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

OK - I'm really stuck. I can't access Ourstage from here (it's blocked). At the place I stay when I'm in the Philly area, I don't have internet access, unless I can tap into someone's wireless network, which doesn't last for very long.

I think I'm the only one here that entered a song in the Reggae category. My song "Many a Man" is not true, traditional Reggae arrangement, and I use some weird instruments and vocal harmonies that are not common in Reggae. So if anyone wants to listen to a different style of music, let me know how I'm doing. THANKS!

Tom,
Your song is currently 118

Thanks for letting me know!
Of course, there's probably only 118 songs in that category.

I have now on several occasions voted my song as better by far and each and every time most people ranging from 60% to 97% agree however all of these songs are still many places above me. How can this be?

Most likely because those only represent opinions of a small percentage of the total songs competing against you.

Say you vote on songs 1, 2, and 3. Maybe most people think those are weaker than your entry. But there are 700 more songs on top of that. The other 700 could have public opinion leaning in the other direction.

My song "Sour in the belly" is #36 in indie rock.I do not think I have the strongest song in this category but I have listened to the #1 song and I feel it is much weaker than a lot of songs I have heard.This seems to be a common sentiment from what I have read here.

I'm floundering in all categories this month. However, I anticipate a much better result next month when I reveal my new picture:

Sorry Andrew You have lost me I do not understand what you are saying. If 97% think my song is better by far than another song then it should be placed higher regardless of what other people have voted on other songs.

I put a song in folk last month and was surprised at how well it did - 52nd out of 400 entries.

This month I put a song in the same category that I think was better and it is getting clobbered! 350/400 last time I looked.

Gonna do some experimenting with genres and pictures - this really can be useful in learning how to present yourself, I think...

Scott

I'm at a bit of a dilemma here, because I entered 4 songs in 4 different catagories. 2 are doing really well, and 2 are languishing at the bottom of the pile.

What I think, doesn't correlate to what the listeners think.

I think that's the difference. What a musician thinks, doesn't have a great deal of bearing upon what the public thinks.

I think it's a very good tool to seperate yourself from your own pre-concieved and sub-concious views of your own material, and is a good tool in the tool kit to decide which tracks you are going to persue further, and which should be given lesser attention.

We do, after all, write for an audience, and it's a good indicator of what a general audience is looking for in their listening tastes.

I'm quite surprised at my own current rankings, ( good and bad )and personally have different views on the matter, but as a fair system, will take in the opinion of the audience. The same audience who either like or dis-like what we create.

cheers, niteshift

I think the jury is still out as far as I am concerned. Yes it is a great place to showcase your music. However like Niteshift and Scott I am not sure if the discrepancies are down to my own judgement, flaws in the voting system or perhaps bad/unfair/corrupt judging of the kind that has been hinted at in previous threads. What I do know is that in most cases I agree with most of the others judging sadly this agreement does not appear to be the case when it comes to actual positions.

I am beginning to think there is some odd things happening with the judging.I can rarely judge because the site won't let me. And a song I have had in the top 10 for 3 weeks straight has suddenly dropped and may not even make it in the top 20 by tomorrow. Somehow I sense some kind of fowl play possibly. It just seems odd that within hours of making the top 10 where I have been since May 5th the suddenly I am dropping quickly. I just wonder if people are on there purposely voting against some that have been in the top 10. Hmmmm just rather odd for a last minute thing right before the semi finals tomorrow. Any thoughts on this???

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Tammy, I'm with you. I've noticed this since I've known about Ourstage. I'm ready to just write it off as just another web site. Good bye Ourstage. There's too much crap on there anyway, It takes way too much time to download. I don't need all of that junk. Bye Bye. Ben

I stand by my word and took any song that I had in competition off.I'm not mad at Danny or anyone else associated with Ourstage.
I think that they have fallen prey to manipulation and cannot have a fair and balanced contest as they claim.
I tried to give them a chance. And they deserve that.
Something just ain't right, and when you get that feeling the best thing to do is run away, and that's just what I'm doing. Getting the hell out of there. Ben

Hey Tammy,

I had a similar experience, with the top 10 in 2 diferent channels, Electronica and Instrumental. Dropped like a stone in both to high teens from single digets.

