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Christian music should be broken down to some more gospel genres. I write country gospel, why not have country/bluegrass gospel as a category.


The more you taste the bitterness of defeat, the sweeter final victory will be

May the flowers of love forever bloom in your garden of life

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashsounds

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashgospel

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Everett,

You could easily break down any number of genres into smaller sub categories of those genres. It's almost never ending. We try to broaden it when it's clear, through overwhelming and distinct entries that more categories need to be added or broken up. Ourstage seems to be doing the same thing as their genres keep growing and growing. But we have 100 genres this year in our awards with a half million songs.. I don't think they have a fraction of that on their site and they have nearly 50 last I checked. So I think they are growing it at the right pace. By the way, this is the first year in the JPF awards that we've ever been close to having enough traditional/country gospel to break off into a category of its own and we're still not sure about it.

Brian

Brian


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Anyone else dislike the "Pick 4" judging. I thought I was going to love it -- but I found a showstopper for me. I like to click on one song, wait for the "chorus" and then go on to songs # 2-4. I then go back and re-listen to the songs again. For the pick 4 it always starts over back at the beginning of the tune!!! The old style (head to head) started playing where you left off.

Is there anyway to do the old style of judging anymore?

Kevin


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Kevin, I just happened to have this happen to me too. It just came up as the "Pick 4" style out of nowhere. (I tried it, but prefer the head to head as well.) Look to the right of the screen, under "Who Will Win" in the black area, kind of across from the window that holds the channel you're viewing. It says in red, [Switch to Head to Head Judging] or whatever they call it. Click that and you're good to go.


A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write,
if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be,
he must be. -- Abraham Maslow, American Psychologist
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Well now I 222 In Christian/Spiritual. Boy this sure does fluctuate.

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Kevin,
Thanks for bringing this up. I really like the new Sort 4 system better, mainly because I can easily sort from Best to Least, though sometimes "least" (or worst as they call it) may still be pretty good and not necessarily "bad".

This is fairly intuitive and you can keep sorting them until you're satisfied before clicking the "Lock In Vote" button. At top right they also tell you how many songs are entered into the contest channel and they still give judges the option to use the original "Head to Head" voting approach.

All around some good improvements. Hopefully more fans/judges will enjoy using the "Sort 4" system. My guess is that if not enough people continue using the "head to head" judging option, maybe they'll eventually drop it. I think for the finals (quarter, semi & grand) they may still use the original judging system but we'll see! smile

Michael


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Wow, I thought my entry had a chance to crack the top 100, but it just plunged to 224th! I doubt it'll rally before the final week. I'm looking forward to studying the top ten, though!

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Scott,

You never know.. things can bounce a lot.

Brian


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Hi y'all. I found out the I'm at 13 in comedy. I guess I made the quarters. I'm glad to see that the fans weeded out most of the vulgar stuff. It was so bad I couldn't ask friends and fans to go online and vote because most of them would have had to listen to stuff that they would find offensive. Congrats to all that made the quarters.

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Anyone else in the Quarters?


Brian Austin Whitney
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"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

"It's easier to be the bigger man when you actually are..." -Brian Austin Whitney

"Sometimes all you have to do to inspire humans to greatness is to give them a reason and opportunity to do something great." -Brian Austin Whitney
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I'm #16 in traditional country.


The more you taste the bitterness of defeat, the sweeter final victory will be

May the flowers of love forever bloom in your garden of life

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashsounds

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashgospel

www.cdbaby.com/all/eca333

www.showcaseyourmusic.com/newsflashsounds
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I'm #3 in Comedy at the moment.

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I'm at #10 in Acoustic...


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I see you're there in the top 10 with Lara Herscovitch, Amy Jo Ellis and Greg Panfile, all JPF members. I think Lara has done the CT showcase around the fire with us the last 2 times.

Brian

PS: Did you ever enter Insane in anything?


Brian Austin Whitney
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"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

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I remember Lara... I think we split a bill in Northampton, MA a few years ago too. I figure next month I'll pull "Come On Katy" and replace it with "Insane." I'm always surprised at how much folks like that one sometimes. smile


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Well I'm now #199 won't make any of the finals...

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Saturday I was in the 90's, now at 253!

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Quarterfinals have begun. I made it with two songs...

* System - Techno/Ambient
* Rainforest Majesty - New Age/World

And Jillian has Shadows, in Club/Dance. smile



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Great job JPF members (as always). As for Sort 4, we have both methods of judging available and will continue to do so. So if Sort 4 isn't for you, you can always switch to the Head-to-Head mode.

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This time I entered an older song, in the folk category, called "The Golden Age Of Steam" and am pleasantly surprised that it has apparently made the quarter finals. I had one (Please Emmalene) score a Top Ten finish a while back so maybe I am a folkie after all?

I have to be honest, though. I've not been really participating like a good boy should (although I have listened to and judged other people's songs, and added an Our Stage promo button to my blog, so I'm not a complete loser). I'd feel so awkward asking people to go and vote for my music. I just don't have the time to conduct such a campaign. I have entered songs though. I upload them, wish them luck and see what happens.

What happens is often amusing. The songs I consider to be my best set new records for poor performance. I think one of them came in at 656th. I wouldn't have minded but the were only 458 entries...

So, for a laugh, last month I threw up what I thought was a throwaway song. I say throwaway because it was written as a bit of an exercise to see if I could write something outside of my comfort zone. Since I'm from Northern England, I thought I'd enter it into the Americana category. It made the finals.

Further proof that I have no idea what I'm doing and that I need a manager. Are you in, Brian?

Good luck to all,
Steve R.

