channel and win some money, or it could win the grand prize. In the meantime, you can also discover some cool artists, find people to network with, make some new contacts with artists in your genre who make similar music as you and thus probably have very relevent contacts and experiences to share with you. You can target specific prizes like a slot at the Newport Folk Festival (at least 1 JPF member will be getting a full set there.. maybe more).

So Ben, if you'd won $5000 dollars last month, would you still be quitting? If so, then it's simply impossible to please you.

Brian

The amount a song gets listened to probably is skewed. I'm in a category with roughly 1200 entries. How many times did my song get counted as listened? 43 and it finished in 438th place - nowhere close to several thousand listens. To be sure, I'd even bet that of those 43 listens maybe 50% made it halfway through the song. In fact the only thing you're being counted on for a listen is the first 15 seconds.

Maybe so, but the higher you get, the more listens you get, and if you compete in smaller categories you will definitely get way more listens overall. More importantly, if you make it into the finals, you are practically guaranteed 10,000+ listens. A shot at that is a no-brainer when it doesn't cost any time or money.

Big Jim,

It's not that 97% of the voters think your song is better than the other songs...97% thought it was better, worse, far better...whatever the rating indicated...than that particular song against which it was paired...that song only. The vote percentage is only for that pairing...not how either of the paired songs faired against all the rest. At least, that is my understanding.

Alan

OK so now I have realized that there is a FLAW in the system on OurStage. IMHO...I took a break and have come back to the country catagory. I have been keeping track and I have done 6 sets of country songs. The same girl has come up 4 of the 6 times. Some of the 20 I have never seen come up, much less myself. I have dropped from 3 to 18 in one day. I am just pointing out that the shuffling process, at least on my computor is FLAWED! I have friends who have been pulling their music off OurStage for various reasons. I have noticed that a couple of catagories that had over 1000 entries in April have dropped to less than 500 in May. TO me that says something. People will demand to see some kind of way to make this seem more fair. I don't know what that would be but consider this a warning or a heads up from some discruntled musicians. I hate to see the site go backwards from where they are trying to head.
Thanks!

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

The shuffling process is not flawed. On the OurStage FAQ it explicitly says that it will often give you the same song several times in order to get an accurate opinion from you. For example, lets say you vote on Song A vs. Song B. You love both songs, but Song B is just slightly better than A, so you vote Song B as better. However, that one vote doesn't really tell the OurStage system much - what if you thought both songs were really bad, and song B was just marginally less bad than song A?

So, it clarifies your opinion by giving you more matchups to see what you REALLY think of any given song. This is not to say you will continue to get the same song in a row many times, of course, just that it is built into the system to have the same song matched up in a row if it needs clarification.

But more importantly, you'd have to do thousands or tens of thousands of votes to get a statistically valid picture of the rate of any given song(s) being presented. If you flip a coin five times in a row it's possible that it will land on heads every time. That doesn't mean the coin is broken or weighted. It's not LIKELY that would happen, but it's well within the realm of possibility.

Of course, during the quarterfinals, you are GUARANTEED to get every song the same amount of times. That's why you have a limited number of battles in the final rounds. You get every song matched up against every other song exactly once, and no more.

I can't improve much on that last post by Andrew. But it seems like we're focusing on a tree and calling it the forest. I'm willing to bet you have never seen the same match-up twice. The same song several times? Sure. In a category of 500 songs, you will eventually see it 500 times. But everyone else is experiencing an entirely different shuffle than the one you see, and I believe the balance comes out in the whole of the process.

Yes, I have seen the same match up twice. Funny you should say that. It happened this morning with the same two artists. That girl and another guy and it came up again a couple later. I just proved your theory wrong.

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Well, sorry to hear that...and even more sorry that I came off all snarky. I apologize for that.

But I love what those guys are doing, don't have the slightest belief there is anything sinister going on, and I think it's wrong to broadcast accusations against an organization that supports our interests.

As I said before we should be pointing out any flaws or problems so they can be rectified and the system improved. To throw our toys out of the pram, run away, or go in the huff is not productive or adult.

I am sure we all agree that Ourstage is a great site and we welcome it as one of our partners. We should be patient and understanding and offer constructive criticism and suggestions.

Thanks for reading my gripe Brian, but the truth is, I'm not trying to be pleased. It's a great concept but it is not "Grass Roots". The JPF MP3 and Lyric boards are grass roots. It is an overloaded web site that is subject to corruption by musicians who can't depend on their talent alone to rank high.
I am not disgruntled, I happen to like Daniel and think that they are doing a Nobel thing.
I simply chose to withdraw until I am convinced that everyone is dealt a fair hand. It just doesn't look this way to me right now. If you or anyone else here knew me than you would know that I am not a quitter. I think that they need some time to do a little house cleaning. Until then, I will carry on as if they never existed. Ben

Which is part of the flaw in the system. If a song catches someone at the wrong time - it might be better than the song it's showcased against, but that person will vote according to a feeling at that time. Thus it lowers the value and such. I've noticed that having put the same video up twice (the video that won the JPF awards) it has finished around 50th both times. This month it got about 150 listens and favorited as well. It never cracked the top 10, but it did crack to 15. But I will keep entering it, because it's free.

The other song (finished 438), started off much higher and dropped. This is a song mind you that has been getting extremely positive feedback from consumers and industry types alike - not from my ego. I'll keep entering it until I officially release it.

On the flip side, I'm not about to go writing electronica or tackling a small genre for the sake of doing something on a website. It's not yet struck my fancy to write that type of music.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

Jody,

The number of listens that you are looking at has NOTHING to do with the number of times it was judged. That number tells you how many ADDITIONAL listens people requested outside of the judging process. That means that 43 times someone decided they wanted to hear your song just because they wanted to hear it.

A lot of "assumptions" are being made by people that simply aren't true. Why damage a company simply because you feel it's okay to "guess" what you think they are doing wrong? I am pretty disappointed that some people who should know better are making inaccurate commentary here without really knowing facts.

I've done over 6000 judging sessions on there and I've never had the same two songs come up against each other more than one time. That included voting the max number of times in the semi-finals where I got every single combination mathmatically possible (I kept track on a note pad just to see it work).

Also, the reason Tammy that the numbers dropped is because people were no longer allowed to have more than 1 song in a given channel. It took a while to clean it up, but now that they have, you're actually seeing MORE people competing, but less songs per person in a channel. There were some channels where people were posting their entire album song by song in a channel.. or multiple albums worth of songs. So again, you're claim, which suggests people are leaving Ourstage in large numbers, is not only false, but the truth is they have more folks on there right now than ever before and it's growing constantly.

Folks.. we don't allow false statements to be made about anyone here.. including companies that are scammers. So let's not make false statements about an ally. It's truly unbelievable to read some of the bogus accustations being made here. Get your facts straight, or shut up until you actually know what you're talking about. Asking a question is one thing, but taking a guess and then turning it into a negative is simply not acceptable. We don't do it to scam companies and we're certainly not going to do it to honest ones.

Brian

Please don't let anything that I've said influence you Tammy.
Brian is right, but I am still stepping back for awhile until some matters are straightened out.
I know they aren't perfect and even if they were, people would still complain. Right now I am hearing complaints that I have thought of myself but never mentioned. So that tells me that something is not right. As Forrest Gump said, "That's all I got to say about that".

Usually assumptions like this are made strictly because the information is not clearly posted or easily found. With how a song is "tracked" on a users profile - it does not state anywhere that those listens are over and above the "judged" results. Maybe this is an oversight they ought to look at. Since the claim is made that people are supposedly getting 1,000's of "listens" where are people seeing/getting those numbers? Because I'm not finding them.

The question posed on this thread is "Where is your song at on Ourstage?" That's what I posted based on the information that I saw. I wasn't slamming them or damaging them, but I do believe there can be flaws in the system. There is no perfect system and I've already told you what I did think of it - that hasn't changed.

If it's this damaging, it's probably time to delete the thread and start over.

Tammy,

This is simply not possible. If you look at the quarterfinal judging system, you are given a maximum of 190 rounds. This is EXACTLY enough rounds to pit each of the 20 songs against each other once. (20*(20-1))/2 is the math. The -1 is there because you can't compete against yourself, and the /2 is because Song A vs. Song B is considered the same round as Song B vs. Song A.

It is very possible that there are two artists with similar cover art, or the same artist has two songs with the same art, which might lead you to assume (at a glance) that you are judging the same song. But it is simply not mathematically possible that you would have gotten the exact same matchup twice. I have voted over 1,500 times during the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals since I started participating in February. Jillian I believe has voted over 2,000 times in that period, and collectively, fans we speak with regularly have voted several thousand more times. None of us have ever observed the same matchup happening twice during the quarterfinals, semifinals, or finals.

