JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Does anyone want a Song of the Month contest here?

Hi Folks,

Since we finished the JPF Awards in December and we've had a chance to relax since 24/7 all hands on deck for several years, I thought I would see if there was interest in an official running "Song of the Month" contest for the board?

It would be free to enter 1 song each month. For it to make sense we would need at least say 10 entries to start it.

I would post more details and rules if I see any interest. This would be a "Pat on the Back" and "bragging rights" kind of thing. Additionally, if there is enough interest for a Song of the Month, then we might also add a Lyric of the month.

Any Interest?
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I like the idea. I have ideas on how winners can be determined as well.

Example:
My fav board here is the MP3 forum.
Based purely on statistical analysis (views/day and frontpage only) The winners are:

1.Southbound Train (26)
2.Or You Can Choose To Follow Me (26)
3.Between the Lord and Me (25)
4.Mac's Marvalene (24)
5.Another Coat of Paint (22)
6.These Many Years On (21)
7.Bond of Brotherhood (20)
8.Over There (18)
9.Hickory Hill (15)

In the 'Bullet ' category:
1.Small Town Dust (90)
2.On the Shoulders of My Shepherd (59)

Bill

Hmmmm... Since this is a "songwriting" site, perhaps a "topic of the month" sort of thing would be interesting?

-enlist four or five participants in one of the lyric forums
-pick a topic
-one month to work on each topic.
-end of the month, there would be say 5 different lyrics
-find some music for those lyrics without same (need music person volunteer)
-submit 5 songs to panel of impartial judges for prizes...lol.

Bill

Hey Brian, do you still have JPF caps?

I've seen songwriting contests on other sites like muses muse back in the day. I never hung out there much, i did for a stretch, I think I entered once and got nominated, didnt win. lol, that's pretty embarrassing to not win with 7 amateurs entering... lol. Somebody openly admitted they didnt vote for me cause they didnt like me lol. I said oh yeah? You ugly bastid, I aint crazy about you either....

They had it going for a while, but it was pretty meaningless after a while. Some people get resentful they werent picked, then there's the issue with tin ears listening and having voting power. And when it comes around that often, it lessens it.

Id say the more meaningful you make the contest, the more attention it would grab. Make it every other month or, quarterly

If you charged even a 5 dollar entry fee, it would create a buzz, let JPF keep the money as a way of getting donations.

Give the winner something, i dont know what. accolades.

Would it be possible to have somebody like Harold Payne, to simply log in and congratulate the winner, and give his take on the "winner"

I wouldnt expect him to be part of voting or anything, but something, input like that might be worth more than a prize.

Then of course the ultimate way to make it work is by giving the winner money, im pretty sured youd have people who never show up here showing up, if they could win money.... if it was a decent amount
The money would have to be generated by entries.

In short, the less reason to care about it, the more like nobody will.

But id do my part, im lurking anyway, i dont have any problem listening and picking .

Hey, I won lol. I don’t think this would necessarily be a good way to judge this. Some song threads veer off into political mud slinging and generate a lot of views that have nothing to do with the song.

Well if you are looking for ideas how about a collaboration forum\area that might focus on lyrics and decently presented songs. I know people here have offered eachother their talents and capabilities, and I expect you might get a critical mass of lyricists and musicians and "producers" working together on decently produced music

well aint that a biased request...... "A forum that might focus on lyrics and DECENTLY presented songs" lol

it is true these forums took off cause of lyrics people. There's simply more of them, anybody who can write their name can be a lyricist. Might not be a good lyricist, but a bad lyricist beats a bad musician ANY DAY. As a band member used to say, there's nothing worse than an out of tune guitar, EXCEPT, TWO out of tune guitars.

One forum that I thought would be good is a "what makes this song work" forum. They had one on another site, and per usual, i made daily contributions to it but nobody cared, not unless it was some ancient country song.

But something like Rick Beato's what makes this song great....... But focusing on the song itself more than the production of it

I kid you not, a short time ago i had a great idea for a youtube channel, it was the opposite of that "What makes this song suck" I thought wow, that's different, let me get to work on it, turns out there are several already done.... ANYTHING you can think of has been done already, it's sad in a way.