Then I noticed that the quarter-finals have started. It makes sense, that since there are only 20 songs in each voting category, they will bounce around like yoyo's once voting gets under way. ( I'm guessing they reset the counters here )

Don't know if they'll settle down, but the next 4 days should be interesting. I would expect a slower movement as the voting numbers increase.

cheers, niteshift

Well my cover song The letter made it to number 19. However I too have noticed discrepancies. I checked the last couple of months positions and there are songs placed in the top ten that do not deserve their position based on my judgement and comparisons to other songs that did not make it. I too believe that something is wrong. Either the system is flawed or people are cheating or abusing it.

I agree with Ben there is a lot of crap to wade through and some sort of audition process is needed to weed this out. I also see songs running for months on end AND EACH MONTH THE ENTRIES GET LARGER sooner or later meltdown will occur with the sheer numbers. Perhaps songs should be removed from competition after a certain period and entry numbers limited on a first come basis. The whole thing needs an overhaul. I also do not like to see songs entered midway through a judging period as this must have an unfair effect on the judging system. Some songs were only entered a day or two before the Q finals.

However I do not believe that running away is the thing to do. I would rather keep chipping away at Danny to try and improve things. He is a nice guy and is receptive to suggestions and Rome was not built in a day.

My song in Country was also bouncing between position 9 and 13 for over two weeks and all of a sudden dropped to the mid twenties.

Hey Jim,

I see your song is coming in at No6 on the covers channel. Of course we all know it's the ladies playing the system, on account of that god awful, but true to life mug shot !

cheers, niteshift

Hi Guys! It is strange trying to figure this out. I am growing more frustrated. I keep getting spinning disks. I can judge like two songs and then the next ones won't load. I have been in the country catagory and the same girl came up 3 times in a row against a different person each time. I just thought the songs would be shuffled better. It's all still a mystery to me. And you can never think your song is safe or locked in because the next thing you know it drops out of nowhere. Hmmmm...

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

A flawed system...You can't really believe that..can you? Ha!

I don't know how it works.
I have yet to see either of my songs when Judging. But I don't spend much time there.
My guess, If it is a random thing and no one controls when the song will pop up.....well, your song might not come up for judging for two weeks then it might come up every couple of hours.
It would be like spinning a roulette wheel with a thousand numbers on it.

One of my songs did not move for a week then it moved UP 100 places in a day, then another 50 places later that same day. then stopped moving.
My guess, it did not even appear for judging for that week then it did and somebody liked it. So it moved up. If it comes up again and somebody likes it it will move up more, if they don't it will drop.
My other song.. It doesn't move more than a couple points either way every day. Either it never gets judged or it is always getting judged the same.
In either case I don't put much stock in any of this.

I get more listens and action on My Space than anywhere and I never talk to anyone there.

Hmmmmm....

Let's see if we have this all straight. Cost to participate on Ourstage: Zero. Requirements once you enter to win: Zero. Rights you give up to your songs by participating: Zero. # of JPF Members who have made the finals in the last 3 months: Over 100. JPF Members who are message board users who have won the $5000 grand prize the last 2 months: 2. (i.e. BOTH winners). And.. Ourstage is now a JPF sponsors, helping make the entire organization possible.

And here we have Big Jim among MANY other JPF members in the finals for THIS month. And the BIG problem is WHAT exactly?

If this company/site is the enemy here, I sure wish our friends were as supportive of our grassroots community.

Have they had problems? Yes. Have they worked for fix them? Yes. Have they shown good faith and good will towards not only ours, but the entire grass roots music community? Yes. Find any other site out there who is doing more for less in return. And here everyone is biting their hand because of what exactly? Because you don't like how people have voted? And that is THEIR fault?

People here spend day and night complaining about how terrible pop music is. That is ALSO controlled by fans. You realize you don't agree with their choices there.. but you expect to agree with their choices here? Remember all those deluded idiots who audition for American Idol who can't sing at all but are positive they can? Those are the same people who are posting the horrible music on Ourstage and they and their friends and family who have told them they are amazingly good are the same people who are voting. What do you all expect? When you make a system "fair" for the Democratic masses.. you get these types of results. Look at the US political system. Ever wonder how some of the complete idiots and liars and cheats get elected? It's the same people making the judgements as are voting on Ourstage. THAT my friends is an open democratic voting system. The music industry has long tried to take it out of the hands of the public and artificially control what music we get to hear and people scream bloody murder because of it. So here we have the masses voting for whoever they want and you guys aren't happy with that either.

