JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum 2009 Music Award Nominations Are Out!

Welcome to Just Plain Notes
Just Plain Notes: Volume 1.181, June 25th, 2009
Written by Brian Austin Whitney
Visit the Website: www.jpfolks.com
Mail CD's @ 5327 Kit Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46237
Copyright 2009 Just Plain Folks Productions.
Just Plain Folks Member Population: 50,131
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Special Music Awards Nominations Edition!

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." -Henry David Thoreau

"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else." -Judy Garland

"The most important thing is to be whatever you are without shame." -Rod Steiger

"The most important goal for achievement should be to outdo yourself. It's both realistic and relevant to future success." -Brian Austin Whitney

My Take:

The day has come! After 14 months of screening and whittling (and occasional clawing) we have narrowed the field down to the final nominees for the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards.

I know time is often short, so if you just want to cut to the chase, the link to the nominations is at the bottom of this email. If you'd like to know more, take a few minutes to read below and then check to see if anyone you know received a nomination or two.

Too big to fail! (Or what I did since last summer... and kept doing for more than a year!)

I can't possibly do any justice to the breadth and quality of the music we received this year so I'll just offer a few stats. Over 42,000 albums were sent in containing 560,000 songs! We received entries from over 160 countries and nominations came from over 80 different countries around the world! We have Canada and the US covered with nominees across 49 US States and 8 Canadian provinces. (My apologies to Prince Edward Island and Kansas who may have missed out). When we say this is the world's largest music awards, it's a fact. Check out all the names for yourself on the nominations page.

What's with all these darn nominees? Did you nominate EVERYTHING?

Once you look it may seem like we have a huge number of nominees, but less than 1/3 of 1% of the songs entered got a nomination and in the end less than 1 out of 7000 songs will win an award. In addition, less than 1 in 450 albums will end up with a trophy. There's a lot of nominees simply because we had the most music submitted in world history.

So how did this music get picked?

So you want the gory details? We just completed 5 long rounds of screening where we used 3 groups of judges to give us their input:

Music Industry
Artist/Writer Peers
Music Fans

We only had 1 criteria for all of them: Does the music "move" you?

In early rounds, we told judges to flag ANYTHING that moved them with no limitations. We used those results to narrow the field. As rounds progressed and the numbers dwindled, we asked judges to indicate which music moved them the very most out of the music remaining. Can you think of a better criteria? We can't. And that has been our only guideline since we started this in 1998.

Lots and lots of passionate judges:

During the entire process, judges could post notes about the music they listened to and many made passionate arguments for their favorites and why they should receive recognition. Remember, these judges donated 100's of thousands of hours of their time to screen all this music. They did it because they were passionate about music in general, and as we progressed they became more and more passionate about your music specifically. (As a side note: Many volunteer judges spent a lot of money buying the CD's of both nominees and folks who didn't make it all the way. One judge decided to buy a CD every day that he judged but broke his own rule because one day alone he bought 5).

Our goal is to surpass the 8000 judges that participated in our last awards. To do that, we need more help! If you'd like to hear a lot of music you've most likely never heard before (or let's be honest, you just want to see what all the hoopla is about), and you have a few hours to listen and tell us your favorites from the nominees, please register and join us!

Register to vote here:
http://wilshiremedia.com/jpf/signup.aspx

You won't be able to judge right away, but you will be first in line to choose the genres you want most.

Final Round Judging

And if you're wondering, we don't count the votes of anyone nominated in their own category. We also only allow current JPF members to vote as peers. You'll be asked for your email address and please use the one where you received this email. If you are a music industry professional, you can register as such by following the instructions.

And if you know music fans who might enjoy participating, please invite them to register. They will have to supply YOUR email address along with theirs so we know who referred them so we can avoid conflicts of interest. In plain English, we do NOT want you to drive fans to register and vote for you. That isn't allowed so we have to carefully moderate all requests to judge so that our results are fair. But, your fans or friends or family are all welcome to vote, as long as they aren't voting on YOU or your family/friends. If you're a nominee, you've already achieved a great deal and if you win, you'll want it to be just as fair as the nominations so it means that much more! Further instructions on all this will be sent to everyone who registers before we get started.

A Note To All Those Who Missed Getting A Nomination:

Since so many of you entered this year, I am sure there are disappointed folks out there. Don't take it personally in any way. Some categories had ties that were double digits that had to be broken to get to the final nominations. That is how close it all was. So much of your music made it a long ways and I wish we could honor all the amazing music we've found. We do all of this solely for one purpose: To bring attention to music that otherwise might not receive it. Some of my own favorites didn't quite make the cut and trust me, I've heard a lot of the music and it was really good. When only 1/3 of 1% of the songs get nominated, a lot of great (as well as not so great) music had to be left out.

But those who didn't make it should never doubt their own work in any way. We have all sorts of people miss the cut one year and make it another. The good news is that we'll be doing this on a yearly basis starting this year and for at least the next 3 years after this in 2010, 2011 and 2012. There will be many more opportunities for your new work to be heard based on some exciting projects we have in store for the near future. And if you make it next time, we'll be cheering you on as a nominee as we hope you'll cheer on the current batch. Let's all get excited that someone in the world is actually caring enough about the grassroots music community and the music we all make to volunteer more than a year of their lives to bring attention to it. And it's not just me or the JPF Staff, but a cast of thousands of people who get nothing more out of it than the knowledge they helped bring some attention to grassroots music which all to often gets less attention than it deserves.

Did I mention the awards show yet?

It will be held Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at the Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville TN. You can get more info and purchase tickets on our website starting Friday. (We'll send a note to all the nominees with more info soon). After being on the West Coast since we started last century, we made this move to give the folks in the Eastern half of North America a chance to drive to the awards and see it for themselves! We'll also have a Pre-Awards Showcase on Friday night at BB Kings in Nashville, TN. (The two venues are on the same street 2 blocks away). We hope you'll come and join us in Music City!

Thanks for reading this far (or skipping right to it).

This year's 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards Nominations are linked on our home page!
http://www.justplainfolks.org

Send questions or comments directly to me by placing "Awards Question" in the subject and I will get all of them. If you'd like to chat with others about the awards, visit our message boards and see what folks are saying.

To register on the message boards: (It's a separate registration from JPF membership):
http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?action=agree

Thanks again to everyone who has already helped out and congrats to the nominees! Your music is inspiring and clearly has the ability to move folks. That already makes it a big success!

Thanks to our 2009 JPF Community Partners:

Disc Makers: www.discmakers.com
TAXI: www.taxi.com
CD Baby: www.cdbaby.com
Ourstage: www.ourstage.com

Also thanks to Wilshire Media for their help with the judging software and Adrian James for his help on the website and announcement pages.

Learn, Succeed, Thrive! We're All In This Together!

Brian

Brian Austin Whitney
Founder
Just Plain Folks
www.jpfolks.com

Hi Folks,

We have this year's Just Plain Folks Lyric, Music Video, and Live Concert Video nominations finished and ready to announce.

Congrats to all the nominees!

2009 Lyric Nominees:
http://www.jpfolks.com/MusicAwards/2009/Nominees/Lyric.htm

2009 Live Concert Video and Music Video Nominees:
http://www.jpfolks.com/MusicAwards/2009/Nominees/Video.htm

If you click the name of the Music Video nominees it will launch YouTube and you can see them all for yourself!

If any nominees want more info feel free to contact me at jpfolkspro@aol.com.

We will have the nominations posted on the JPF website very soon, but I wanted to let the message board community know first!

Congrats and I hope to see some of you at the Awards Show in Nashville!

Brian