JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Songoftheyear.com Scam Back Again

We let anyone enter the JPF Awards but every time we have Grammy winners who don't even get nominated (some don't get out of the first of 6 rounds) and people who don't even have a commercial album released for sale get nominated and one year a song a girl recorded in a bathroom with a single mic won the biggest genre category over lots of well established artists. Best stuff that moves the judges wins. If money is at stake why wouldn't people good at what they do try to win it? BUT.. if a company simply hands out money to "established" artists who are in on it with the contest (i.e. lending their name so it legitimizes things in exchange for prize money for example) then that is fraud and I believe there are MANY "contests" which are fraudulent on many levels or completely on all levels.

I know a company that does ALL the judging for a ton of small to large contests. They get paid but do they really care (does anyone involved for that matter) who wins? No. They "judge" get paid move on to the next thing. If judges aren't truly picking what they love, then it's fraudulent in my view. That is why we don't pay judges and we don't charge to enter. Anyone can, and anyone can win and they do, from famous people to unknown newbies who hit a home run out of the box. Our judges do a lot of heavy lifting too... to judge a single genre in the finals, it takes over 10 hours just for a single album category of 70 we had last time. Song genres took at least 90 minutes. We require people listen to a certain % of EVERY song for their votes to count. That way if someone slips in that is connected to a nominee, for example, they have to spend a LOT of time just to get a single vote. Other BIG awards with all the famous people don't even require anyone to listen to ANYTHING to vote. As long you pay a membership fee, vote any way you want. If a label wants to win, you sign up ALL your employees as members to vote who you want by giving them ballot lists. And you trade key genres/categories with OTHER labels so they vote for your important artist and vice versa, even if that means screwing over your own artists in one category so another more important artist wins their category instead. It happens. For a FACT.

That's just some of many ways contests or awards can be corrupted. Usually it is simply about making maximum money. They could care less who wins. They could care less about fairness. They could care less about good music.

Brian