Why blame the messenger because the message is not what you hoped? Ourstage has been gracious to every complaint and problem and comment made here. I am pretty disappointed to see them attacked unfairly.

Who else out there is doing more for less for the community other than JPF? And who is one of the sponsors of JPF? Right.

A few things.

1. If you are having trouble judging songs it is very likely a problem with your computer, your web browser, or your internet connection. The site makes use of a lot of Flash and advanced coding. I've been on it since early February and it is pretty rare to see an actual site technical problem, except in the middle of the final round, where thousands of people are voting on the same songs at once. You cannot blame them if you are having a problem with your computer.

2. Before the quarterfinals (eg. any day before today), foul play is simply NOT possible. There are hundreds of songs in even the smallest categories, and thousands in the biggest. If you wanted to somehow vote down a high-ranking song, you would have to vote hundreds or thousands of times to even see it once - and then when you do, it's only one vote that you contributed!!! Considering all the votes that songs get throughout the month, one vote simply doesn't make a big difference at all. The only way anyone can even attempt to cheat the system prior to the quarterfinals is using an automated system. Jill and I know people that tried this two months in a row. It didn't work; their songs were reset to the bottom of the pile.

3. For those of you complaining about your songs dropping, excuse me for being blunt, but you need to get thicker skins. In a contest like this your song is NEVER locked in. OurStage is a very popular site with a ton of users, and a flood of new people coming in all the time. It is not as if everyone votes within the first ten days and then stops. There are constantly new people voting, or old people that only choose to vote towards the end of the month. I for one didn't vote at all this month until yesterday, at which point

4. Why would you ever withdraw your songs from the site or stop participating? That is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. There's NO cost of any kind to enter. It requires no maintenance, no time investment, nothing. You just upload your songs, enter them, and check towards the end of the month to see if you made it into the quarterfinals. Even at this point, you're not required to do anything, though it's advisable that you take the 5-10 minutes (wow!!!) to send an email to your fans or post on your site asking your friends & fans to vote for you. By removing your songs from the contest you are literally doing nothing except hurting yourself. Even if you only had a one in 50,000 chance of winning, it would still be worth entering, because there is no risk or cost to doing so, only the possibility of massive gains.

5. Both myself, Jillian Goldin, and our friend sgx are proof that the site is fair and that it works very well. That is not to say that all of our songs are always in the top 10. This month, many of our songs did not make it into the quarterfinals. In fact, none of mine did. I am not complaining. I know that the voting population shifts and changes every month, people might get sick of hearing the same song, etc. But Jill entered a couple new songs this month in new categories (including some highly competitive ones) and DID make it into the quarters.

The only time OurStage's voting system is at all exploitable is at the end of the contest when there are very few songs left. This is the part where unscrupulous artists can ask their fans to "vote down" competing music. We certainly do not endorse this practice and encourage our fans to vote for us, but vote honestly. More importantly, those who rely on voting down never seem to get very far. After all it didn't hurt Jillian or sgx when they won the grand prizes.

6. It can be surprising when your songs that you think are weak or merely average rise high above those you entered that YOU thought were amazing. But again, this really has little to do with OurStage. Artists are notoriously bad judges of the quality of their own music; no offense to anyone here, as it's true for me as well. Several songs that I am quite fond of that I enter each month continue to not make it into the quarterfinals. I'm finally beginning to accept that maybe, after hundreds of votes, the average listener on the site just doesn't like it as much as I do. You can't accuse that many people of being biased or having the "wrong" opinion. If nothing else, as Brian once pointed out, OurStage is a great way of testing the waters with a song to see what the average reaction is to it.

Edit: It appears that Brian beat me to the punch by three and a half minutes

I do not see a problem in pointing out weaknesses or flaws. Otherwise how could these be corrected. Every business and service relies on feedback to iron out flaws and make improvements to make it better. That is a fact of life.

I am positive about Ourstage it is a great site. That has never been in question however I think that THERE ARE FLAWS in the whole system that need sorting. JMHO

If people have a problem with that then I think it is them that are thin skinned SHORT SIGHTED or not facing reality.