Hey Brian
I hope you did not take my post as being a slam against Ourstage.
I think what they offer is great. I was only telling what my songs have done. I was not passing judgment on Ourstage.
The statement my song in the Male Singer songwriter category has not move all month is true. I has not moved more than a few point up or down.
By the end of the voting this month it was 726. I think it started out at 716. It stayed within a few points of that. Same as last month.(except when they were making the changes)
So it either isn't get judged much or it it's about a 50/50 split, LOL Either you like it or you don't. It's that kind of song.

We've discussed the number of listens on the Ourstage partner post I believe. This is why I wanted 1 single Ourstage post to discuss all this stuff. It gets too confusing when we're carrying on multiple discussions it seems. Originally this was supposed to simply be a place to tell folks where you had songs posted and how they were doing, but it got off track and has been all over the place. The post on the mentor board was better suited for tech discussion, but that has also gone all over the place. Then there was a new one on the general board for May songs.. which fortunately should have run it's course.

Any listens you have come from folks clicking to hear your song outside of judging. I wouldn't post the vote totals there because then folks would complain if one category had a larger number of votes (or one song over another) and who needs that drama. The number of votes will not likely be exactly the same. There's going to be variation.

If there's 2000 songs in a channel, I think it would take 1,999,000 votes for each song to face each other 1 time. You can imagine as the site grows and grows it will be very tough to generate the votes required to get multiple matchups for every combination. This month they cut it to 1 song per channel to help some with that. I think the next move, when needed, will be to switch to 1 song period. But they might have a while before they need to do that. I do know that membership is growing steadily there since Daniel got involved (as well as JPF). Now people have heard of them who never had in their first year. As any software starts ramping up with exponentially higher numbers, there are always glitches and problems. Something that works pefectly with a few thousand users will work very differently with 10K or more.

I think we've aleady had enough JPF members doing well to indicate it's a beneficial site for our members. There are so many positive ways to use the site that go beyond just the final results that I think you need to look at the bigger picture. And don't forget, for those of you who have entered the JPF awards this year, their support (along with TAXI, CD Baby, Disc Makers and BMI) is critical to even making it possible. Let's help them make the site a really positive thing for the community and perhaps be a little less focused on condemning it when there are problems. Believe me, I've brought more problems and issues to their attention than anyone else. Certain things are easy and obvious to fix, other things are much more complicated technically and also politically within any company. (Anyone who works in a corporation knows that just because one hand wants to change something, someone in another area may have their reasons they don't want to change...). Daniel has been working very hard to win the battles he can win and move the other issues closer to resolution where possible.

We have quite a few JPF members in the running right now... so lets hope another one wins the 5K again.

Brian

Bill,

I actually wasn't referring to your posts at all.

Brian

First, I really like Ourstage and what they are trying to do. I agree it is much better than Myspace.

I'm no rocket scientist but have worked with several friends and co-workers who have that type of implied IQ. Folks, there aint no way to write a perfect algorithm on judging something so subjective as which song is better. Else, wouldn't we all have the same favorite song? I'm sure the engineers at Ourstage are looking to make the algorithm better but it is a fairly new site. I saw from their last newsletter that some folks even got publishing deals. Not too bad for a free site.

On the other hand, I got a chuckle when I see the box that says "People who liked your song also like the following" and see that my country song is liked by people who like gangsta music, hip-hop music and jazz.

Why do you think that is? It's not revelent to your music. Just wondering.
I constantly get MySpace "Friend" requests from Hip Hop artists, Porn Stars, and Hollywood Glammies. I play acoustic American traditional music. What does my music and these people have in common? Nothing. They are trying to promote themselves by throwing Sh** at the wall and hoping that it will stick. Ben

The reason that people like your song and they like Gangsta Rap is because most people under 30 years old have little concern for genres. It's not at all unsusual to find Faith Hill and Kanye West on their iPods and they don't find that odd in the least. In my own case, I like all but a couple of the 100+ genres of music we have in the awards this year and have artists I like across all those genres. And now that such a massive amount of music is available for free or nearly so, kids are free to pick and choose anything they like without worrying about listening to a formatted radio station for example.

The real reason radio has always been so format strict has never been to please the tastes of their audiences. It's always been so that they can control the demographics of the most likely listeners for advertising. Now that kids and most everyone else for that matter are rarely listening to terrestrial radio to find new music or to listen to music at all, they've been freed from formats. That's not to say that even those who love all genres don't like to HAVE genres... because one day you're in a Classical mood.. another you're in a German Death Metal mood. And when you're in a particular mood, you want to easily be able to find that type of music. Genres have always been about making it easy for a consumer to most quickly find something they want. It doesn't mean they'll only like acoustic American traditional music... it means when they're in the mood for it, they want to be able to dial it in quickly. The younger the listener, the less they discriminate against any type of music. So don't be shocked at all.

As for MySpace.. that's a different thing. Those random "Be my friend" requests are simply to build stats and nothing more. The entire "friends" phenomena was a great idea for MySpace to build networks and numbers, but it means nothing. I know artists with well under 1000 friends who sell a LOT of CD's and get a LOT of people out to shows.. I know people with literally 50,000 friends who can't sell a single CD to any of them or get anyone to ever see a show. MySpace is a useless waste of time and as I predicted, the MySpace Music scam has finally exposed itself for what it is. They built it on the activity surrounding Indie Artists so they could have FREE musical content on the site.. and now that they've hit critical mass, they are pissing all over the indie community to kiss the ass of the majors. If all the indie artists pulled their stuff off tomorrow.. the site would collapse and disappear. But they won't. Musicians rarely do what is really best for them. They prop up scam artists and those that abuse them and they tear down their best friends and their best resources and would stab them all in the back if the "industry" ever batted an eye at them. It's always been that way sadly enough.

Brian

Ben,
Brian's theory makes more sense than the spam theory. I went back and checked on the artists in question and none of them had more than four fans, none of them asked to be my friend and none of them had more than six 'favorites'. Basically, they just added my song to their favorites list.

On myspace, I don't accept just any friend request and as soon as I see any spam, I will block them and delete them from my list. Haven't got any porn requests as of yet, how did you get so lucky?

I think Brian is right about the younger folks being less discriminate about music genres and styles. I do not know for a fact that it is for the reasons he gave; but I have no reason to doubt him. His explanation makes sense to me.

I have my son's iPod here with me. He is 39 years old. Here are twenty artists in sequence:

1 - Maroon 5
2 - CDB (Charlie Daniels Band)
3 - CCR
4 - Bruce Springsteen
5 - Norah Jones
6 - Diamond Rio
7 - Heartland
8 - Brice Springsteen
9 - Willie Nelson
10 - Me!!!! (Al David)
11 - Norah Jones
12 - Phil Collins
13 - Brad Paisely
14 - Tim McGraw
15 - Martina McBride
16 - Martina McBride
17 - Me Again (Woo Hoo!!!)
18 - Meatloaf
19 - Alabama
20 - Foreigner

So, if that is any indication, it lends some validity to Brian's assertion. I am much the same way. I like a great majority of the the major genres in music. I grew up listening to and playing nothing but Country music. It is probably my fovorite; but I like a lot of the other stuff that's out there. I could listen to Steve Tyrell and Diana Krall all day...sometimes do! If you would choose to do so, you could go to my OurStage page and look at my favorites. There are 6 or 8 different genres there.

I'll stay out of the My Space debate. Go there if you like it; don't go there if you don't.

Just my nickel's worth.

Alan

So where do my songs rank ?

Currently.....

4th in Electronica
12th in Instrumental
165th in Blues
311th in Indie Pop

No fan email lists, ( actually no fan base that I'm aware of) , no bulk mail outs or advertising. Heck, I don't even own a mobile phone.

What does it all mean ? Beats me, I'll figure that one out next week. To anyone that has voted positively, thanks. ( I'll give you the hard sell if the first two progress any further LOL )

cheers, niteshift

Rivertown is 164th (out of 1,026)in Singer/Songwriter (Male)

Lonely Man is 370th (out of 574)in Contemporary/Soft Rock

And I was going to enter my "Do You Want to Dance" cover, but from what I read, that catagory seems to be only for folks who only do covers. Did anyone else get that impression?

Same here.....

Actually, if someone told me a year or two ago that any song that I was playing and singing on would finish in the top 6th of anything, I'd have laughed silly....

I'm beginning to look at this as a great way to experiment - change things and see what works.....

By the way, I agree with all of you that suggested that we are not the best judges of our own work....still another good reason to participate....

Scott

Truer words were never spoken.

If you wanna know how good my songs are just ask me...
Better yet

ASK MY MOMMA!!!!!

LOL. Them Ourstage judges sure are fickle. The best song IMHO in cover bands which has held the top position for most of the month all of a sudden has crashed out of the top ten. The songs currently at the top positions IMHO should not have even been in the top twenty. I hope this situation changes before the semis.

Hey Jim,

Nope, they're not fickle. They just saw you, and ran screaming from the room.

