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

There's a big difference between Ourstage and contests. Contests charge a fee to enter and then give PART of that money back in prizes. Ourstage charges ZERO to anyone to participate. They give out prize money (way too much in my opinion, something I've told them since day one) and to date 7 JPF members have won $5000 dollars and all 7 have told me they got the money. (And 2 or 3 of them have posted here about it all first hand)

They also give 100 dollars to individual category winners. According to Tammy (and I believe her 100%) they haven't paid that money out. She says she has another friend who also didn't get paid that month. I think she is right in complaining and I also agree with her that if they'd say there was a reason for the late money and they kept in close contact with those they haven't paid, that would be understandable. When someone isn't responsive and doesn't talk straight, it's a problem.

Now... I believe 1 of 2 things will happen. Either Tammy will get paid, a bit later than she hoped, or Ourstage will cease to exist. I'd much rather it be #1 than #2 because they really have been a positive thing for 10's of thousands of artists who haven't had to spend a dime to participate.

Just the $35K (not counting all the $100 dollar category wins) our members have won without risking a dime of their own money means that it's been a great thing. We have also gotten some sponsor money from them (no where near 35K to be clear) which helps us do OUR awards for free so that people can get recognition from both places without spending a dime to pay an entry fee.

Ourstage wants to build a large musician community. They have actually succeeded. But once you build it, you have to be able to pay for it and with this economy I fear that a lot of sites, organizations and services are going to be in trouble. Even JPF has been hit hard because we lost our BMI sponsorship because they had to cut that program from this year's budget, and if we lose Ourstage too, that's going to be over 50% of our operating income just vanished. So I am being patient (they're behind paying us as well to be clear) in hopes that they can hang on and keep going. If our members were giving them money, I'd be far less patient, but they aren't. It's voluntary to participate and it's free to enter there various contests. They've invested a lot of money and when investments dry up, it's hard to keep a large site going.

Tammy is the only JPF member that I know of that hasn't gotten her prize money. If in the end she never gets it, I already told her I would give her the $100 dollars myself. (And remember, I don't even make a salary running JPF.. I've done this for free for 11 years). But my hope is that they can figure out where to go next, they will continue to sponsor us and continue to offer the only monthly free music contest with real cash payouts I've ever seen in the music industry. That's a big deal and I think if we turn on those who have been doing something good in our community because they are suffering some tight money issues right now, then we're going to get what we deserve in the end, which is nothing.

Food for thought. By the way, I am as in the dark on this as you guys are. I did get a note that they got some additional funding in this week and are working on getting everyone else caught up.

Now you all know everything that I know. If you don't want to participate there with the questions that are out there, I certainly understand. If you're not on there worried about winning prize money in the first place, then you should keep enjoying it as a feedback tool (which for me is it's most useful purpose anyway) and if the prize money continues on, great, if not, then it's still useful. Frankly, if they took away the prize money, it might become a far more honest voting system because the artists who are trying to scam the system (and we've exposed several of them in the last year) would have no real motivation.

So, I am going to stick with them for now. I will continue to share with you what I know as it moves forward. I've always felt (and told them this myself) that it would be a tought model to make money from offering all that stuff for free and giving out so much prize money and other offerings. I think they could make some changes to improve their process that might help, but I am not running their company and I didn't put up the money to start it or pay their bills.

Those are the facts. I still think by virtue of it being free that's a great contest for the grassroots community, especially in these tough times where you may no longer have $30 dollars per song to enter the myriad of other contests. It's why we're so proud of the JPF awards which has been free for 11 years and processes 50 times more music than the Grammy's do. We need to stick with the folks who were with us in the bad times if we want them to still be around in the good times.

Brian