Brian I do not understand your attitude on this one. Just cause a thing has flaws or does not appear to be working properly does not make it an enemy. I rather adopt the approach that Soudstage is a friend. If it has problems then it is up to us to identify that problem through advice and feedback.

I am in the finals. However I still identify some operating problems with the engines and software this site uses. It is a fairly easy fix but impossible to even diagnose without people like me pointing them out.

If you've got it flaunt it as they say. Song is now at number twelve must be the mens turn to vote and they hate voting for a guy more handsome than them.

Well, I won't be joining in on the bank run...I saw "It's a Wonderful Life" after all, and I know how those things work.

Since fowl play is suspected, I'm going to enter my new song, "Twenty Chickens for a Saddle"!

Seriously though, voting volume intensifies just before each of those deadlines, and songs shoot up and down. One of mine that was floundering all month shot way up...not enough to hit the top 20. Is that foul play? Nope. Just a bunch of voting joggling the status quo.

This isn't the KGB we're talking about, it's a legitimate website. No need to tear it down in public and smear its reputation out of paranoia.

I'm not being Hasty, free or not, It's turning out to be just another music site as I said. Nothing special. The more crap they add on the longer it takes for the page to open, just like MySpace. I don't want the aggrevation. Ben

So if you enter a song halfway through a month, is it doomed because other songs received many votes earlier in the month, or is everything prorated in such a way that the time in the contest is not relevant?

I entered two songs partway through May but have them scheduled to compete throughout June......(Blue Island Beer Club)

Colin

Jim,

I wasn't addressing people pointing out problems. But the site is FAR different from other music page sites out there. Do you really think MySpace could give a crap about ANY grassroots artists out there? Do you think they'd EVER listen to a single comment you had to make? Do you think they'd come to a site like ours and individually answer concerns and take action? Ha!

There's a big difference between pointing out issues and tearing something down or suggesting they are no better than anyone else. That is simply not true on any level. I get approached by similar sites literally every week. All of them say the same things, but in the case of Daniel and Ourstage, I could tell he was actually LISTENING to what we were saying in return. They are actively seeking ways to create more opportunities for artists.. all sorts of performance opportunities, all sorts of mentoring opportunities etc. Plus there's the money.

What's the worst possible thing that can happen on Ourstage? Your song gets listened to several thousand times in a given month and doesn't rank very high at the end. That's the worst case scenario. From there, it can gain fans, it can be discovered by any number of people, it can rank well enough to get in the finals, it can then help you be chosen for a performance opportunity, it can win a channel and win some money, or it could win the grand prize. In the meantime, you can also discover some cool artists, find people to network with, make some new contacts with artists in your genre who make similar music as you and thus probably have very relevent contacts and experiences to share with you. You can target specific prizes like a slot at the Newport Folk Festival (at least 1 JPF member will be getting a full set there.. maybe more).

So Ben, if you'd won $5000 dollars last month, would you still be quitting? If so, then it's simply impossible to please you.

Brian

The amount a song gets listened to probably is skewed. I'm in a category with roughly 1200 entries. How many times did my song get counted as listened? 43 and it finished in 438th place - nowhere close to several thousand listens. To be sure, I'd even bet that of those 43 listens maybe 50% made it halfway through the song. In fact the only thing you're being counted on for a listen is the first 15 seconds.

Maybe so, but the higher you get, the more listens you get, and if you compete in smaller categories you will definitely get way more listens overall. More importantly, if you make it into the finals, you are practically guaranteed 10,000+ listens. A shot at that is a no-brainer when it doesn't cost any time or money.

Big Jim,

It's not that 97% of the voters think your song is better than the other songs...97% thought it was better, worse, far better...whatever the rating indicated...than that particular song against which it was paired...that song only. The vote percentage is only for that pairing...not how either of the paired songs faired against all the rest. At least, that is my understanding.

Alan

OK so now I have realized that there is a FLAW in the system on OurStage. IMHO...I took a break and have come back to the country catagory. I have been keeping track and I have done 6 sets of country songs. The same girl has come up 4 of the 6 times. Some of the 20 I have never seen come up, much less myself. I have dropped from 3 to 18 in one day. I am just pointing out that the shuffling process, at least on my computor is FLAWED! I have friends who have been pulling their music off OurStage for various reasons. I have noticed that a couple of catagories that had over 1000 entries in April have dropped to less than 500 in May. TO me that says something. People will demand to see some kind of way to make this seem more fair. I don't know what that would be but consider this a warning or a heads up from some discruntled musicians. I hate to see the site go backwards from where they are trying to head.
Thanks!

