Just Plain Folks Songwriting & Musician Networking Organization

Just Plain Folks Music Awards

Just Plain Folks Welcomes CD Baby Members!

Once again our good friends at CD Baby are participating with us here at the Just Plain Folks Music Organization (JPF) to bring positive attention to a wide variety of music in the Grassroots community through our 2008-2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards. Every 2 years we have a free music awards program for our JPF members and we have invited anyone with their CD on CD Baby to participate in both the Awards program and our free Organization. Whether you are already a member, or are now becoming a member of Just Plain Folks for the first time, we're looking forward to checking out your music and hopefully meeting many of you in person in the coming year. Please take a couple minutes to read this page so you have a clear understanding of what we are doing, how we do it and why.

For those new to Just Plain Folks, we are a free 44,000 member Music Networking Organization. We have all genres of music and all levels of success represented within our membership, including hit writers and artists all the way through to entry level folks just getting started. Through a variety of activities and programs, we work to educate, promote and network our members together and the JPF Music Awards program is one enjoyable way we accomplish that. We have active chapters throughout North America (with new chapters forming in countries all around the world), we have featured over 16,000 artists live at one of our member networking showcases in the past 10 years and we have a variety of educational tools to offer such as our email newsletter, a Mentor program offering expert feedback and advice and a lot of in person, face to face events which serve to bring the grassroots music community together. We are also filming a documentary on Music in the grassroots community. Active JPF members are eligible to perform in the showcases and be considered for interview segments for this project. We just finished a 6 month US and European tour where we met and videotaped over 2000 members performing live and interviewed hundreds of them for the project.

Thanks to Derek Sivers and his team at CD Baby, entering the Just Plain Folks Music Awards is very simple for you. Upon your request to participate, CD Baby will create a database spreadsheet of those interested and we'll use that info to start the screening process digitally right off the CD Baby servers. As opposed to previous years, you don't even have to send us a CD.

For 2005-2006, CD Baby shipped us over 22,000 Albums of the 25,400 that were entered into our awards program. Over 6000 of those artists were brand new to Just Plain Folks which helped our group grow as well. (Thanks Derek!) A large number of CD Baby artists found themselves accepting an award live in Southern California in November when we announced the winners! (Winners and nominees are all posted in the Awards section of our jpfolks.com website (you can click the link that says Awards above to see them all for yourself).

When we receive the Spreadsheet Database from CD Baby, we will automatically add you to our membership, which is free, and send you a welcome email with more information. That means you'll start getting our Email newsletter "Just Plain Notes" which comes out once or twice per month and contains info on opportunities and events within the group as well as updates on the Awards program itself throughout the year and some cool articles of interest. Just Plain Folks will not share your contact information with any other party. We do work with various radio broadcasters via terrestrial and internet radio (and ONLY those who pay full royalties for airplay) and will work to get as many of you airplay as we can. Our 8 year partnership with Virgin was once the largest internet radio network playing independent artist music, all from our awards entrants. Being played on the JPF Channel there earned many of our members their first airplay royalty checks of their careers. Though they closed their internet radio operations in 2007, we are always looking for new opportunites to help you make money and gain fans and notoriety.

Important Note: Each year, a few CD Baby members forget they requested to enter the Just Plain Folks Music Awards and also forget that means they are requesting to join our membership. This has caused them to get upset with both CD Baby and Just Plain Folks even though they generated the request themselves. If you don't want to join the Just Plain Folks Music Organization membership, please do not request that your music be entered. The awards (and membership) are free, but they are for active Just Plain Folks members only. We have no interest in adding anyone to the group that doesn't want to be, and we also don't want to spend time and resources screening music from folks who don't actually want to be involved. Once we sign you up, you'll receive a welcome Email and a confirmation that we have your music entered into the current awards process and have added you to our membership. Please add jpnotes@aol.com to your address book/white list so that it doesn't get blocked in the future by your spam filters. This is the address from which the JPF Membership Newsletter "Just Plain Notes" and all the music awards updates throughout the process are sent. If at any time for any reason you change your mind, let us know and we'll remove your email address from membership and your music from the awards process.

Being a member also makes you eligible to participate in local chapters (which can be helpful while you are touring across North America in particular as it can provide a built in friendly local resource for you) and any networking showcases and events we put on throughout the year. Performing at one of our Roadtrip showcases also makes you eligible for the Live Artist of the Year award and a guaranteed performance slot at the next awards show for the winner.

