JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Music Awards Discussion Music Awards 2nd Round Screening to Begin!

Dave,

We've never had a limit before this. It's not uncommon for some artists to get multiple album nominations in any given year for different projects. We decided the best way to do the awards was to keep limits as few as possible. If something isn't moving you, simply move on and don't spend a lot of time on it. If it IS moving you, then why would we want less of that? Either way we don't see it as a problem. Either it's not great and you move on past it, or it IS great and therefore the more the better.

As for having entrants pick the songs, that's a terrible idea which has been clearly demonstrated every year we've done this. The reason is that artists are the worst judges of their own work. I bet 2 out of 3 songs nominations are songs not suggested by the artist. There's many reasons. One is that they pick the ones they think we're SUPPOSED to like based on some bogus crap they learned in some bad seminar or because their family said it was best etc. I think it's best to let a wide range of unbiased listeners who aren't worried about what sells or what rules there's supposed to be pick what they love based on that single criteria.. does it move you? No one else allows the entrants or the judges to make decisions based on something so honest and straght forward and I think by doing it we see a lot of great material and more importantly, a lot of great writers and artists getting attention that a predictable and stale "industry" would never shine the light on.

As for screeners, we used over 8000 judges last time.. we have a lot of redundancy. So just flag what you love and we'll take it from there. No worries.

As for where this will be, as I said in the email, we're going to set up a message board at the BOTTOM of this page in the staff area. It's actually already there, but it's a pain in the button to add people to a special "group" so they can access the board privately. I am trying to figure out a faster way to do it. Right now it's takes over a minute to add 1 name and we have hundreds already and soon thousands. It won't be viewable to the general public. I thought I'd answer these questions here as they aren't a secret.. we just want a private area where judges can be open about things without worrying what people may say or think that aren't involved in the process and don't know the entire picture.

Brian