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

The shuffling process is not flawed. On the OurStage FAQ it explicitly says that it will often give you the same song several times in order to get an accurate opinion from you. For example, lets say you vote on Song A vs. Song B. You love both songs, but Song B is just slightly better than A, so you vote Song B as better. However, that one vote doesn't really tell the OurStage system much - what if you thought both songs were really bad, and song B was just marginally less bad than song A?

So, it clarifies your opinion by giving you more matchups to see what you REALLY think of any given song. This is not to say you will continue to get the same song in a row many times, of course, just that it is built into the system to have the same song matched up in a row if it needs clarification.

But more importantly, you'd have to do thousands or tens of thousands of votes to get a statistically valid picture of the rate of any given song(s) being presented. If you flip a coin five times in a row it's possible that it will land on heads every time. That doesn't mean the coin is broken or weighted. It's not LIKELY that would happen, but it's well within the realm of possibility.

Of course, during the quarterfinals, you are GUARANTEED to get every song the same amount of times. That's why you have a limited number of battles in the final rounds. You get every song matched up against every other song exactly once, and no more.

I can't improve much on that last post by Andrew. But it seems like we're focusing on a tree and calling it the forest. I'm willing to bet you have never seen the same match-up twice. The same song several times? Sure. In a category of 500 songs, you will eventually see it 500 times. But everyone else is experiencing an entirely different shuffle than the one you see, and I believe the balance comes out in the whole of the process.

Yes, I have seen the same match up twice. Funny you should say that. It happened this morning with the same two artists. That girl and another guy and it came up again a couple later. I just proved your theory wrong.

Tammy

www.tammyedwards.com
www.myspace.com/tammyedwards2

Well, sorry to hear that...and even more sorry that I came off all snarky. I apologize for that.

But I love what those guys are doing, don't have the slightest belief there is anything sinister going on, and I think it's wrong to broadcast accusations against an organization that supports our interests.

As I said before we should be pointing out any flaws or problems so they can be rectified and the system improved. To throw our toys out of the pram, run away, or go in the huff is not productive or adult.

I am sure we all agree that Ourstage is a great site and we welcome it as one of our partners. We should be patient and understanding and offer constructive criticism and suggestions.

Thanks for reading my gripe Brian, but the truth is, I'm not trying to be pleased. It's a great concept but it is not "Grass Roots". The JPF MP3 and Lyric boards are grass roots. It is an overloaded web site that is subject to corruption by musicians who can't depend on their talent alone to rank high.
I am not disgruntled, I happen to like Daniel and think that they are doing a Nobel thing.
I simply chose to withdraw until I am convinced that everyone is dealt a fair hand. It just doesn't look this way to me right now. If you or anyone else here knew me than you would know that I am not a quitter. I think that they need some time to do a little house cleaning. Until then, I will carry on as if they never existed. Ben

Which is part of the flaw in the system. If a song catches someone at the wrong time - it might be better than the song it's showcased against, but that person will vote according to a feeling at that time. Thus it lowers the value and such. I've noticed that having put the same video up twice (the video that won the JPF awards) it has finished around 50th both times. This month it got about 150 listens and favorited as well. It never cracked the top 10, but it did crack to 15. But I will keep entering it, because it's free.

The other song (finished 438), started off much higher and dropped. This is a song mind you that has been getting extremely positive feedback from consumers and industry types alike - not from my ego. I'll keep entering it until I officially release it.

On the flip side, I'm not about to go writing electronica or tackling a small genre for the sake of doing something on a website. It's not yet struck my fancy to write that type of music.

Post deleted by TAMERA64

Jody,

The number of listens that you are looking at has NOTHING to do with the number of times it was judged. That number tells you how many ADDITIONAL listens people requested outside of the judging process. That means that 43 times someone decided they wanted to hear your song just because they wanted to hear it.

A lot of "assumptions" are being made by people that simply aren't true. Why damage a company simply because you feel it's okay to "guess" what you think they are doing wrong? I am pretty disappointed that some people who should know better are making inaccurate commentary here without really knowing facts.