Any music in any genre can be entered and musical diversity is encouraged! There are no restrictions on when the music was released (meaning it could have been recorded yesterday or 10 years ago.. it just doesn't matter) but we only allow you to enter the same music 1 time, so if you have entered the same album previously, it isn't eligible to be entered again.

Our 2006 Awards were the largest Music Awards program ever conducted in world history. Over 350,000 songs and over 25,000 albums were sent in from 103 countries worldwide. We give out awards in over 80 different genres of music for both songs and albums. Because CD Baby is doing most of the work for you, all of the steps to enter are already covered automatically. However, if you'd like a complete FAQ of how the awards process works, feel free to check out the Awards FAQ posted on the Just Plain Folks website (linked at the bottom of this message). You can ignore the parts that don't apply but it might contain answers to additional questions you have, and if you still have questions, you are welcome to post your question, or email us directly at jpnotes@aol.com. If you email us, please place "Awards Question" in the subject field so we can answer quickly.

Remember, the sole reason for our awards program is to bring positive attention to music that might otherwise not get the recognition it deserves. We don't do these awards as a money making project. All levels of artists and writers are treated the same without bias (good or bad) and all styles of music are warmly welcome! Here's a list of genres from the 2006 Music Awards. If we receive enough material in any additional genres, we'll be happy to expand this list even further:

A Cappella, African, Alternative, Ambient, Americana, Asian, Bluegrass, Blues, Cabaret, Cajun/Zydeco, Caribbean, Celtic, Celtic Instrumental, Children's, Children's Storytelling, Classical Concerto, Classical Chamber, Classical Orchestral, Classical Voice/Opera Solo, Classical Voice/Opera Choral, Classical Soloist, College Rock, Comedy, Compilation, Contemporary, Contemporary Christian, Country, Cover/Tribute, Dance, Educational, Electronica, European, Experimental, Female Singer-Songwriter, Gospel, Hard Rock, Hawaiian, Holiday, Indiana Classical, Indian Contemporary, Industrial, Instrumental, Instrumental Jazz, Jewish, Klezmer, Latin, Live, Male Singer-Songwriter, Metal, Middle Eastern, Modern Rock, Native American, New Age, World, New Folk, Novelty, Polka, Pop, Punk, R&B, Rap, Reggae, Rock, Rock Instrumental, Rockabilly, Roots, Roots Instrumental, Salsa, Self Help/Meditation, Solo Guitar, Solo Piano, Solo Instrumental (Non Piano/Guitar), Soundtrack, South & Central American, Spoken Word, Storytelling, Surf, Techno, Theater/Stage, Traditional Folk, Vocal Jazz & World.

Don't let the name "Just Plain Folks" fool you. This isn't a Folk Music Awards program (though that is one of our categories). Among our very largest genres last year were Jazz, Rap, Singer-Songwriters and Rock and every genre above had a large number of entries. In addition, we had multiple categories for Best Video and Best Lyric. Note: The Lyric award is a separate entry process which is conducted on the website ONLY. We will announce the guidelines for entry for Best Lyric later in the year (and it will be conducted later in 2008 to coincide with the rest of the awards nominations process).

Singer Magazine stated that the Just Plain Folks Music Awards were without question "the Independent Artist Grammy Awards." We actually think our awards have grown beyond that comparison to something completely new and unique. Here's an article from Singer Magazine that summarized the Awards show (and even features a photo of Derek Sivers who attended the show). It ran in the last issue of Singer Magazine and is here in PDF file format. Here's a direct link to the file: http://jpfolks.com/AwardsArticle.pdf

Here's the link to the general Just Plain Folks Music Awards FAQ which we posted for our current members (i.e. those who are entering directly and not via CD Baby). Remember, CD Baby is handling the entry process on your behalf, but if you have friends with CD's who might like to join and enter or you want to enter another CD or new material that isn't on CD Baby or is released later in 2008, all the information needed is included on this page.

2008-2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards FAQ

We are glad to have you involved in the awards process and also as a new member of our friendly Organization! Our Motto is "We're All In This Together" and we're happy to have you join us!

Brian Austin Whitney, Founder, Just Plain Folks Music Organization

We're all in this together!