Over all,I'm pretty pleased with ourstage.I'm finding out what songs are popular and which ones are duds,what catagorie I fit in and what ones I don't.I have a soundclick page thats 6 months old and 1450 hits,a myspace page thats 3 months old with 570 hits,and my ourstage page thats only 40 days old and my songs have been heard 3,103 times.I'm seriously thinking of dropping the myspace page as I never cared for the overall vibe there.

I was as high as #3 in one contest,which frankly was way above my expectations.Of course it dropped since then,and I don't expect to be a winner.I'm perfectly happy if I place in the middle of any contest,simply because the over all quality of the music there is so good.Of course there are some stinkers,but the sink dosen't fill up the whole site.

The only bone I have to pick with them is that the winner of last months folk category is not a folk song,in my opinion,and I have very broad interoperation of what is a folk song. Check it out for yourselves and see if I'm off base with that statement.

I do think they need to define the categories better and hope they "police" the submissions a little better. Relying on the users to do it can only go so far. I wondered if they did anything at all when someone pushed the button because of so many wrong placements,so I placed one one of my songs in the wrong category and they sent me an email saying they removed it and why. Good on them.

As for the fairness of the judging goes it seems fair,but I know people and I know about machines. Some people love to cheat and any machine can be rigged,hacked or broken. Some day someone will find a way to cheat the system,they always do,but the operators there seem to be honest,stand up guys and gals and will probably handle the problem before it causes them too much harm.

PB

http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/papayaboy/

http://www.soundclick.com/members/default.cfm?member=papaya+boy