I've done over 6000 judging sessions on there and I've never had the same two songs come up against each other more than one time. That included voting the max number of times in the semi-finals where I got every single combination mathmatically possible (I kept track on a note pad just to see it work).

Also, the reason Tammy that the numbers dropped is because people were no longer allowed to have more than 1 song in a given channel. It took a while to clean it up, but now that they have, you're actually seeing MORE people competing, but less songs per person in a channel. There were some channels where people were posting their entire album song by song in a channel.. or multiple albums worth of songs. So again, you're claim, which suggests people are leaving Ourstage in large numbers, is not only false, but the truth is they have more folks on there right now than ever before and it's growing constantly.

Folks.. we don't allow false statements to be made about anyone here.. including companies that are scammers. So let's not make false statements about an ally. It's truly unbelievable to read some of the bogus accustations being made here. Get your facts straight, or shut up until you actually know what you're talking about. Asking a question is one thing, but taking a guess and then turning it into a negative is simply not acceptable. We don't do it to scam companies and we're certainly not going to do it to honest ones.

Brian

Please don't let anything that I've said influence you Tammy.
Brian is right, but I am still stepping back for awhile until some matters are straightened out.
I know they aren't perfect and even if they were, people would still complain. Right now I am hearing complaints that I have thought of myself but never mentioned. So that tells me that something is not right. As Forrest Gump said, "That's all I got to say about that".

Usually assumptions like this are made strictly because the information is not clearly posted or easily found. With how a song is "tracked" on a users profile - it does not state anywhere that those listens are over and above the "judged" results. Maybe this is an oversight they ought to look at. Since the claim is made that people are supposedly getting 1,000's of "listens" where are people seeing/getting those numbers? Because I'm not finding them.

The question posed on this thread is "Where is your song at on Ourstage?" That's what I posted based on the information that I saw. I wasn't slamming them or damaging them, but I do believe there can be flaws in the system. There is no perfect system and I've already told you what I did think of it - that hasn't changed.

If it's this damaging, it's probably time to delete the thread and start over.

Tammy,

This is simply not possible. If you look at the quarterfinal judging system, you are given a maximum of 190 rounds. This is EXACTLY enough rounds to pit each of the 20 songs against each other once. (20*(20-1))/2 is the math. The -1 is there because you can't compete against yourself, and the /2 is because Song A vs. Song B is considered the same round as Song B vs. Song A.

It is very possible that there are two artists with similar cover art, or the same artist has two songs with the same art, which might lead you to assume (at a glance) that you are judging the same song. But it is simply not mathematically possible that you would have gotten the exact same matchup twice. I have voted over 1,500 times during the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals since I started participating in February. Jillian I believe has voted over 2,000 times in that period, and collectively, fans we speak with regularly have voted several thousand more times. None of us have ever observed the same matchup happening twice during the quarterfinals, semifinals, or finals.

Hey Brian
I hope you did not take my post as being a slam against Ourstage.
I think what they offer is great. I was only telling what my songs have done. I was not passing judgment on Ourstage.
The statement my song in the Male Singer songwriter category has not move all month is true. I has not moved more than a few point up or down.
By the end of the voting this month it was 726. I think it started out at 716. It stayed within a few points of that. Same as last month.(except when they were making the changes)
So it either isn't get judged much or it it's about a 50/50 split, LOL Either you like it or you don't. It's that kind of song.

We've discussed the number of listens on the Ourstage partner post I believe. This is why I wanted 1 single Ourstage post to discuss all this stuff. It gets too confusing when we're carrying on multiple discussions it seems. Originally this was supposed to simply be a place to tell folks where you had songs posted and how they were doing, but it got off track and has been all over the place. The post on the mentor board was better suited for tech discussion, but that has also gone all over the place. Then there was a new one on the general board for May songs.. which fortunately should have run it's course.

Any listens you have come from folks clicking to hear your song outside of judging. I wouldn't post the vote totals there because then folks would complain if one category had a larger number of votes (or one song over another) and who needs that drama. The number of votes will not likely be exactly the same. There's going to be variation.

If there's 2000 songs in a channel, I think it would take 1,999,000 votes for each song to face each other 1 time. You can imagine as the site grows and grows it will be very tough to generate the votes required to get multiple matchups for every combination. This month they cut it to 1 song per channel to help some with that. I think the next move, when needed, will be to switch to 1 song period. But they might have a while before they need to do that. I do know that membership is growing steadily there since Daniel got involved (as well as JPF). Now people have heard of them who never had in their first year. As any software starts ramping up with exponentially higher numbers, there are always glitches and problems. Something that works pefectly with a few thousand users will work very differently with 10K or more.

