JPF Home Page Forums 2006 Best Lyric Award Process Discussion Has Started

Hi Folks,

Some of you are familiar with our Best Lyrics Award in conjunction with the rest of the Just Plain Folks Music Awards. We're ready to start discussing any changes/improvements or ideas to enhance the 2006 Lyric Award category and process. For those who are new to it all, you can read the older posts here with info on what and how we did it all in the past.

Looking forward to the new Awards!

Brian

Brian,

I thought the last lyric awards went smoothly and I can't think of anything to improve the process. I liked having only those who entered a lyric determine the initial 50 lyrics; and I liked having all other members vote for the final 20. I thought it was a very fair process for all involved.

The only thing I remember a couple of folks had a problem with was the alpha order of the final lyrics; but to me (and I had a "W" lyric), putting finalists in alpha order seems like a pretty standard thing to do. I don't see the point of changing that.

Regardless of what system you use to line them up, someone has to be first and last on the list. It's no different than listening to the Music Award nominees - someone's song will be first on the disk, someone's will be last. I would like to think that those who vote take it seriously - order should have nothing to do with it.

If you're looking for major changes, maybe someone else will offer you more suggestions. I'm happy with the way things were the last time, but I'm open to other ideas too.


All the best,
Amelia

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http://www.ameliarosemusic.com/

Season's Greetings Brian! I didn't join in any of the fun last year and would love to be part of it for 2005. I scanned the past postings to see if this is a 'lyric' only contest as the contest title implies but then I saw one posting from last year suggesting that cd baby was involved somehow so it made me think we can submit mp3's or cd's? Linda A

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http://www.soundclick.com/lindaanthony

you think you can or you think you can't; you are right"

Linda,

CD Baby is involved in helping send us entries for the music awards. But we do the Lyric Category separately and ONLY on this website. There are too many songs entered in the general awards (pushing 350,000 already this year) for anyone to even consider sorting through the lyrics. Imagine the stack of papers if we had 1 copy of each lyric printed out and sent to us?

So to dramatically cut down on the numbers and to enlist all the other entrants into the judging process, we do it here. Ironically, even with meteoric increases in entries every year for the awards, the Lyric category actually shrunk last year. So we don't really know what to expect this time around. We've certainly learned that a big chunk of people will never come to a message board for any reason.. so we'll likely start off with similar guidelines as last time and if there's an unexpected increase in submissions, then we can adjust as we go.

Brian

I haven't gone through every posting but I am in search as to how to "become" one of the judges? And when our responsibilities will begin. I've seen how nominations are to be submitted from 2004. Not sure if anything has been changed on that since that year.

The past postings have been helpful in knowing that being one of the judges isn't easy and there needs to be a plan set in place to be able to read every posting and submitting the nominations before the deadline.

My only concern is of the possibility/probability of "edited" or "resubmitted" lyrics falling through the cracks. To keep up with the reading and the categorizing and then to have to go back over each posting to see "if" they've made changes seems to be unreasonable, although I realize they have a deadline. It's wise to have some kind of headstart though in order for the judges to "keep up". Is it possible to have a separate topic just to give heads up to look at a submission once again due to changes? An FYI of sorts? Linda Anthony

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http://www.soundclick.com/lindaanthony

you think you can or you think you can't; you are right"

Linda,

Being a judge is pretty simple and straight forward. The way we did it last time was everyone who entered also judged 1 page of entries themselves and chose their 5 favorites. There's not editing or changes made once a lyric is entered and all of them are posted on one single page (see previous years entries to see what I am saying). So someone simply reads 50 other lyrics and then choses their 5 favorite in order. We compile all the scores and the top 50 remaining lyrics from that round move into the second round. That's the stage where we bring in outside judges as well as folks who were eliminated in earlier rounds to pick their 5 favorite of the top 5. Those results give us the actual final nominees. At that point, the Lyric Category is treated like all other categories. We use fans, industry and peers to vote on the winners just like the song and album categories.

Hope that answers your question/concern. If you want to be a judge, simply entering makes you a peer judge. If you don't want to enter, then you have to wait until the second round to participate in judging.

Brian

Can you provide me more information on this matter?

johntvery@operamail.com

johntvery@hotmail.com

We will post all pertinent info here in the next few months. Right now we were looking for any input on changes or adjustments from last year's process. (You can read about how the last awards cycle (2004) worked on other posts in this board).

We'll also mention it in the newsletter when we're ready to start.

Brian

Looking back on the discussions we had on this topic two years ago, seems like things went pretty well.

You know, if it ain't baroque ...



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Marty my home

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you
recognize a mistake when you make it again!

If it ain't baroque, you should do a Bach-up...

I participated last year, as an entrant and a judge, and didn't see anything resembling a problem from my teeny point of view. Did have a question, though, Brian. What if two people entered a collaboration? (I was thinking about doing just that this time around.) Would both of them be judges? How would you make this fair?

Joe
www.soundclick.com/bands/7/joewrabek_music.htm

The person who enters the song is the spokesperson going forward. Since each person can only enter 1 song lyric, the one posting it has the authority and votes. My suggestion would be that each cowriter should enter a lyric so they both get to participate. We will likely change up some of the voting process just to protect from someone trying to stack the deck in some way. Not sure how they would do it, but sadly in the past we've had people try to manipulate the lyric awards process and so we generally zig when they expect a zag.

Brian

I think we'll start the lyric entry process in April 2006. Stay tuned!

Brian

I guess I don't see how to technically enter my vote for the best 5. What link takes me that that part of process? Or is that link come later, after the entries are all submitted?

Voting won't start until after the deadline and all entries are in. At that time, all who entered will receive instructions on what to vote for and how to do it. Watch the guidelines/questions page for the lastest info. This page was used for discussion before the process started. I think I will lock it so only the current discussion page can be used.