I'm currently playing yoyo's, every position between 4th and 20th.

cheers, niteshift

I have been yo yoing since the start of the Q/fs. LOL

Hey maybe we could write a song about it. Enter it into the Eurovision. Well it could not be any worse than the rubbish on Saturday night. I normally have a laugh at the Eurovision. But it has gone even beyond that. Cheeky Cheeky... they have a cheek!

I haven't seen it yet Jim, but have seen the press reports. Sounds like the show that everyone likes to hate, and gets great ratings along the way. Them Germans are not impressed, so I hear.

Mien Got !, time for zzz's . Catcha if I'm still floating face up in the morning.

cheers, niteshift

I got another MySpace friend request today pointing to a porn and/or dating site. That's three this week.
I also got an e-mail on my web site from a nice lady saying "Your life is crap". At least I have one fan. Ben

I got a couple questions regarding this site. I checked it out, but couldn't really come away satisfied after reading the Faqs or the terms of condition.

Firstly, if you place a song on that site, do you lose the right to play it when and where you want? I saw kind of contradictory statements on that subject, though I might have misunderstood.

Secondly, is the service free? I was told its free signup, but does it cost to actually upload the songs, or anything? Again, I searched....but I may have just been temporarily blind.

And the current rankings are....

"Alienlandscape" by niteshift is floating face down in the water at No 11 in Electronica and needs reviving

"Synthetic Salsa Blue" by niteshift is tempting the taste buds at No 6 in Instrumental

"The Letter" by Big Jim has been posted by snail mail, sitting at No 16 in Covers, but through rain, snow and sleet in the dark of night, it will be delivered

"Follow Your Dreams" by Tammy Edwards is following the path upward at No 14 in country

"Avalon" by Jillian Golden is the apple of eveyone's isles at No 2 in New Age, while "The Winds of Change" has a storm brewing in Contemporary/Soft Rock at No 18

and finally, a new day is dawning in New Age with Michael Borges taking the No 4 spot with "New Every Morning".

Did I forget anyone? Best of luck folks..........

cheers, niteshift

Ourstage is completely free to use. There are no hidden charges or catches. The song and all its rights remains the property of the user and there are no strings attached. So no fears on any of your worries.

I have been thinking about this all weekend. I feel that I WAS hasty in my decision to step back from "OurStage" and am ready to "Eat Crow".
Brian can write the reasons why we should support them until he's blue in the face and some of us still won't listen.
Here is why I changed my mind. I have been a part of JPF for a couple of years now. I come to this site every day and have made who I consider "Real" friends even though I have never met anyone. I believe that this organisation is truly "Grassroots" and have been able to have my music listened to by others who are more discriminating then the average music fan which gives you a more honest assessment of what you are offering. MySpace doesn't do that. OurStage probably does that in a way because you are being judged by other writers and musicians along with the regular fans.
The most important reason that I changed my mind is that OurStage is a JPF sponsor. Daniel has posted answers to questions. I don't believe that this "Tom" guy from MySpace has ever done that. Daniel even commented on one of my songs.
MySpace is looking phonier to me every day. I may drop them if I keep getting Spammy friend requests.
After my hasty retreat from OurStage, I began thinking about what I did and reread this whole thread. I will reenter my song "The Rainmaker" in the Americana contest for June. Ben

Ben,

May I compliment you? Not necessarily for deciding to go back to OurStage, per se. I do think that they may be the best site of that type. I am not sure what all the negative hype is about My Space, other than the aforementioned arbitrary friends requests. There is, apparently, something going on there regarding Indie artists that I am not aware of. So, I cannot comment intelligently on that. I'll have to look at that.

However, what I wanted to compliment you on was the fact that it is difficult for most folks to do an intelligent reevaluation of a position they have taken on any issue and then decide reconsider that position after looking through the information they have. When someone makes a public statement on a position they hold about anything important and then publicly say that they have changed their position after further evaluation, that says a lot about their character.

I don't call it eating crow. I call it simply exercising your rational judgment, as you see it, and responding to it accordingly. As I said, it's not that you decided to to reenter the OurStage arena that I compliment...it is that you are bold enough to say, publicly, that you are willing to to reconsider your position. Not a lot of folks would do that...particularly in a public forum. My hat is off to you!

Good luck with your song next month.

Alan

+1 on Ben's character.

It's not common for people to share their own thoughts and decisions that way, or to ever admit they've changed their mind about something after some consideration...it takes a certain kind of strength to do that, and when you do it publicly it ends up teaching other people something valuable.

Hi Ben I agree with Al there is no weakness in changing opinions or reconsidering options. In fact it shows strength of character through a willingness to rationalise.

He's a waffler. A flip-flopper.

I am not sure I understand all this hate for Myspace.

I am trying to figure out why a friend request from a total stranger is better on Ourstage than it is on Myspace. On one it's spam on the other it isn't?
On Myspace I get friend requests from fans, non musicians. Are there any non musicians on Ourstage?

Brian, would you care to share with us who this person is who has 50,000 friends yet cannot sell a single CD. I might go buy one just to try to help the poor guy out, LOL.

I don't think I have had more than two "Spam from Porn sites" in the couple years I have been there.
I don't solicit friends or listeners but my songs get played. Not a thousand plays a day. Just a few a day. But they are playing my songs. I am usually listed in the Top 100 in my home State Michigan. More often than not in the top 50.

Why is that a bad thing? What is it that Myspace is doing to me that is so terrible? They don't ask me for money, I don't get spam E-mail from them, And I have never been solicited for anything.
I get more plays of my songs than Ourstage, Soundclick, and JPFolks combined. If I post and solicit a song on JPFolks I will get listens for a few days, same with Soundclick. I use to get more plays on soundclick when I was active on the boards.I had more plays yesterday on Myspace than I have in the last week from the others combined. And I never solicit for plays or fans.
Why is that a bad thing?

And can someone explain for me why Ourstage has sub Genres for rock, metal, and Rap but none for country. They lump all Country under one channel. Traditional, Southern Rock, Classic, Modern, bluegrass, etc. Why is that?

Thanks guys. accolades were the last thing on my mind. I believe that things that I or anyone else write can influence other people. If we write irrational or negative things, especially concerning a third party, it can have a domino effect and people begin taking sides. I don't want to be responsible for that. The best thing that I can do is look at the good compared to the bad and reevaluate accordingly. The good out weighs the bad in this case. Ben

Hi Bill.

"And can someone explain for me why Ourstage has sub Genres for rock, metal, and Rap but none for country. They lump all Country under one channel. Traditional, Southern Rock, Classic, Modern, bluegrass, etc. Why is that?"

I am very interested in seeing the answer to that question myself. Another question I have is that what can be done to stop all those off topic songs that keep appearing on different categories? Every time I judge a category it seems full of stuff totally inappropriate to that category. Makes a fool of the whole idea of having categories.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but here's 2 big points on MySpace.

1. The "friends" thing on there has become a waste of time. If people really invited people they have any knowledged of or interest in to become "friends" then it might be relevent. But what actually has happened on MySpace is that most people simply are collecting #'s rather than real people they have a connection to. They want to increase that "friends" number in any way they can simply for the sake of doing it. It's a status thing. A lot of people think is means something to have a larger number. It doesn't. It DOES mean something if you have a number that actually represents people you've met, people you've formed an ACTUAL friendship with and people who might actually have an interest in your music. That applies often to people with low numbers of friends... but those who simply go about trying to hoard numbers from strangers are being dishonest and inflating their popularity for bogus reasons. The number isn't important.. the real people behind them and how you form real relationships does. MySpace teaches kids and adults alike the opposite lesson and it's damaging to the artist community to keep the false facade of that myth alive. Even Bill is clamoring to know who has the 50K members, when he REALLY should have been curios as to who the person with 1000 friends who sells CD's and gets people out to shows is.. then he might learn something useful. (Sorry Bill.. but you took the bait hook line and sinker and made my point perfectly).

2. MySpace is simply a mega corporation (owned by Rupert Murdoch) who is collecting data and hits to sell to advertisers. That's their entire model. They use music as a free lure to get people to use the site and they pay ZERO to anyone in return. Sure, some people have been able to use the site to promote what they do, no question. But that is simply an accidental by product, not the intent of the site or company. Ourspace would also like to increase traffic and numbers. They are focused solely on the music as a method to build the community and they are offering real life tangible benefits all along the way to the artists involved for their participation and help in doing it. It's a partnership where the more you use it, the more value you get out of it and the more value they continue to put into the system. It goes beyond just the cash they pay out. They are building relationships with venues and promotors to book talent. They are working with experts to offer mentoring sessions. They are engaging directly with the artists themselves regularly to improve the site and find more ways to make it mutually beneficial to both parties. MySpace has never and will never do that for the indie artists. When they finally decided to break off and become a stand alone entity for the music portion of MySpace.. did they come to the artists who helped build it with their music and fans to get them involved? No. They pissed in our faces and went instead to the Major labels who have always shunned them and gave them part ownership and let them set up all the rules to benefit themselve and excluded the entire base of users from the process. Now, at best, the community will get a few table scraps of benefit solely as a by product while the majors use the site and cash in.