I think we've aleady had enough JPF members doing well to indicate it's a beneficial site for our members. There are so many positive ways to use the site that go beyond just the final results that I think you need to look at the bigger picture. And don't forget, for those of you who have entered the JPF awards this year, their support (along with TAXI, CD Baby, Disc Makers and BMI) is critical to even making it possible. Let's help them make the site a really positive thing for the community and perhaps be a little less focused on condemning it when there are problems. Believe me, I've brought more problems and issues to their attention than anyone else. Certain things are easy and obvious to fix, other things are much more complicated technically and also politically within any company. (Anyone who works in a corporation knows that just because one hand wants to change something, someone in another area may have their reasons they don't want to change...). Daniel has been working very hard to win the battles he can win and move the other issues closer to resolution where possible.

We have quite a few JPF members in the running right now... so lets hope another one wins the 5K again.

Brian

Bill,

I actually wasn't referring to your posts at all.

Brian

First, I really like Ourstage and what they are trying to do. I agree it is much better than Myspace.

I'm no rocket scientist but have worked with several friends and co-workers who have that type of implied IQ. Folks, there aint no way to write a perfect algorithm on judging something so subjective as which song is better. Else, wouldn't we all have the same favorite song? I'm sure the engineers at Ourstage are looking to make the algorithm better but it is a fairly new site. I saw from their last newsletter that some folks even got publishing deals. Not too bad for a free site.

On the other hand, I got a chuckle when I see the box that says "People who liked your song also like the following" and see that my country song is liked by people who like gangsta music, hip-hop music and jazz.

Why do you think that is? It's not revelent to your music. Just wondering.
I constantly get MySpace "Friend" requests from Hip Hop artists, Porn Stars, and Hollywood Glammies. I play acoustic American traditional music. What does my music and these people have in common? Nothing. They are trying to promote themselves by throwing Sh** at the wall and hoping that it will stick. Ben

The reason that people like your song and they like Gangsta Rap is because most people under 30 years old have little concern for genres. It's not at all unsusual to find Faith Hill and Kanye West on their iPods and they don't find that odd in the least. In my own case, I like all but a couple of the 100+ genres of music we have in the awards this year and have artists I like across all those genres. And now that such a massive amount of music is available for free or nearly so, kids are free to pick and choose anything they like without worrying about listening to a formatted radio station for example.

The real reason radio has always been so format strict has never been to please the tastes of their audiences. It's always been so that they can control the demographics of the most likely listeners for advertising. Now that kids and most everyone else for that matter are rarely listening to terrestrial radio to find new music or to listen to music at all, they've been freed from formats. That's not to say that even those who love all genres don't like to HAVE genres... because one day you're in a Classical mood.. another you're in a German Death Metal mood. And when you're in a particular mood, you want to easily be able to find that type of music. Genres have always been about making it easy for a consumer to most quickly find something they want. It doesn't mean they'll only like acoustic American traditional music... it means when they're in the mood for it, they want to be able to dial it in quickly. The younger the listener, the less they discriminate against any type of music. So don't be shocked at all.

As for MySpace.. that's a different thing. Those random "Be my friend" requests are simply to build stats and nothing more. The entire "friends" phenomena was a great idea for MySpace to build networks and numbers, but it means nothing. I know artists with well under 1000 friends who sell a LOT of CD's and get a LOT of people out to shows.. I know people with literally 50,000 friends who can't sell a single CD to any of them or get anyone to ever see a show. MySpace is a useless waste of time and as I predicted, the MySpace Music scam has finally exposed itself for what it is. They built it on the activity surrounding Indie Artists so they could have FREE musical content on the site.. and now that they've hit critical mass, they are pissing all over the indie community to kiss the ass of the majors. If all the indie artists pulled their stuff off tomorrow.. the site would collapse and disappear. But they won't. Musicians rarely do what is really best for them. They prop up scam artists and those that abuse them and they tear down their best friends and their best resources and would stab them all in the back if the "industry" ever batted an eye at them. It's always been that way sadly enough.

Brian