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

Sinking fast.

O.K. My song in rock instrumental was between 15 and 19 all month long. I voted a lot and watched for movement of the songs I voted on and saw a minimal change.

So in the last 24 hours it dropped from 19 to 106.

I am out of there....the movement makes no sense whether or not my song is deserving.

Maybe it dipped and bounced back? It was still #7 as of 11/20.

Man.. can't believe it's already Nov. 21st.. yikes..

Brian

#6 in comedy today, out of the running in bluegrass and trad country.

Well blow me down...I was ranking low and never bothered to look until now. Somehow "Lady Stardust" jumped up at the last minute and I made Quarterfinals for Cover Bands.

Thanks, David Bowie.

Congratulations to all who made the quarterfinals. I haven't bothered much with OurStage this month. With all of the organized voting, it gets to be insulting when what is obviously crap gets ranked above tried and tested material. I still participate - but I don't plan on putting any of my successes on OurStage in my bio. From my experience, the value of doing well on OurStage is minimal due to the "street team" voting at all levels of the competition.

Mine dropped from 15 to 139 the last two days.

I'm barely hanging on to #10 in comedy. #1 today is new lyrics put to the tune of "The devil went down to Georgia". Is that allowed? Would that be an infringement of copyright? Or did he get permission?

Post deleted by TAMERA64

I just see it as a challenge, rather than an unfairness. It's a challenge that sort of echoes the real world, too...it's not always the best that wins, but the most popular. I've made the semifinals twice, with two different songs, and hope to do it again now with a third. I don't really care about winning a hundred bucks, and I don't expect to ever nail that $5000 until my recordings improve. But if I can hang on to a top ten spot without any particular fan base, so can others.

#11 yesterday,#9 this morning in comedy, my aim is to stay in the top ten, not bad with no team or not even being able to vote for myself.

I think that there is a generation gap/style issue in many categories. I entered a song in rock instrumental which seemed the best genre for the overdriven guitar, bluesy song The Pioneer.....or so I thought. But when I judged many of the other songs, they were totally unlike mine and were mostly electronica or shredding. I could barely stand to listen for the requisite 15 seconds in many cases. I would bet that most people on OurStage are 30 or under. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but it means it is unrealistic to expect to be competitive.

Rose to #3 in comedy this morning, Wow.

This morning I awoke to find my song "That's life" #1 in the Club/Dance catagory. I won't hold my breath though. haha! It's nice for the moment. I didn't write the song. My friend James Kinnear did. I just demo'd it for him but he said we could compete with it.

So how many make it into the finals? I have never made it this far. Kind of fun! Good luck to all of you who are still in today! Way to go Every Everett!

Thanks for all of your votes! I still need your help! Thanks!

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Congratulations Tammy

I bounced all over in the quarterfinals, but ended up at #20 when the bell rang. At one point I was as high as #4...lots of voting in that last day. I'm still happy..."Lady Stardust" had 1718 plays--all independent of the judging plays, and all within a month. Can't help but to look at that as a good thing.

Getting three new ones ready for December:

"Picture Book" - Cover Bands
"King John" - Comedy
"What Am I?" - Indie Rock or Rock...not sure yet

#5 in comedy this morning. At least I made the top 10, that was my goal. Thanks Tammy. Looking good for you too.

Thanks guys! I will be on Ourstage alot today and give you a hand with my votes. I am still lucky enough to be sitting at 1 on Club/dance this morning. I have to hang on until 11 PM central time tonight to clinch the spot for November. It's nerve racking. I have never made it this far. My goal was just top 10. If you like the song and want to vote for it I would be grateful. No pressure. Again, I didn't write it, I only sang it. But it is a fun song! I really wish I could do more songs like this one.

Funny, none of the ones I have written have made top 10 yet, but that's they way it goes. lol I just have to chuckle.

Good luck to all of you today!! Have a super day!
Oh ya, my song is "THAT'S LIFE' on the club/dance channel. Again I did not write it, just demo'd it. James Kinnear is the writer.

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

I am grateful to all of you who may have voted for me. Thank you! I ended up with 1st place in the Club/dance catagory.
The finals started tonight at midnight and go until tomorrow midnight. There are 50 of us in the finals and 1225 battles. Ugh! Thats alot of listening. But if you feel so inclined and do like my song, called "THAT'S LIFE" I would appreciate your votes. Anyhow, I am just thrilled to have made it this far.

How did everyone else come out? I would love to hear.

Thanks!
Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

#5 in comedy is where I ended up, which is good when you consider I can't vote and I have no team. To end up in first would be next to impossible for me.

I see 9 JPF members in the running on Ourstage who won their individual categories:

Tammy Edwards
Echofission
Lynn Carey Saylor
Roberto Dalla Vecchia
Jennifer Marriot
Cobalt and the Hired Guns
Osgoods
Shotgun Kitchen
Overdose

Tammy seems to be right in the middle right now with 12 hours to go.