I think MySpace and Ourstage are about as different of their pathway to get to the same place as is possible.

Brian

Thanks Ben.. I appreciate you posting that. Info like this comes up in search engines and there's a lot of value for folks to DO change their mind to say so to include that in the record of the discussion. Often folks leave the negative without the corresponding positive and people coming in from outside only see that and are influenced by it. Hopefully they'll read the entire thread and see your thought process and it will help them make an informed decision themselves.

Brian

Niteshift,
Very nice... thanks for the update!
Let's see what happends this Thursday when we head
into the semi-finals!

Cheers,
Michael

Sod'S law Tammy LOL

I would like to see an audition. Each song submitted for a competition category should meet certain minimum criteria.

1. The song should be recorded to a certain minimum standard.

2. It should be relevant for that category.

3. The performance IE vocals and playing should be up to a certain standard.

This would weed out the unlistenable stuff. There is a fair share of it about and it would discourage the JOKERS.

Big Jim,

Where the problem comes in for a review or criteria for acceptance is that that process, too, is purely subjective. As an example, I think Kris Kristoferson is one of the most talented lyricists we have ever seen. He rates very high in my book. At the same time, I would pass a law that says he should never be able to get within half a mile of a micrphone. I know that a lot of folks like that rough, slightly off-pitch voice. I cannot stand it. So, using my criteria, Kris could never have a song on OurStage. That would be unfortunate. And, I am sure that there are vocalists whom I like a lot thast other folks think are horrible. So, there really is no way to take the subjectivity out of it. And I am sure that they are not going to have a panel of 5 or 6 folks review every one of the several thousands songs submitted each month and take a majority vote for acceptance. That would be virtually impossible. I think that we just have to accept that there is going to be stuff that we, as individuals, would call pure trash and unworthy that other folks think are fine examples of music. It's a noble idea; but it simply isn't possible to do.

I have a couple of reservations about the way I preceive that some things are handled at OurStage. But, I still think that it is the best site of its type out there. I'll give them an opportunity to smooth things out for a few months. if some of my concerns appear to assauged down the road, I'll continue to participate. If not, I'll reevaluate whether or not I want to continue participation. I am not expecting everything to be to my liking. That isn't going to happen. But, there are some changes I am hoping will evolve in time to maintain my interest in their site. As I said, I'll give them some time before I reevaluate. A couple of my concerns have already been addressed to Daniel. I'll see how that plays out. The political machines at the site are probably more difficult to adjust than the technical gear.

Good thought, Jim. But, I don't think that it is possible. All the best to ya!

Alan

Thanks for the speedy reply Big Jim. Much appreciated.

Hey Big Jim
My vote musta helped. you are at number 4...woohooo

It must be them lovely curly locks.

Jim & anyone that's getting into the top 10, good going!
I'll take some time later this week during the semi-finals to vote in categories that I haven't entered for this month. Actually, right now I still have a good chance of getting into the semi-finals for my song "New Every Morning" in New Age/World channel. I'll be able to vote for the rest of you in whatever channels you're in! I'll never know if you voted for my song, but if you did, just let me know... it'd be nice to hear!

Looks like we're going to earn some achievment awards this month!

All the best,
Michael

I didn't know that Big Jim worked the grill at a breakfast bar!

Hey Guys, listen up !

I overlooked Ernest Whaley, who is at No 16 in Soulfest with "Children".

http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/ernestwhaley

Sorry Ernest, you must have slipped under the radar.

cheers, niteshift

Well, got my very first spam "comment" from somebody named Honey Brown on Ourstage. Is there anyway to turn off posting direct links in the comments?

Honey Brown is a real artist. In fact, she's a JPF member and previous awards nominee. What did she spam you with?

Brian

As of right now, my song "Avalon" is 3rd in New Age/World. The collaboration with Andrew (zircon), "The Winds of Change," is 18th in Contemporary/Soft Rock.

Lots of great songs out there this month! I'm enjoying listening to entries from JPF peeps.

See I told you there was some weird voting. LOL

I have been almost every position between 4 and 18.
My thanks to all who voted for my song. But please vote honestly for the song you genuinely think is best.
JPF's reputation may be at stake if we just vote for our own.

I was thinking that too Jim, but I don't think a few votes coming from JPF folks ( although they are very much appreciated ! ) will make a great deal of difference. There's whole armies of street teamers out there who are rallying the troops. I'm not so sure if it will get them anywhere. I would like to think that the songs will stand on their own merit.

As I said before, I have no email lists or fan base, so am surprised at the results.

It's good to see your song up there, I'd go and vote for it, but am too scared I might fall for your picture ! :/

The standard is exceptionally high in the genres I have been listening too, both in terms of compostion, production and muscianship, with only the odd dud song which is, um, a little out of place, so I look foward to the semi's.

The semi's will be VERY intersting. I hope a few of us get through to keep the interest alive.

PS - to anyone who may have thrown a vote at "Alienlandscape", thank you ! It has revived itself to
No 2 and is floating face up, having a bit of a rest from the rough seas. Well, for now anyways......

cheers, niteshift

Brian,
I agree that she is a real and talented artist. But on the comment she left, all that was there was:

http://www.t2000ultra.com/?rid=43790

Uh oh... It sounds like she may have been phished. That's not good - does anyone know her email address?

Jillian,

That's exactly what it appears to be. It happened to me on <My Space once. jack Swain, and couple of other folks, were receiving a lot of crap about cell phone...sent from my account. We reregistered my account and I've had no problem for 6 or 8 months. But the the damage is that once you are perceived as a spammer, even though it really wasn't you, your professional rep takes a big hit that is very, very difficult to repair. Hopefully, mostly for her, she will get this rectified soon.

Alan

Alan: yes, it's a terrible thing. I think I too may have been phished on MySpace, and that' what caused my old account (/jilliangoldin) to lose all its content. I received an angry PM from someone I'd never met in my life, so it seems as though someone had taken over and abused the account.

In other news, the semifinals have officially begun. Less than 48 hours left! Who here has made it into the Top 10? Michael Borges and I are both there in New Age/World.

Hey Jillian,

Yep, I wandered over to New Age today to have a listen, and cast a vote, and the first 2 songs out of the barrel where yourself and Michael ! I beat a hasty retreat, cos I'm too scared, LOL. I'll go back this evening, but if the same combination comes up, you guys will have to be content with the "same" button.

I just scraped in to Electronica, and Instrumental, so we'll see how the next 48 hrs go. One's going good, the other not so good, but I reckon a lot can change in that time.

Best of luck folks !

cheers, niteshift

Well overnight my song has bounced down 12 places and so have other songs that were at the top for most of the month. Looks like tactical voting to me. The two songs voted best songs for most of the month ar not even in the top ten now.

Know how you feel Jim. I was doing OK, but now have a lead weight tied to both ankles, on account that I have 2 songs, ( that's one for each ankle ) which are sinking without a trace. I'd call in the cavelry if I had one, except I don't know if they have horses which can swim, and also do mouth to mouth at the same time. Perhaps tomorrow will be a different story. Of course, if I had your ugly mug up there as my graphic, I'd be going great ! Ha !

cheers, niteshift

Greetings....all from Canada ..in the top 10 this month in the Jvc Jazz...look for Zack in the Box
http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/geofflapptrio

and Yo Bo in jazz genre. .No.45
http://www.ourstage.com/entry/FDEFMZESGUPE-yo-bro-geoff-lapp-trio


The trio has been in the Top Ten since April.


Cheers
Lorraine
www.geofflapp.com

http://thejazznetwork.ning.com/profile/GeoffLappTrio http://thejazznetwork.ning.com/profile/GeoffLappTrio

Hey Jazz,

Welcome ! Cool stuff to make it in the top 10 in jazz. Very difficult field. Best of luck to ya !

cheers, niteshift

I'm currently judging in a variety of genres on OurStage. The New Age/World and Instrumental categories are both strong. Pop has about 3 or 4 songs that could go radio. Some genres though are weak(IMO). I have had numerous battles with JPFers(my votes are classified info)- some head to head. I think the Instrumental category seems to be determined by one's instrument preference. If the arrangement and performance are both top notch, it would seem the the featured instrument would be the hot button. Best wishes.

My song, "Avalon" has made it to the music finals! If anyone will be voting, I'd be grateful if you'd keep your eyes peeled for me.

I quickly scanned the winners and saw at least a half dozen JPFers. I don't have time to go through all of them though (been working 20+ hours the last several days getting ready for the trip). Good luck to all of you and I hope a JPFer makes it 3 months in a row!

Brian

An awesome round. Jill made it to #2 (!) and our friend Audix, with two entries in the finals, had one at #6.

There's an important lesson that we learned yesterday. The rankings are NEVER final. The person who actually won the grand prize only appeared at #1 in the last hour or so of the voting. For the entire day, people were in and out of the #1 spot and the top 10 consistently. Jill pulled up from #30 to #2. So if you're voting, never give up, there's always hope.

