Welcome to the Just Plain Folks forums! You are currently viewing our forums as a Guest which gives you limited access to most of our discussions and to other features.
By joining our free community you will have access to post and respond to topics, communicate privately with our users (PM), respond to polls, upload content, and access many other features. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free; so please join our community today!
Having fans that are willing to spend time voting for you is helpful also. I've got folks on a couple of message boards, visitors on my website, and people who've signed up for my mailing list that I asked to visit ourstage and vote for me. I think I would have done well, but maybe not won if I didn't have the help. Some people may not like that some artists with a following might have a bit of an advantage, but to that I say:
1) Ourstage encourages this. They sent an email (or was it a message on the site) to all quarterfinalists in March's competition suggesting that we do things like that to get fans to sign up and vote for us. It gets them traffic which is what they want. This is how Ourstage expects it to be played.
2) I earned those fans and I will use them. I didn't happen upon my listeners by luck - I've worked hard on music for about 7 years having a continuous online presence with a website I built myself, lots of free mp3 downloads, lots of online community participation, answering emails asking me advice on gear and technique, and most of all, making what I would call good music. Dues have been paid, I think
Oh, also remember, that it is probably futile to try to vote for yourself or get others to vote for you before the quarterfinals. Your song won't come up often enough in such a huge pool to make it worth anybody's time. Just hope you get into the quarters, but that's often a crapshoot since you'll only get maybe 10 listens.
SGX, I agree with your insights and experience. They are pretty much proof that one of the important factors to winning an OurStage contest (besides good song quality) is the fan/popularity support factor. Your fans are not likely to vote for me (different style & genre) and my fans are not likely to vote for you for the same reason. In the end, every artist has to build up their own fan base to get the kind of support that's needed to sustain the "wins" all the way to the top in the finals.
Nothing wrong with this, because this is how it works in "real life". Ok songs and acts might get ahead of great songs just because there are other factors involved such as: fan base, popularity, image, entertainment value, marketing dollars, connections in "high places", blah blah blah, you get the picture. There's always more than meets the "ear" and artistic beauty is in the "eye" of the beholder.
So the message is, build up your fan base and don't be "ashamed" to get tons of support because if even one artist is doing this, then everyone has to do it to be able to compete. Am I saying song quality doesn't count... No, because without generally good music quality, it's harder to build up a fan base in the first place, but once you have a strong fan base, you can get support for relatively weaker material that can still get you pushed to the top.
There's nothing new here... keep improving your writing and production skills, but that's "dead in the water" without some great marketing and promotion to back it all up.
Michael
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. -- Johann Sebastian Bach
We would like to keep the membership in Just Plain Folks FREE! Your donation helps support the many programs we offer including Road Trips and the Music Awards.