Brian

Hi everyone! Congrats to all the finalists! I wish you all the best. I hope everyone votes for the song they like the best. I can't ask for all your votes because I have fellow jpfers up against me. So let whomever is suppose to win, win.

I just checked and I am at #15 out of 50. So I was happy with that. I can't argue about that. So now we are down to 8 hours left. Whew! It's nerved racking to say the least. lol

Good luck all!
Thanks!
Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Congratulations Tammy on finishing #1 in your category.

Well done Tammy and beast of luck. Congrats to all other JPFs who qualified. Hope one of us wins.

Congrats to everyone that did so well in November on OurStage. It was fun and thank you for all your well wishes.

I ended up 1st in the club/dance channel and then after a LONG grueling 24 hours of judging (I don't know of anyone who made it through all 1225 judging matches, I only made it through 800) I think I ended up 7th out of 50. But that was only in the last 5 minutes. It just goes to show anything can change in the last few minutes.

I don't know if the post the final results other than first place. Does anyone know if they do?

Also Congrats to the Sonflowerz for winning the grand prize. They are a real good group and wel deserving of the title.

Good luck to everyone competing in December!

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Congrats to Tammy for finishing in 7th!

Brian

Just thought I'd tell the world that I just posted a track called "El Cant dels Ocells" on the Onstage instrumental channel. It's a traditional Catalunyan (Spain) melody we learned there last year, but we do an arrangement of it with cello, trumpet, drums, accordion, and our friend Cyril Neville (of the Neville Brothers) on congas. It's from our new CD "LOVE OR DIE!" which is a tango-influenced disc of tunes from serbia, USA, Venezuela, Argentina, Catalunya, Klezmer, etc. www.thejustdesserts.com

The only thing i have to say about ourstage.com so far is that i entered this song in the instrumental channel only becuase the "world" channel was lumped in with "new age"!!!! what a silly thing for them to do!!! seriously! anyone who thinks all world music is comparable with new age music is really missing out.

hope y'all go check it out. oh, and if you have europe summer festival info, send it our way...we just got back from ecuador and are heading over the atlantic summer 2009.

Ok I feel violated. I was just listening to and judging songs on OurStage and I was on the spiritual/Christan channel. I ran into a song that had a picture of Jesus and a man holding each other in a very provacative sexual nature. I thought....well maybe it is just an artsy picture, but somehow the look of a mans lips on Jesus's neck in a sexual way was just not setting well. ugh!

So I went on and listened further to the song, and to my horror has says in the lyric line "only Jesus knows my secret place" and then it going on to say ...its in my b...t! and then he says he makes me cu....(use your imagination) And this guy was dead serious with his song. No one had left any comment. I found this to be extremely offensive. So have any of you come across something grahic? Do you report it? And I realize people have the right to sing what they want. But this is not Christianity. And reguardless of the genre I didn't think you should refer to anal sex like that, much less with Jesus. Lord have mercy. I need to go and renew my mind. I may have to go to another channel for awhile. No one has removed the song yet. Hmmm,.

I am not sure how often someone checks the mail on that site.

Anyhow, your thoughts are welcome. Thank you!

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Tammy, I reported a song that was offensive to me as a Christian on the comedy channel but it was not removed. I believe they wait until more than one reports it. It seems people can get away with saying or doing anything against Christianity, but don't dare touch other religions or there will be hell to pay.

Tammy,

I have not listened to it yet, but thanks so much for the heads up! I'm with you 100% on this one!!!

Everett, you're so right as well!!!

I agree that some songs can be offensive. However censorship can be counterproductive. It can sometimes send out the wrong message or make people intolerant and promote narrowmindedness. What might be insulting to some might be acceptable to others. Where do we draw the line? It might be better just to leave it there and vote it down. This will send out the right message to the writer and others that this type of song is not popular or welcome. Nothing wrong with leaving a message saying why you dislike the song or are offended by it. I would rather have things out in the open than swept under the carpet.

I had noticed a pornographic cartoon of two women having oral sex on a comedy song in October and it was removed. Lyrically though I haven't noticed much as regards controlling what is offensive to the majority. I would hope in the case to which Tammy has referred, it would be removed because clearly it is out of genre (for those who are hardcore anitcensorship). If one is entering a "Christian" music genre, the lyric should agree with "Christian" values.

The motto of Ourstage is "Let the fans decide" so let them. If a song is in the wrong category, unpopular or offensive then that will be reflected in the voting.

The trouble with that specious reasoning "let the fans decide" is that in this situation, in order to avoid having to listen to something they want to avoid in the first place(that's why they listen to "Christian Music") many fans in this genre would opt not to listen at all to OurStage until they set some standards here. Why would one of these fans want to listen to something so repugnant in order to vote against it? The more likely and easier choice is to boycott OurStage until they act. Why go through the trouble - especially since it's possible that the poster of this song may have a PC posse supporting it? It's in OurStage's best interests to remove this song in this situation. Otherwise they may lose alot of fans in this particular genre. Less traffic - less advertising bucks.

