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

Larry,

We've covered this multiple times. We don't have a time frame limit. Music isn't milk. It doesn't spoil with age.

Someone may not even know about JPF until today. If they didn't, how could they have entered their music from 2006? We want to encourage more people to get involved. And we want to find and recognize outstanding music. That's our goal. So how does a time frame enter into it?

I wouldn't be against having a time cut off if we had the budget that other entities have and could let the entire music community know about us so they could enter. But since we're still a volunteer run entity without a marketing budget and media ties, it takes a long time for people to hear about us. And if you think about reality, many times people write songs years before they actually record them and release them. So why have an arbitrary time frame based on commercial release to limit finding great music?

If the problem is too many entries, well, I don't think we can have too many entries as long as we can get through it all. If the very best song or album we find happened to have come from 2006, I sure don't want to miss it. If this grows beyond what we can do, then we'll have to start limiting it. But it wouldn't be because we wanted to.. only that we had no other option.

If it bugs you that music has a date on it earlier than you like, I suppose that's an issue that "moves" you. Use your own judgement. But to be clear, we welcomed anyone to enter anything they wanted. Many of these folks (about 7K) are new to JPF and thus could not have entered anything the last time. Also remember that we haven't even DONE an awards since 2006 and the last entry deadline was the end of 2005. So technically, you couldn't have entered any music newer than 2005 into our awards until now.

The Grammy's specifically serve commerce. They often shy away from (as the Oscars also do) releases even at the start of a year. They want the freshest possible releases, preferably in the few months before the deadline. That's because they want sales. That's their purpose. Our goal is to recognize music that moves us. For most people, that has little to do with release dates. We do restrict people from entering anything more than 1 time. But we're willing to give all music 1 shot at it. We do have an internal guideline for really old material which can be considered in our historical category. But beyond that, we just take what comes in. If something that was recorded years ago has the production values, songwriting quality and ability to connect with us as much as something recorded this year, bring it out.

Brian