I think the others are what makes this song stink....

But, somebody started "your favorite one line lyric" thread, and that died pretty quickly. I started a thread mentioning Charlie Watts had passed, not one person commented, i guess they never heard of the rolling stones, and think their drumming is better? I dont know.

Seems like anything musical is off limits, accept the posting of songs. If you can find a way to make the posting of songs a bigger and better experience, you might have something.

Dom, have you ever considered just talking to yourself?

I'm really not trying to be a smarta$$ lol, although at times it seems I can't help myself... Seriously though, instead of complaining about nobody following your threads, why not start one that's truly important to you and just keep writing?

Cause i dont have the authority to have my own forum, and why waste my time if nobody cares? I dont know what they care about, but it aint music or songwriting. I think music or songwriting was the initial draw, but its not the sticking point.

But has your advice worked for you? Youve written one mundane covid anti vax theory after another, and it seems people have given up trying to correct you.....


But I will say, if it makes you happy, it cant be that bad... actually Sheryl Crow said that...

But, id love to start several forums, all interesting, at least to me, but im not going to talk to myself, it doesnt seem to bother you though.

Agreed.
How about positive reviews?

Another Coat of Paint (12)
Southbound Train (9)
Mac's Marvalene (8)

So diff statistics generate diff results..

But I was thinking, hold the # of days on the board consistent (ie 30 days no more no less)....bang everything in an excel....have weighted criteria....see what the highest score is.

And then, judges have final say.

YEAH... JPF caps! lol

Positive reviews would be everything ever posted here. ANd the more active somebody is, and the more they tell others how good their work is, the better reviews they will have of their own song.

It would take a neutral voter, designated voter. Id do it.

But, as long as it is not glaringly horrendous, and has a structure and seems like a song, it will get good reviews.

But theres a difference between not being terrible, and really liking a song.

Then there's the whole "good ol'boy" thing that goes on here for sheer lack of traffic lol...

It's Brian's site, I think he's the only one here qualified to judge... and perhaps a couple of the moderators.

That would be fine. A consistent vote is the most important thing.

Whoa...some truth in those last three posts.
We are on the hunt for goods songs, is all.

I scanned through the responses, here's a few thoughts:

1. No one involved on the site would initially be involved in judging. We have a giant network of judges from the music awards. (I wish some would post here, but alas). Last time around we had over 4K people participate in judging but that was over 3 years of judging. The good old boy network would have no influence. I don't follow the drama here much and I am used to running a fair music awards where my friends don't always get nominated and people I don't care for sometimes win awards. The results are the results. Usually my favorites in a given awards cycle don't win anything. But I only get 1 vote like everyone else.

2. If we did this, we'd have a page with entries. We'd have to have at least 10 entries (1 per person). The idea is to build the numbers. That is my goal, plain and simple. We need a more unifying thing than politics to drive activity . The Music Awards were started simply to recognize the great music I was getting (back in the 90s) from mostly Pro and Semi Pro artists. We did have hobbyists win now and then, but more often than not it took very commercially viable music to do well.

3. Our standard for judging would NEVER be popularity or hit or comments or positive reviews. NEVER. The only criteria would be as it always is: Does the song move you? In the final we'd have people rank their 5 favorites in order. We have perfected the process on over a million songs entered from 185 countries in about 110 genres. It works.

4. We have the potential to award eventual winners with a pro recording. BUT.. not until we see growing popularity. We first need to build it beyond only the regulars here. I would be very happy if a regular won to be clear. But we need to increase the active numbers so the program needs to be growing to invest our limited resources in giving prizes to winners. That said, we have a benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous among you who has offered to fund such a program. We're not talking A list Studio money, but we might be able to fund a producer to do solid demos (assuming the winner needs one). Ideally people would invest in their best song in the first place. There is no question if you have a wide net of judges the better the demo the better for you. That is just the reality. Good recordings are within reach of even broke writers. Perhaps this will also serve to cause people to up their games. If we start to award prizes, the winner could apply the money to a new song should they be happy with their winning recording.