Actually Cobalt and the Hired Guns are also JPF members. So that is 3 months out of 3. Congrats to everyone who did well!

Brian

Wow, bravi!

Congrats to those who have won or placed High in the rankings. I have listened to most of them and they definitely deserve to be there.

What I am learning from this is either my taste in music is really weird or my songs really suck, LOL. I have listened to dozens of songs that rank higher than mine and I think my song is better. Yet my song continues to drop.
One thing I have noticed is in the category's I am in most of the songs sound a lot alike. Maybe that's the secret. Don't do anything different or unique.
I think it's time for me to take a hint and drop out of there.

Never give up on something you feel strongly about being different makes the music more interesting.

I rank in R&B 70 and will keep tryings and now in POP and Songwriter.

All we can do is stay true to what we feel and are passionate about. The MUSIC

Bill you are not alone. I have experienced the same thing. I think there is more tactical voting and "cheating" for want of a better word than we are being led to believe. I saw some great songs which had held the top place for most of the month drop out of the top ten and remain there during Q/finals. These songs were replaced by quite poor songs which did not deserve to be there. Some songs were only added to the category with a day or two left in the comp yet overnight jumped into contention I think this is unfair. All songs should be entered within the first 48 hours of the start of the month.

I don't know Big Jim. For that many folks to resort to cheating would be a little dificult to believe.
I do agree on some of the songs that seem to drop out of contention. But there is no accounting for public taste. You just never know.

I am not really bothered by my own songs position. It is what it is.

Ended up at.....

No6 in Electronica
No9 in Instrumental
No195 in R&B
No312 in Blues

Quite a spread....

As Big Jim has noted, there does appear to be tactical, or what I would refer to as predatory voting at certain points along the voting time scale.

The most marked example of this was the song I entered in Instrumental, "Synthetic Salsa Blue", which after being in the top 20 for most of the month, and floating around 6-15 th place, suddenly took a nose dive to No 125, a couple of days before the quarter finals started. Statistically, that's very improbable. It did recover over half a day or so, and ended up in the top 20 for the quarter finals.

Is anyone allowed to register and vote at any point ? If so, I would suggest allowing registration only before the top 20 are announced, to prohibit would could be construed as "stacking the odds" once the contest becomes heated.

I'm fine with the final positioning, so please don't take these comments as sour grapes. Just a suggestion to ensure a more even state of play.

cheers, niteshift

PS - Bill, when there's $5,000 riding on it, it sure makes sense to get as many votes as you can, which ever way you can.

I wonder how much of it has to do with marketing? Do some of the folks actively persue voters, court them for votes.
Nothing wrong with marketing yourself to help you become more successful.
I am terrible at that. I don't market myself at all, No fan base, no mailing list, nothing.
Maybe I need an agent or a manager, LOL.Or a PR person.

Hey Bill,

Same with me, no mailing list no fan base, so I have to be content that the 2 songs that made it into the top 20 actually did it on their own accord. As for the other two ? , well, public taste is very fickle, LOL.

cheers, niteshift

It's really not possible to do any kind of tactical downvoting in the pre-quarterfinals. Was that being implied by anyone? You'd have to judge hundreds of songs just to get to the one you're looking for, possibly thousands, which would take a great deal of time. When you finally did get it, you'd still only have ONE vote on it, which wouldn't make a huge impact.

Seriously, try it yourself. Sit down at, say, 1PM then go into Electronic and try to vote for your song *once*. Though it's possible you'll get a song you want to get early on, I can just about guarantee you'll be there for hours before you do.

Hey Andrew,

No, it's not possible by one person, but it is possible by large cohorts of likeminded individuals, or semi-automated systems. Unlikely I know, but possible.

I'm more concerned about mass sign-ups after the posting of the top 20. I think there is room for playing the system, especially after the top 10 have been announced. Any ideas on this ?

cheers, niteshift

Jill and I know a group of people that tried to cheat in the pre-quarter final rounds using some kind of a script system. They tried it two months in a row, as a matter of fact, and OurStage caught them both times. The cheaters were removed the first month, and the second month their songs had the illicit votes removed, sending them down to <250 in the rankings. So, I'm pretty sure OurStage has a handle on that kind of thing.

As for mass signups in the top 20/10, well, I don't really see what the problem is there. OurStage encourages you to ask your fans to vote. They want traffic, and after all, the site is supposed to be a complete democracy with votes drawn from "the fans" in general. My fans are certainly part of that population, and so are yours! Jill and I ask our fans to vote each month in the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals, should we make it there, and there simply isn't anything wrong with that.

We always tell them to be honest and to NOT use downvoting or proxy accounts, for example, and through our efforts we have encouraged numerous artists to sign up for OurStage themselves AND vote in the pre-quarterfinals (not for us specifically, but for fun.) Some people have accused the site of being a popularity contest. So what? sgx put it best earlier in the thread. If he earned hundred of fans through years and years of hard work, he deserves the reward of encouraging those fans to support him in a contest like this.

Inevitably some people will say, "But the people with the most fans aren't necessarily the best musicians." Maybe so. However, fans are the best metric of finding good music, short of having an elite panel decide what's best. Not that there's anything wrong with that method at all, but it's the exact opposite of the point of OurStage.

That's right Andrew.
I believe if you have worked hard to develop your fan base it is perfectly ok to be asking them to support you. After all that is why you develop a fan base.
Nothing wrong with that at all.

FANS! So that's what I have been missing (LOL).

Today I decided to enter "Town's On The Edge" in Americana, but I ended up loading the wrong file. So I had to withdraw it and reload the correct file -- it's now "It's A Town on the Edge". I think I can be my own worst enemy sometimes.

Town's On the Edge: http://www.ourstage.com/music/channel/67-americana/LNYGFTNZEVAV-its-a-town-on-the

Look's like another bottom-feeding month for me.

Kevin

Post deleted by TAMERA64

Yes, to tack on to what Andy said... Encouraging your own fans to vote in the last round is definitely important, considering how many people actually participate for that final 24 hours! At that point, all the music genres are pitted against each other; genre bias can play a huge role for listeners, because most people tend to lean towards the more "accessible" genres like Acoustic, Rock, Pop, etc. You may have noticed that Rap and Heavy Metal tracks tend to wind up at the very bottom of the finals rankings - even though they are the best of their channel and usually well made.

OurStage ran a contest back in March: artists who got the most new fans to join in the span of one week would get their music submitted to AOL for consideration. Well, Andrew and I both wound up on that list - but there were over a dozen people who recruited more fans than us, and still didn't place as high in the finals. So to summarize... having your own fan base can only help in those last 24 hours, but that alone may not be nearly enough if your track were not actually very good! (Luckily, most tracks *are* good in the finals. )

Asking fans to vote earlier on in the month - on the other hand - is basically pointless, because there are so many submissions in each channel; the chances are slim that your own song will come up. At least we can all be generally satisfied that the songs making it into the Top 20 deserve to be there.

I do not know how many fans we are talking about here but it seems to me that it would be better asking fans to support the artist by buying their Cds or purchasing their downloads.

Personally I would prefer doing well on Ourstage because the general public genuinely thought my music deserved it rather than a few biased fans rigging a vote. I do not see any mileage or integrity in doing otherwise. Ourstage should be used solely as a yardstick to see how the public feel about your songs.

It is always difficult voting for songs from different genres put against each other. Most people I suspect vote for the song from the genre they prefer even if technically it sucks compared to another song from an alien genre.

I wonder how many folks on Ourstage are Non-musicians or Non-artists. I don't think there is a way to tell.
It would be interesting to see if this is just a peer group site or if there are large numbers of "Fans".
Seems like most internet music sites are primarily musicians.

Jim,

I understand where you're coming from. The thing is, how do you get a good representation of the general populace? In a perfect world, using statistical methods, you'd select a random sample from different areas of the country - the same way political polls are conducted. This would be the most fair thing. But OurStage is not like that, since such a website would have to be closed to any new visitors. By nature, OurStage can't be a perfect representation of the public at large. That much is clear, because if it were, hip-hop would do far better than it does now.

So it's the next best thing. If you let anyone make an account at OurStage, you're basically inviting the general population to participate. Maybe more country fans will end up joining. Maybe techno fans are in the majority. Who knows? What I do know is that MY fans are part of the general populace. So are yours, so are Bill's, and so are the fans of every other artist on OurStage. The invitation is extended to all of them equally.

Of course I agree that actual rigging of the results via intentional downvoting, or other forms of cheating, is despicable and I don't support it at all. I explicitly ask my fans not to do that, and if they want to support me, they still must vote honestly.

In an ideal world, Jim, a contest like that would be possible... somewhere. But that's not what OurStage is actually about. They WANT artists to solicit their own fans. So yes, if you have a fan base, you are completely entitled - and encouraged - to use it. If you're personally using OurStage as a thermometer, that's great for you. But PLEASE don't put down others' integrity who are in it to compete and still playing by the rules. It's a little rude, frankly.

