Originally Posted by Brian Austin Whitney
I haven't heard the songs, but it's not surprising the general public would choose something out of genre over the more in genre stuff. They only vote for what they like and pop country is more popular than traditional country. That's why it's such a tough job to get the genres right. But if you don't let people make their own choices, they get angry. And if you move them to the genre your staff has judged a better fit, they get angry. I've seen example of people threatening lawsuits (always an indication the people are crackpots by the way) because they were moved to a more suitable genre. I've heard the songs and they were moved correctly.. but logic and common sense doesn't matter.

It's even tougher when a song falls in between pop country and traditional country. Pop country (like Shania Twain) often has pop production, less traditional instrumentation etc. Also keep in mind that Country from the 80's and even early 90's era is going to sound like Traditional Country to most younger listeners. So if you have a specific bar set for "Country" and another set for "Trad Country" and the song sort of falls in between, you're better off just leaving it. But always know that when you do, more often than not it's going to win. That's what happens in our own awards. If we have a debate about where a nominee belongs and come to a tough decision, we always end up paying for it by that song winning. We had a song do just that last year. A band that was hard core 1 genre had a song that was slightly off their normal format. It didn't cleanly fit in a genre outside of their normal work and we debated about what to do with it. We decided to leave it in the genre that they are identified with as artists and with which part of the song matched perfectly, but another part did not. Of course it ended up winning by a large margin and many people sent us notes complaining. No imagine having to make that decision EVERY month across thousands and thousands of songs in all 50 of their genres.. it's a tough job. So if something isn't blatant OR if no one even calls attention to to it being out of genre, they're going to leave it.

Did any of you call attention to it being out of genre prior to the quarter finals?

Brian



As Bill said nice spin. Whichever way you look at it it was in the wrong category. I think if most folk are like me they will have given up reporting as it seems almost every second song has a problem this way. You feel you are banging your head against a brick wall reporting. No point in having different categories for genres if people cannot distinguish between them. As I said before there are many issues that need cleaning up this is just one.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=687727&songID=5238055