5. I would also consider a Lyric competition, but I am not sure I want to start there. Our resources, even with the benefactor, are limited. It needs to bear fruit otherwise I would rather keep the money to cover the costs. Our donations, after a good start, are way down this year.

As for having new boards to do X, Y or Z, I am open to anything IF someone will take ownership AND people participate. Most of the boards we have were added by request back in the day. But over time sadly folks have passed away or moved on. When you have a nearly 24 year old message board (one of the oldest on the net continually operated) people age, their lives change and now the dystopian social media companies have taken over.

One more thought: The 100 or so "regulars" here could help by simply recruiting a couple friends to join us. I invite folks a lot but politics kills most new people's interest and it seems that everything turns political everywhere (not just here) every time. I could be a hard ass and delete it all, but then we get people tattling on their rivals and it becomes a mess. I also believe in free speech that isn't harassment or trolling or illegal. So I try to let it go. I haven't heard a peep from our updated Moderator staff so maybe things have improved.

I am happy to address responses.

Ball caps for losers then?

I think it's a good idea too. And that's great, Brian, congrats for being around 24 yrs. It was very cool to return here after a hiatus. as well. Thanks, Brian for asking. I guess see where this goes. :o))))

Sounds great Brian...........the only thing is that not too many hear believe they are the one in 30,000,000 that has that right "thang" that pushes them into being that megastar. I've heard lots of really good............but, that is far from MEGA.
A monthly contest is fine, but you won't find what you are looking for............then again, if we all bring in 100 members...and they bring in tens of hundreds members.......so on and so forth....maybe, just maybe, we'll find the new chicken chow mien.

I'm in favor of contests among our peers............but to have dry, salty "elitist's" turn their noses....well....I'd rather have people who love the adventure, for its own sake, listening.
God bless the megastars and their machines..................I couldn't care less to join in with them, even if I had such talent.
Sincerely,
-IronKnee

One thing i think would help, but Brian may not agree, and that is making people have to log in, and/or sign up and log in to read content. The only way you're going to get the lurkers out from hiding is to stop them from cheating. It may initially hurt numbers, but what good does a view do you? it's abstract. I noticed Twitter has done just that, you now have to sign up and be logged in to read content.

Ever since ive noticed that "whos online feature" that says who is reading what thread, i have noticed that people somehow are reading threads from 2005, or earlier, i mean, the only people who know that is there, are people who were around and active at that time, and they are reliving their glory days by reading them threads.

It's asinine and frustrates me, and its not even my horse in the race, i can imagine it would annoy you.

It aint some random person suddenly zooming in on a thread that's 15 years old. its former regs, and they should be called out, they must get something out of reading, so why not contribute?

'But, a songwriting contest would be fun if people contribute. I think more than a recording an "opportunity" would be a priceless prize, but there are so few opportunities. Perhaps you know some music supervisors or people like that who always need music for indie films and might just allow the winner to be in their piece. If you had that youd be beating the contestants off with sticks lol

Most things always come down to "what's in it for me" selfish to the bone.

I just want a hat...

When "The Biz" is looking for music..........in any form......they don't come looking here. They go to THEIR friends for recommendations.
A monthly song contest, here, would be fun.............I'm constantly in one, at another forum. But promises of studio quality demos of our work is no big deal. The fun on the competition, between peers, is what will drive it.

Remember, we're just plain folks!!

And....yea.........I want a hat, too!

We get 100's of thousands of songs for the awards and every level of writer/artists from total entry level to #1 writers. All are screened with love and respect by a wide array of judges from all walks of life. I am not sure if anyone reading this participated in judging before, (which is a bit sad actually because we openly asked for volunteers for 2 years in a row) but over 4K fellow members DID volunteer in some cases 100s of hours of time judging music. The judges aren't "elite" anymore than amateur. We actually use 3 distinct groups of judges.

1. Industry Professionals. These are people who work full time in the music industry. From venue owners to managers to publishers to studio engineers to Ent. Attorneys to music teachers and so on.

2. Fellow writer artist peers. If you make music and do not qualify for group 1, whether you are a hobbyist lyric writer or a full time hit artist or writer, all levels of music makers go here.