Here are a few samples from official OurStage emails about soliciting your own fan base to join in, if you need convincing:

Top 10 email, 5/29:
"You've earned the right to show off: Recruit everyone you know to check you out on OurStage.com. Show them how far you've come and get them interested in the next great revolution in music and video. You, my friend, are at the forefront of that revolution."

Top 10 email, 3/29:
"A little encouragement can go a long way Now's the time to make sure your fans are doing all they can for you. To help facilitate the possibility of you moving up a notch, we've included a sample email you can send out to your fans, or post as a bulletin, or have tattooed on your forehead. However you use it, it's there to encourage your fans to register for OurStage if they haven't already done so, and to come back and vote again for next round.

May luck shine on you,

The OurStage Team
Hey fan of us,

It's Semi-Finals time at OurStage.com, America's great independent music and video discovery destination, and we're shooting for top act of the month. There's quite a bit at stake here, such as gigs at festivals and other career-making goodies.

And this means, of the thousands of bands competing to be #1, (your name) stands a decent chance of taking it. If you already voted us into the Semi-Finals, we hope you'll come back and support us again. If not, hope you'll vote for us now.

So thanks for your vote, if you did - it means a lot. And please vote for us again. If you're not yet an OurStage member, you can easily become one right now, right here. It's fast, easy and free.

Yours very loudly,

(your name)"

Top 20 email, 3/25:
"Most of you, I suspect, have fans who are not connected to you by DNA or marriage. As much as you depend on your fans, we here at OurStage also need their involvement to see us on to bigger pastures. So here's a special opportunity, offered exclusively to our esteemed quarter finalists. Between now and the end of March, any artist who adds 20 or more new fans into your fan club will be automatically submitted to AOL for promotional consideration (musicians only), not to mention a passage in our beloved newsletters and other promotional announcements.

The best way for you to earn the honor is to tell ALL your friends and devoted fans who are not on OurStage to register for OurStage ASAP and join your fan club."

So it is a popularity contest to see who has the most fans. I am sorry I did not realise that. I thought let the fans decide was a general term meaning music fans not particualrily loyal to any artist to judge what they thought was the best song.

Well I apologise for being rude but stick to my guns. If what you say is the case then that sucks. THAT is being rude to people who are relying on fair and impartial voting. No wonder the results are all over the place.

Nowhere does it say, "Get all your friends to sign up so they can vote only for you and down-vote everyone else!" As Andrew has already stated, we and our other friends (who have some overlap in fan base) only ask people to vote HONESTLY. They have to rate all the other songs as they would anyway - can't just skip to us, the way the system works to begin with.

There is simply nothing wrong with encouraging people who have been longtime supporters of your music to join in the fun - especially considering OurStage ASKS the finalists to do so. If you have a problem with it, maybe the site isn't for you. Complaining won't change things, and I've seen an impressive amount from you in all these OurStage threads.

To expect long time supporters of your music to remain impartial is naive to the extent of being silly. I have no problems with asking friends to join in the fun but it has to be pointed out that this can account for unfair voting and unjust winners if enough people are recruited in this way. That is all I was saying.

Perhaps it is you who have caught the wrong end of the stick and this site is for people like me.... not for people who manipulate to win at all costs.

Jim, are you really accusing three fellow JPF members of manipulating to win at all costs? I hope you're referring to other people (like the one sleazy guy who was mentioned who encouraged his fans to cheat.) Again, it bears repeating that there are quite a few other artists who have significantly more fans (on AND off OurStage) than the previous three winners, yet those artists have not won the grand prize or placed as high as us in the finals.

I heard one of your entries last month that had ranked pretty high. I enjoyed it and I think it has an excellent shot at getting into the quarterfinals. Keep entering your strong material and if people really do like it, you really will make it into the later rounds. The first month I entered, my song "Breathing You In" (feat. Jill) did not get into the quarters. The next month, it placed 3rd in the finals! The following month, it was back to not making it into the quarters again.

Remember it is really impossible to do any sort of manipulative voting in the pre-quarters. As I said earlier, we've seen people try, and they were caught. OurStage is good about that.

I've been away from performing for four years. So now I'm building a fan base again. OurStage is just one avenue to use. If one is looking for the voting there to confirm whether they write good songs or not, I would suggest performing them live where they stand on there own and see the reaction.
With these contests there are so many apples to oranges comparisons that occur. For example, I do novelty songs. Is there a novelty category? No. So I must compete in categories where I'm at a disadvantage because of genre conflict. However - say for example I put a song into competition in the Pop category. Since that is one of the more high traffic categories, I reap the benefit of reaching more people with my music. And one thing I've learned about the music I write - whether people like it or not, they do remember the songs - and that's the power of a good hook. Do I need to win to benefit? No. If I acquire fans, I win. If I acquire enough fans, I win big. Look at it as a business. This business is not for the hypersensitive. I like what OurStage has done in avoiding a lot of the abuses I've seen at other sites. Yes there's a lot of material that's low quality. And some of it floats(you know the saying). But that's life. Some Top 40 songs are low quality. One can win with crap. But could one take pride in it, if they did - and knew better?

First off, I don't have much of a fanbase or any. Given that, my goal is just to reach the top twenty. My only suggestion is to cut off submitting entries at some point much earlier than the start of quarter finals. As Jillian has suggested, it is very difficult to manipulate voting during the early rounds due to the sheer volume of competition. However, what about entries that are entered just a couple of days before quarterfinals? (Speculation on my part to follow). Wouldn't the algorithm in this case try to 'catch up' by trying to pit the new entry with as many matchups as possible to get a more accurate reading? In that case, it would be easier to 'cheat' your way into the quarter finals as the new entry would show up in more matches. As Jim and others have suggested, the last few days seem to have more movement of song placements that one might expect. Even I thought that the last couple of days in the 'country' category had some very odd movement and entries that I hadn't seen before in the top ten suddenly show up. Just my observation and suggestion.

I like the idea of a novelty and/or comedy category.

I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am just stating my opinions on Ourstage. I apologise if anyone has got the wrong end of the stick but that will not change my opinion. There has been some weird voting and not always does the system seem fair IMO. I am only suggesting ways in which the system can be improved. I am not alone in exposing a number of flaws in the system and pointing these out. I always maintain that anything can be improved. This is usually done by complaining or making suggestions as to how it can be improved. To state that complaints will not change things is an insult to anyones intelligence and counterproductive especially Ourstage. We have been encouraged to make comments and suggestions and promised that all will be considered. Is this suddenly now not the case?

It has to be pointed out that due to the fickle nature of the human being and a wide spectrum of taste there is no perfect system of music competition. That said we should all pull together to try to improve Ourstage to be the best it can.
I will also repeat that it is naive to expect fans of any individual to vote fairly and impartially. That being the case measures should be taken to prevent judging abnormalities and irregularities. I am not convinced that there is enough being done at the moment.

Please do not get the wrong idea I do not have sour grapes about winning or not winning competitions. That part of music is not very important to me at the moment. However I am positive in attitude and like to see fair play for all. I will fight for a cause and ways to improve it for others as well as myself.

So far I have only entered a couple of songs as a bit of fun and to test the waters so to speak. Debatebale if there is much mileage in taking it as serious as some people. However as was stated previously extra exposure and a wider audience for your music is important but personally I would prefer to sell my music than give it away.

I'd second that motion!!! Never tried to write comedy myself, but I love listening to it.

"I have a sad story to tell you
It may hurt your feelings a bit
Last night when I walked into my bathroom
I stepped in a big pile of...SHAVING CREAM"

Eric

Jim - it's not naive to think my fans can, and do, vote honestly. Andrew, sgx, Audix, and myself all come from an online community of amateur musicians similar in some ways to JPF: www.ocremix.org. All the music there is completely free, and we and the other artists make it solely because we like to. We're not in it for money or prizes, and we have been actively participating for years.

The fans on ocremix.org admire our music, yes, but they are used to critiquing and evaluating other artists because there are over 1500 songs on the site, and there is a public reviewing system. We didn't just tell them about OurStage so that they could vote for us, but so that they can enjoy the community as a whole. They are hungry for new music, and genuinely enjoy having a hand at evaluating it because that is how ocremix.org works. And many of them are entering there own songs now, too!

I would appreciate it if you could try not to pigeonhole me (or anyone else here) into your views of "fickle humanity" unless it's completely warranted. I haven't been posting here for very long yet, but hopefully you will give me the benefit of the doubt... that I'm an honest and friendly person.

Making reasonable and constructive suggestions is great, but your complaints have been edgier - and you're only offending people in the meantime. There should be a way to make them that isn't insulting or generalizing. And the people who matter (like OurStage staff) would probably be more receptive if we can pose our suggestions in that way.