You could be right. I am too broadminded and thick skinned to take offence that easy. I forget that some people are not as liberal or forgiving as me.


Turn it around.... should someone who perhaps is easily offended or has different beliefs from others bar me from listening and formulating my own opinion about a song I may not have an issue with. Can they not just skip through it.... judge it as being far worse and move on to the next song.

I remember when Rock and Roll was branded "The Devil's Work" and people tried to ban it.

I also remember when an innocent casual John Lennon throw away remark left some narrow minded people burning Beatles records.

Now I do not know just how offensive this song is BUT censorship is a very poor answer. As I said before where do we draw the line the PC police cannot be allowed a free hand.

Thanks for your responses folks. I appreciate it. I am not sure if that song has been removed yet. I don't know when it has been acceptable in any genre to say "Jesus knows where my secret place is....and he sticks his...( ...) in my B....t and make me CU...! Hmmm???......do you think that one should be stuck in rock? or comedy? or dance? hmmmm cause it doesn't belong in Christian. I am sure anyone with any Christian values would appreciate not hearing that. I know it is a free world with freedom of speech, and I love that fact. But I was on the Christian station because I felt safe to be hearing those kinds of songs and then to have that crop up. Whooaa... we will see what happens. I wonder if I am the only one who complained.

Tammy

www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Post deleted by TAMERA64

Hi Tammy. This has been a bone of contention of mine for some time. So far I have not had any decent explanation and judging by previous results my fears that some songs are way out of position because of a flaw in the voting system are justified.

I am sure that this weird pattern of battle order happens to other people. A song cannot drop or climb in the charts if people do not get to vote on it one way or another. I do not think it is possible to cover every conceivable battle in the early round. Say that people only complete a few battles, so the results of these few battles are entered and affect positions for those few songs. What about all the battles they did not complete and how does that affect the other songs positions. Multiply that a few thousand times and you can have songs way out of positions because the fans never got a chance to decide.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

FWIW there are rap songs on the radio that are as bad as the gay Jesus song you mentioned......as in most other endeavors, there is a fine line between too much regulation and anarchy.

Hi Tammy again. I think the main problem is that Ourstage is now trying to be all things to all people. Whilst some of the features are OK some fall flat or do not work properly. They should concentrate on getting the basics right rather than adding in all these naff new extras and flashy ideas that just do nothing. A lot of this new stuff is confusing and serves little or no purpose. Concentrate on the original idea forget the ancillary bells whistles and trimmings.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

For What It's Worth - and I never send text messages!

Well Tammy I hope you hear soon you are a deserving winner.
I agree up to a point about switching this song onto another channel. I was just switched about three days before Q finals last month without as much as a by your leave...it seems that despite the song being written and performed by myself was not considered appropriate for singer/songwriter. They moved it to rock. I do not mind but there is no consistency and my song had nothing in common with the other songs there. I reported many really off topic songst but they are still there. They keep moving the goalposts and changing the rules. It seems that there are rules for some and different rules for others.

I'm no mathematician, but let's see if I can come up with a ballpark number of possibilities. The Christian category has 420 songs. So if each song gets matched up with another, that's 419 match-ups per song. So, 420 songs multiplied by 419 matchups equals 175,980 different combinations. Maybe I'm wrong about that logic, so to be safe, let's cut the number in half: 87,990.

Each person who judges goes through that entire list of match-ups in random order, but no match-ups get repeated. Seems entirely possible that even after three hundred rounds, you might not see your own song yet. Meanwhile, other people may have seen it several times already...they don't see the match-ups in the same order.

I have to say that there is usually some pretty darned good competition left standing in each category by the time they hit the semi-finals.

Mark you are correct so even assuming that the algorithms and engine works fine, in practice how can any partial voting stats be consistent. Nobody can do a complete set of battles, even in the smaller categories so my opinion is paired up with some other different opinions to provide a "set." That is flawed theoretically and practically.

They may not be consistent...but they've come up with a great way to do this sort of thing. Anyone with the courage to read this entire thread will hear us bitch about it endlessly on this site, but I've never seen a better way to do this sort of online competition. There always seems to be a cloud of suspicion cast over them, like it's all a big scam with sinister motives behind it all. Really though: whaddya want for nothin??

Yes you are right. You cannot please everybody or be everything to everybody. But hey we are songwriters we bitch about everything.

Seriously it does not matter what system of voting you have it is up to the fickle public to decide. What I think is outstanding some people put to the bottom of the pile and vice versa.

I only put suggestions forward to help try make it better and fairer and my crit as to why it is not as good as it can be.

Now if the categories had much much smaller entries in smaller more manageable groups it would be easier to complete a full set of battles to get fairer standings. More rounds with less qualifiers from each group over shorter periods of time perhaps one week of voting to reduce the groups down to top ten or twenty.

I love to contradict you, Big Jim--you never take it personally.

I guess you must be used to it.

Then again, I'm married too...