JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum So Where Does Your Song Rank On Ourstage?

Jim,
Right... all these things also concern me!
Flagging can be good if used properly, but some people might be flagging to purposefully tamper with legit songs in legit channels that are normally achieving good rankings. The purpose would be to hurt the competition or just to make trouble.

Placing original songs in cover bands is wrong and placing cover songs in channels geared strictly for original songs also wrong! I've seen both happen and it continues every month, so it seems out of control.

Maybe the best way to control the problem with cover songs is to get rid of the "cover bands" channel all together and simply let artists upload their songs in the best genre fitting channel.

The management (Ourstage staff) then needs to create some filter which lets people know which songs are truly original. One way to do this is to let artists fill out some copyright notices so everyone knows exactly who wrote the music and lyrics. This way proper credit is given in any case. If artists abuse or violate these conditions, they can be permanently removed from the site, or at least those songs they posted, depending on what the management decides.

Bottom line, the Ourstage management needs to properly enforce their own rules, conditions and terms of service. They can't leave this up to the crowds of fans and judges, though fans and judges may help by reporting serious and obvious violations.

In my humble opinion, the best way for Ourstage to build respect and a good reputation is to properly manage these issues with no nonsense "hands on" management, otherwise the site becomes "too zoo" to build a rep as a serious music industry filtering and awards program. Though they may have other challenges, this could currently be the weakest link in their chain.

Michael