I was referring to all fans not just yours. It is incredibly naive to think that any fans are impartial, a fact of life, a human failing, call it what you will but people are influenced by favouritism and nepotism even subconsciously and with all due respect and the best will in the world all fans are guilty of human nature. It may be true that your fans are more impartial than others but my point is still valid. You have obviously not considered that other peoples fans are not so honestly inclined as yours and it was them I was referring to.

This is not a personal attack or pigeonhole or calling honesty or friendliness into question. I have no idea why you have taken this so personally. I am stating my opinions generally on Ourstage not pointing fingers at anyone in particular. I see flaws in the system and am trying to bring these to peoples attention to try and improve the system for all of us.

You are entitled to agree or disagree with these opinions and suggestions on how to improve these things. I have a feeling that I am not alone in my feelings. Perhaps I just am a bit more outspoken than most folk.

I would appreciate it if you could point out what it was about my complaints you found insulting or offensive. I only made general points and made no personal references.

Um, maybe because you have been responding to my posts this whole time and telling me the way I (and others) do things is unfair, lacking in integrity, and naive? I'm rolling my eyes at this point. I never said that ALL fans of any artist are impartial, but no need to try to reason with you... You really don't realize how rude you come across, I guess.

Here's my one gallon of gas worth....

Music is a popularity contest....you develop fans - those fans then request your music on radio and buy your CDs (or download them) and you gain more popularity/more fans. Those who develop and have a large fanbase should definitely use it to their advantage. That's what keeps the artist popular. I don't think there should be any expectation of anyone's fans to be impartial on Ourstage or anywhere else. They're fans because they like that particular artist. It would be kind of like expecting New York Yankee fans to cheer for the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. Ain't gonna happen.

Ourstage is a click and move site much like other click and move sites (probably carried out in a much fairer fashion than most). Folks with larger fanbases will probably do better. I enjoy being a part of it and have no expectations. Maybe that's why I enjoy it. I've heard some really great artists I would otherwise never have heard. I've heard some real clunkers too. Are the best songs always winning? Maybe, maybe not. Are the best songs always at the top of Billboard and being played on radio?

Steve V

Sorry you got it wrong. Way wrong. Nothing personal was ever meant. I never once said that you or anyones integrity was in question. I just said I did not like the rules. I myself was rolling my eyes at your responses and attack on my opinions. I did not know that Ourstage was that big a deal. Maybe you are right it is not for me. I prefer to win alone without help from friends influencing the vote. Then I feel I have achieved something by merit. But as they say let the fans decide and the person with the most biased fans wins the prize.
If you think that is OK then you are welcome to that opinion.
You are doing NO wrong playing by the rules I just do not like the rules or the way people are abusing them (no reference to you meant)

During the q/finals my song jumped about from 18 up to 4 and then back up again finishing at 16 a similar pattern happened to other songs. The really good songs that were in the top positions all month dived finishing out of the top ten during that period. You do not have to be a genius to work out that tactical voting was responsible for this. Again I will state my reasons for this stance nothing personal against you just a dislike for rules that leave themself open to abuse.

Well said. Similar to the earlier question about whether pictures should be included with the songs, I think absolutely that an artist is a package deal. They come with music, yes, but they also come with an image and (hopefully) a fan base. Those things cannot be overlooked because they are equally important in an individual's path to success. Nobody claims that the music business is fair; I think we all know that by now! But at least OurStage has a much better voting system. Most other sites let you just skip right to your favorite entry, instead of forcing you to explore, vote on, and enjoy other music.

Here's my take, and I'm not here to make a "fuss" or disagree with anyone, but only to share some of my insights.

First of all, OurStage is a great FREE resource! Since I'm not paying a penny to use any of their services, I can't really complain about anything. Also, they are amazingly open to suggestions, input, feedback and discussion. Danny has done a great job trying to make everyone "happy", but the bottom line is that as much as he'll try, it may still not be a "perfect" system, probably the closest thing to perfect to is enjoy replaying your favorite music by your favorite artist or composer, even if that includes your own tunes.

If I'm paying $30 (or whatever) per song entry, I might expect & demand the best possible service. I would want a fair judging pannel and preferrably an experienced, professional one at that.

Amazingly, this is what Just Plain Folks offers, and though it's completely FREE (told you it's amazing!), it only comes around once every 2 years or so because it's gotten so huge.

So really there's plenty of choices for all of us to get our tunes heard here, there or yonder. There's paid contest services and FREE ones. We need to choose wisely and then try to learn from all the feedback we're getting, whether good, bad or indifferent.

Generally, music does have to be good to attract and sustain a long-term relationship with our "fans", otherwise they'll lose interest and support other artists.

Best,
Michael

Wether its free or not I think most of us would like to think things are fair. I know there are things going on behind the scenes wether one wants to believe it or not. I have personally received emails as to the "goings on". At this point I am laying low and not saying anything just yet. You are NOT imagining things Big Jim. I usually go with my gut instinct and it serves me right 99% of the time. I had thought something was going on with a particular artist. Then without me asking another artist emailed me some evidence. There are email trails. HAHA! I guess I have to take the site not so seriously and look at it as exposure of my songs and hearing and meeting other great artists. But as for being fair. I really think not. Sorry, but that is how I feel. I have evidence too. But, it only takes one bad apple to ruin it. Maybe in time we can weed out them bad apples. :)But it is not the fault of the person running the site but definately of those not playing fair on the playground if you know what I mean.

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Good points Tammy,
And I did mention at top that... they (OurStage) are amazingly open to suggestions, input, feedback and discussion. That's why we have this forum and why Danny, the OurStage representative, is here to get feedback and discuss these issues with us.

If there are problems with unfairness we suspect or have proof about, these should be reported and discussed. Evidently they have a lot of priorities to deal with including bugs, spam, program edits, new rules & policies and cheating to contend with, etc.

Some problems are more obvious than others and most of the "issues" I've had were only based on theory of how people could try to "game" their judging system. Beyond that, I haven't personally seen any proof, but no evidence is needed to perceive basics like anyone artist could create numerous fan accounts (with alias e-mail addresses) to vote for themselves.

But the reality, as Andrew pointed out, is that it's virtually impossible (and much too time consuming) to vote for oneself against thousands of other fans and judges.

On another note, I'm curious how many successful full-time professional artists and bands would use OurStage? Would it interest them or would they feel like it's a "step down" for them, or maybe just a "risk" if they don't win 1st place each month or something like that?

How many major "brand name" artists and bands have you guys seen on OurStage? Maybe they would consider it more like playing in the little league rather than in the big league. I think they would rather invite their fan base to their own web sites and concert events, etc. But I know a lot of them have pages on MySpace and videos on YouTube, etc. but there's not as much "head on" competiton there.

Michael

Can someone please tell me how to navigate Ourstage? Someone suggested I put up a lyric, so I did (last week). It's loaded (..I played it...but I can't figure out how to get to all the songs in the category. Whatever category I click, it takes me to 2 songs that I guess are going head to head, but that's it.

I'm sure it's in this thread somewhere, but I can't stare at this screen for that long. If you could just point me to something.

Thanks.

Well, I just went to the site and saw that I've gotten some votes, but I have no clue how this works. People wanting to make friends. Yikes!

OK,

I messed around and at least figured out a little. One is 26th in country..."If You Were Here With Me" The other says untitled. Don't know how I screwed that up. It DOES have a title....

Hey everyone!
This month I'm entering only two songs for the JUNE contest:
(You can click the images to go right to the song.)


Suave Lluvia (Gentle Rain) - New Age/World


White Bird - Cover Bands

Post your tunes & see you guys there!
Michael

Ben: Don't forget to add an image to your "If You Were Here With Me" song. Every little bit helps. Good song, by the way.

Kevin

Hi Everyone. There's no category that defines what I do on OurStage but for fun I have entries in Pop and Reggae. Yes, that's not a typo. I said Reggae maun. Best wishes.

What have I learned from Ourstage?...well
If I'm in this for the money I might as well quit now, LOL

I put my song "Crazy Redhead Woman" which went to number 1 on soundclick (WITHOUT any promotion. I just put it there and it went to the top) in the acoustic channel.
Now I am sorry but that is a decent song, everyone has liked it. The production isn't the best but it isn't bad. The prosody is good and I sing on key.
Right now it is sitting at 522 out of 699 songs. below RAP, Bluegrass instrumentals, Rock, Metal, and any number of songs that should not even be in that category. There are songs well ahead of it where you cannot understand a single word of the song being sung. The singer is pitchy and off key, and the production sucks. Yet my song sits at the bottom of the pile.

If my songs can't do any better than this then I better rethink what I am doing. I think I am wasting my time.

I admit I am pretty new at this. I am NOT a performing artist and that may be the problem. I mainly focus on songwriting and Ourstage is really for Performing Artists.
I have noticed a few songs that are ranked pretty high that I am pretty certain are demos. The (Author) is not the singer and the music is done by a demo studio. I was not sure if you could do that.
Is it violating your Demo agreement to win money with the song? I know you are not supposed to sell the Demo.