3. Music fans who do not fit #1 or #2. This is anyone who loves music and wants to participate.

I can't think of a less "elite" group of judges. The judges are people. ALL people who want to donate time and help out. Most love it. Only about 1 in 1000 hate it. (I can only think of 2 instances last cycle of judges who didn't like it and stopped out of over 4K).

So if you aren't willing to be judged by ANYONE, then of course don't participate. We have had songs win from entry level people who hit a home run. I can think of 2 great examples. One was a music student at Berklee who recorded her first song in a bathroom at school (for the acoustics) and won the toughest category that year and another who won overall Song Of The Year for the first song she ever wrote. Of course the song would go on to have a life of it's own and become one of the biggest country hits commercially in history. You might have heard of it. Wide Open Spaces. Susan Gibson's version is what won our awards, but the Dixie Chicks made it famous AFTER she entered our awards.

If you make music you may do it only for yourself and thus you don't need outside listeners. Otherwise, why would you be worried about someone hearing it and their response? Isn't being heard the goal?

Brian

Long out of merch, though I think there are some shirts. If we don't have entry fees, we don't have prizes. And we have never had entry fees in the 24 years we've done stuff. We did give our winner trophies in the awards because they were big enough to have sponsors. I would do the same here if it grew enough.

For whatever reason only a few message board folks ever enter our awards. We did have several nominees and some that did very well her like Mac Charles for example who nearly won a genre. (See all the finalists listed at the top of this board. All the winners we could find are also linked on YouTube for free).

Brian

Hi Brian..........my intentions are not to throw cold water. Sure I want to be judged. That's why I've been posting for all these years.
It's just that the hair stands on the back of my head when I hear the inspirational pitch that I could be the next big winner.
I don't win contests with prize money at stake. I win contests that are free and without prizes ;-)
Yea, I'm crying in my beer........and I'm all for contests. I'm not going to pay for them, anymore.
Sincerely,
-IronKnee

Brian, I think maybe one reason not many message board folks enter is that they don't know how. There is no information anywhere about the contests. The only thing I have ever seen is when the nominees and then the winners are announced. At that stage, it's a bit late to nominate a song .

Gavin,

You can lead a horse to water... For 17 straight years I put out an official Just Plain Folks Email Newsletter to nearly 100K members. We also had many millions of visitors to our website (recently lost, but long after the awards) with the entire front page dedicated solely to entering the music awards. Some of your fellow message board members bothered to actually participate. To be a JPF member, the only requirement EVER was to be on the email list. We never counted message board folks because we do not require people to be on our email list to use the board. But it is a choice.

In your case, the entry deadline was just passed the month you joined the board, which is likely why you didn't se anything. We just finished the awards in December, and we always take a year off between them because I need to have a life. During the primary 3 years of judging I spent every waking hour on the awards, on the phone about awards, on email or texts or messenger with judges or screening music myself because we really struggled to find judges. We did ask for judges here regularly but once judging was done, I removed the call for help but it was on our home page up until January 2020 when they deleted our site along with the rest of Hostbaby and much of CD Baby.

Because funding was lost due to no awards show, no showcases leading up to it for now exactly two years, we are in the hole toward building a new site from scratch. Once we relaunch however, I expect message board activity to improve as the home page was by far the biggest feeder. Now we rely entirely on Search engines and roughly 1000 weekly repeat visitors to go along with several million random/sporadic ones. We also get good activity on Facebook on two pages there and we launched a YouTube channel but have had technical issues once our funding made it impossible to buy the gear we needed for a professional presentation. I have over 60 hit writers/artists ready to be interviewed once I get upgrade to a level to present them.

Meanwhile, a generous fellow member who currently wishes to be anonymous, has offered some financial support to help people record demos as part of a contest. But so far the interest level is too low. I can get plenty of people to enter if I put it out to our entire list, but it will include some high end professionals, not famous necessarily, but people with pro talent and previous recordings or even those who can produce pro level stuff. I really wanted to reward regulars so I haven't put it out there. So I have asked but few of even those who do frequent the mp3 and lyric boards have expressed interest or even curiosity. If they can't be bothered to click a link on top of the pages they use or make a comment, why give them free money? The answer is I won't. There are other more important uses in that case.