Well, I have the camera, Kevin. Just don't know how it works! Thanks.


Bill,

That's interesting. I thought once you paid for a demo it became your exclusive property. That's what common sense tells me, but I could easily be wrong.

As far as "selling" it, I don't know how you would do that. I mean, Milli Vanilli is proof that if the singers are shams, it won't sell (once that becomes known, of course). So, without pictures and info on the real singers, it ain't gonna make the hit parade.

I'm not sure Ben
I have a few Demos here of a couple of my songs. I cannot legally sell them, Put them on a CD or put them up on I-tunes for paid download.
They are DEMO's, for Demonstration purposes only. I am not sure if putting them on Ourstage is legal if you can win money.
I think there is a way to have a demo done where you can sell it but it has to be specific in the contract.
Might need someone like Mike to explain that.

Bill,

I checked out your tune -- it has only had 4 plays (OK 5 with me), so maybe only 2 or 3 "judging" listens. Therefore, I wouldn't worry about it too much right now. If you song doesn't make a move all month long, then you just gotta say that the listeners on the Acoustic channel (this month) don't appreciate what you have to offer. Next month or next song could be quite different.


I thought the exact same thing yesterday. I was hoping some of my tunes could "move" somebody on OurStage, but that hasn't happened for me either. I do believe it is worthwhile to "try" and do a song that succeeds on OurStage. It seems to be the most unbiased review system that I have seen. Soundclick is basically the number of listens (but, of course, I still like to get a top 100, top 50 or top 10 soundclick song I have had quite a few top 10 sub-genre tracks, but those top 10 overall stuff seems to be pretty hard).


I would wager that you are 100% right here. If you pay for a demo, then you probably can't use it here unless you pay for those "Master" recordings.

Kevin

Hi Kevin
Thanks for taking the time to listen.

I don't want to give the impression I am complaining about Ourstage.
It seems like a pretty fair system and what they are trying to do is a good thing.

I'd be curious to find out about the Demo thing.

I'm probably just having a Van Gogh moment...Hmmmmm checking ear

Thought I'd have just one shot this month in another genre. Please say gidday if you stumble across it.

cheers, niteshift

Hi all, I just got up on ourstage yesterday via a friend's computer with a high speed connection. A noob question here; how do I check my rank? I can't seem to find it anywhere.
M

Marc,

Good to have you with us here at JPF.

To find your ranking, near the upper right corner of the home page, click on the tab that says "My Profile". it will take it a few seconds to load. Once it loads, go down the right side iof the page and you will see your song(s) listed with its ranking in the genre/channel that you entered it. Hope that helps!

Alan

Deleted...duplicate post.

Alan

Hi Bill.

Re paying for a demo. It would all depend on what agreement you have with the studio. I pay for studio time that includes mixing and mastering and what I take away is mine to do with as I want. Any musicians who I use are paid on a work for hire basis and their contribution becomes my property to do with what I want. I have worked for studios on work for hire projects where my vocals are now the property of the songwriter who paid for the studio and my time. It is the preferred system. Sometimes as we are all pals we will work free for each other and the favours returned as required. It is a neat system but relies on mutual trust.

Things should always be spelled out before going into a studio or hiring musicians so that there are no disputes afterwards.

It may be worth while checking with the studio you used exactly what you can do with the demo they produced.

Breathe Love In and Love You Anyway finished 15th and 16th respectively but were as high as 5 and 6 at one point in the month for Country. Confusing numbers to say the least, but still cool that somebody's listening.

Thanks Al!

Big Jim
If you have a studio do a DEMO it is my understanding it is exactly that. A DEMO, short for Demonstration. It can be used for pitch purposes to publishers, etc. It CANNOT be released as a song, a single, or on a album.
You cannot put it on a CD and sell it, You cannot release it for radio play, you cannot put it up for paid downloads.

Now if you go into a studio and record your own songs that is a different matter. You are paying for studio time. If you pay for mixing and mastering that is also different. When you leave you own the song. If you have their musicians add parts that is a work for hire but I believe you should have releases from them for their work. Otherwise you will owe them royalties.

If you send a rough work tape to a demo studio and they create all the tracks and have a demo singer do the vocals that is a DEMO.
Now if you put that song on Ourstage and it wins who has won? You or the Demo studio, the musicians, and the singer?
My way of thinking it was NOT YOU. You just won a contest with someone else's music.

I agree that demo's should not be sold for download, however what is the difference in entering a demo on ourstage.com for cash/merchandise prizes versus entering a demo in songwriting contests for cash/merchandise prizes? I know the latter is allowed and done all the time.

Kevin,

It is my understanding that the number of plays listed is not connected to judging, but rather the number of times someone requested the song outside of the judging process. Daniel told me that way back at the start. So if Bill has 5 listens, those are above and beyond the judging numbers.

Brian

Bill,

Well, the USGA says that an amateur can win a limited amount in a golf contest, I believe the amount is $750 or less. Of course this is only somewhat similar.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how winning a prize for a demo would be a problem. Maybe you could post at the Mentor Forum and see if Stu has an opinion.

By the way, a recording that has a work for hire agreement is not a demo, it is a master. Once the parties agree it can be sold, it is no longer a demo.

It is? I will have to find out. I was told I could not use my Demos for anything other than Pitching to publishers or the like. Or for my own personal listening pleasure. I would also be able to put the songs on my site for listening purposes only.
Time for a post on the Mentor forum.

So Mike
We are talking two different things?
A work for hire Vs. a Demo?
I wonder how many folks actually know the difference?
I posted a question on the mentor forum.

I have been reluctant to use my demos for anything other than pitching purposes. I don't see how making $5,000 in a song contest is any different than selling 5000 copies of the demo for $1.00 each.

So if I took the Demo you did for me and entered it into a song competition and it won...ooooh say $5,000. You and the guys that did the demo would not be entitled to anything?

Bill,

I'll be interested in hearing what they say. I know you and I think alike in many ways. Am having trouble understanding your not being able wrap yourself around the idea of the person who payed for the demo "owning" the demo.

ie You might pay $600 or more for a demo. That's THEIR $$$ to keep no matter what happens thereafter. They were paid for a service rendered. Let's say you hire a a landscaper to renovate your lawn. He does a jam up job and eventually it wins awards which lead to some $$$. Is that landscaper entitled to more compensation? No, but he sure as heck is gonna get a TON more business if you acknowledge he did the work.

I should think a demo is no different. Think about the number of demos done...say annually. Probably tens of thousands. How many lead to a record deal??? Maybe .0001 per cent? The odds against you (the one paying for the demo) scoring with it are infinitesimal. The odds of the demo itself making mega bucks are virtually non-existent.

That's how I see it, but well see what someone who actually KNOWS has to say.

Ben: I believe the Nashville Union pay scale is different for demos versus "master" work. Therefore, you pay more for a song you want to sell versus a pitchable demo.

Kevin

Brian: That an interesting tidbit. One thing would be really nice for the artist would be to see the results of all the judging for their entered songs. Heck just a data dump of the one by one results would be great.

Your Song vs Song A -1 (..., -1 =other slightly more, 0=same, +1 =Yours slightly more, +2 =Yours More....)
Your Song vs Song B 0
Your Song vs Song C +2

That would be great to see. I think it might be useful.

Kevin

Not sure what you mean, Kevin. Well, I suppose if your talking about organized union workers who do demos (shocked to hear there's a union for that).

Like Heather, you pay her and do whatever you want with it. She doesn't say a thing about restrictions, and I'm guessing that's the case with most folks (independents, for sure).

I mean, Geez, ANYBODY who can sing and pick can run an ad to do demos, and there would be no regulations whatsoever (aside from Uncle Sam wanting his cut).

Ben
I cannot speak for Heather so I am only using her named because you did. I have a Demo with Heather as the singer. I would not even consider putting it on a CD for sale without written permission from her.

I think if you have Heather sing a Demo for you and you put it on a CD and start selling it you will hear from her lawyer, along with the rest of the session players on the song..

Some info: http://www.rmanashville.com/index.php?p=afm%20scales

Ben,

What Kevin said is correct. if you enter into a demo contract with the musicians, it can be used ONLY for demo purposes. It cannot be sold in any way, shape or form unless every demo player on the session agrees to it in writing. that is unlikely to happen. yes, the players in Nashville, fo rthe most part, are all union members. they work at union scale. the scale for a demo recording is at a lower price than the scale for commercial songs, ie...being sold for profit.

A work for hire is separate from all of that. A work for hire is a mutually agreed upon price between the conractor (person wanting/paying for the demo to be done) and the musicians on the demo session. With a work-for-hire agreement, the session players are paid for the session work an that particualr song and are not entitled to any compensation thereafter unless the contractor chooses to be generous...which they usually are not.

Work for hire, demo session and commercial session are three different beasts. Each must be handled according to law, mutual agreement and union dictates if union players are used. And the great majority of players used for demo sessions in Nashville are union players.

Hope I helped rather than hindered.

Alan