Just keeping it real. Either people want to participate or they don't. I appreciate those who have weighed in. I need at least 10 unique people to participate to even put more work into it. I could run this on Facebook and get 200 entries in a couple days. But I am nothing if not loyal as the third most prolific poster here.

I would love to see this board wake up. I have stepped up with this idea. I am open to others but they require volunteers to see it through to make it happen.

Brian

Fair enough, Brian. I know this message board is just one part of the much bigger thing that is JPF. I do remember the home page before the troubles began. All I'm saying is that if you wanted to encourage board folks to participate in the JPF awards, as your post above seems to suggest, then making it easy to find by a link or a thread on the board itself might be a good idea. I for one didn't know about the email list. It's easy to assume that newbies will just know how things are done

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I appreciate this board and brought several people over here after I discovered it.

Soooo... Is this happening or what?

I think for this to happen, we need to step up to the plate to help Brian launch it. I'm in. Brian..how about you JAPOV...Got some ideas??? How about volunteering???Maybe a small donation??? I'll match, up to $200.00 each month in donations by others for the next six months to help fund JPF in general and this project in particular. How about a "make him pay" contest each month..if total donations, by others, in a month, are $200.00 or more I will donate $200.00

Steve

I certainly wish I could Mr North... but, since I'm disabled, living on my social security retirement check, and do my recording in my living room on an old 2012 Mac-mini, I just can't afford that kind of commitment...

Besides, any meager donations I make are to Hal Lindsey

I just want a hat!

I hear you JAPOV ..perhaps contribution with some ideas, which can be just as important.

Count Japov in for 500. Donations in general are nice, but as far as a songwriting contest, the people in it have to think there is something in it for them.

an entrance fee would generate money, but how many people will enter? But then what goes to the winner?

And the bigger it got, the more the polished recordings would enter, and win, and yet the winners probably wont show up.

If you look at the JPF awards, almost none of the nominees or winners frequent the board, unless they are some of the roughly 400 annonymous viewers lurking at old threads.

The point is to bring people to the forum. Not have people lurking to see if they won, and then disappear.

But that's a generous offer Vnorth.

I'll pay a $10 entrance fee, and I want my hat to say...

"JPF Music Org. Contest Winner!
14th place Christian Blues Rock"

I may not be ready to enter the first one depending when it will be, im still working on recordings, AND football season.

But ill pay an entry fee even if i dont have a song ready. I dont want to use an old one, i want to WIN! hate losing.....lol

Thanks Fd, for your insight...I have no idea where this may go ...but if we don't try, it goes nowhere...your comments may be bang on...or not...and others will have the same or different opinions and comments...I've spent the last 15+years consulting to companies having difficulties and I have found that most of the problems start with the reluctance of people to think differently than the status quo ..you have some excellent questions and comments and IMO they can be the genesis for moving this whole thing forward..Please contact Brian with your questions and ideas, which IMO he wants to hear... it's dialogue that will make it happen

Steve

Ive made things work with impossible odds before, lol. I may not be smart but im not stewpid....
I thought i was contacting Brian here...

Your idea is great, no problems with it, and very generous

I'm sorry, that is what I meant, yes through this thread...maybe develop some answers to the questions you are asking and maybe a structure for the process

If we keep talking something good will emerge

Then quit "huggin' an' kissin'" and get on with it... lol

So are you in or out?

Will there be HATS?

Come on board and I will personally guarantee you a hat if this thing takes off...offer limited to only JAPOV

DONE! I'm in!

Cool

Japov's Got A New Hat!!!!!

Needs money to do. If done well and simply (just plain folks)......members will be attracted and join jpf. Emphasis on fun! Keep format as simple as possible.
How to include the lyric people?

Have donation facility to include designation of donated funds to this project ONLY!

Bill

Like your new avatar JV!

Irrisistable as an offering to you as you want that hat so badly Tony

As they say if the head fits...