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

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Steve, it's an odd thing isn't it? I've noticed the same thing...some songs that seem much better than others, do worse. Some might say we're simply misguided concerning our own songs and that this is exactly what would happen to these songs in the marketplace...but I don't think that's quite true either. I have watched great songs by other artists that flounder on one month, then inexplicably do very well the next month---or vice versa. Is that the way the general marketplace works? Maybe so, but I think it has more to do with the make-up of OurStage voters at any given time than it has to do with the merit of your song.

I often wonder what percentage of OurStage voters are either contestants or devoted fans of particular contestants. Not knowing this makes speculation a shot in the dark, but the voting behaviors I see seem to be influenced by a lot of "home team" voting...in other words, I think a great deal of the votes are cast in the hopes of helping certain contestants rather than simply being honest. I may be wrong, but it sure seems possible, and it would explain the fickle nature of some of the voting trends from month to month.

I still think this is the coolest contest around, and the more popular it gets, and the more fans who join simply because they like to discover new music, the better the judging will become.

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Had the same thing. One minute No 999999, and then later on in the Top 10.

Tis a strange world, but Ourstage seems to replicate that.

There is a time and a place, and a good home to be found for the right song. It's just a matter of...... geeez, I don't know !

Anyone ?

cheers, niteshift

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Fans affect what gets played on radio and what sells obviously.. so why wouldn't fans also affect what does well on Ourstage? If you want objective voting, then you have to keep fans away for most of it. Our awards process is extremely objective, but if we opened it up in the early rounds to random voters, we'd have the same problem. So it's just a matter of choice.. do you want the fans to vote or would you rather have a panel of people choose the best instead?

And of course songs do differently each month.. different people vote differently. If they were always the same, that would be a warning flag that something was amiss.. random people vote in different ways. Sure, some songs are just so obviously good that they will always do better than average and vice versa, but I think the jumps up and down are very realistic and very representative of the moods of the wider voting public.

Look at is this way.. in our own awards where we had 8000 people vote last time, not a single voter got the top 5 songs right in order in any category. The awards before that was the same. The one before that had 1 single voter get the top 5 right in order.. want to know who that was? A 6 year old voting in the childrens category.

In addition, we've never had a single song get a top 5 vote from every voter.. in fact, it's rare for a song to get top 5 votes from even half of them. Our song of the year winners rarely have more than 50% of the voters in their category even thing the song is in the top 5 of that genre, let alone the entire awards.

I've learned a great deal about the dynamics of voters from watching it for the last 10 years in our awards processes. It's also interesting to see voting trends from different types of voters (i.e. artists, industry and fans). The only thing that is predictable is that it will be unpredictable. And usually fans are the best judges of what songs do the best as a group. I think artists often make the best decisions and industry seems to often be the most out of touch. Sad but true.

I think Ourstage is a very good learning tool. Figure out how to get a great start to your song (it's really critical). Learn what level of vocals and production you need to finish in the top 50%. Learn which of your songs do better than you expect and worse than you expect. That usually means YOU need to learn to evaluate your own work better (or find a third party to help you who "gets" it).

Brian


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"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

"It's easier to be the bigger man when you actually are..." -Brian Austin Whitney

"Sometimes all you have to do to inspire humans to greatness is to give them a reason and opportunity to do something great." -Brian Austin Whitney
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I've suggested to OurStage that they conduct a survey in at least two genres every month and directly email the results to their artists. The survey would have the voter identify themself as a neutral voter or someone who was encouraged to support at least one particular artist in the genre in which they'd vote. One genre should be one with a large number of contestants and the other should be one with a smaller number. The results would benefit both OurStage and their artists. The benefit to OurStage is that they can know how well artists are drawing supporters to the site. The artist who's trying to evaluate a song can use this to determine if the OurStage results are really a fair estimate of their song's worth. The artist could also determine whether they need to promote Ourstage to their fans more so than what they do in order to get better results.

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The problem is that there's nothing in it for the listener to cooperate or participate and you wouldn't likely get accurate responses from the fans of artists who wouldn't want to tip their hand to the Ourstage folks in fears that the artists they support might not get their vote credits if they told the truth. I don't think there would be any real benefit to that.

Ourstage can see how many fans someone has via other methods (like favorites or fan bases etc..) so I really don't see your suggestion ever happening.

Brian


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Is anyone voting? In the last two or three days the top 20 songs in traditional country have not moved, frozen in time. You would think there would be some movement as artist jockey for position.


The more you taste the bitterness of defeat, the sweeter final victory will be

May the flowers of love forever bloom in your garden of life

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashsounds

http://www.soundclick.com/newsflashgospel

www.cdbaby.com/all/eca333

www.showcaseyourmusic.com/newsflashsounds
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Everett. I've noticed the same thing - and I think it's good. If there are PC posses out there for particular artists this eliminates targeting the front runners for negative voting. The quarterfinal stage is the most vunerable in my opinion for gaming the system.
And Brian, why would OurStage ever deny someone voting privileges if they identified themselves as a fan of an anonymous artist in that genre? It seems the whole point of these competitions is for artists to draw their fans to the website to expose them to the advertising - oh yeah and the music too. I really don't think individuals would fear that their votes won't be counted because they're fans of a particular artist. And after all, only a low percentage of the battles they would judge would directly involve their favored artist. I think most fans understand this and that fear - if any - would only affect those who don't understand and are perhaps a tad paranoid. I think the benefits outweigh the possible risks.

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We're talking perception. If someone knows they are simply on there to vote for their favorite artist, they are likely concerned that they'll be found out or have concerns that their votes won't count if all they are doing is waiting for their friends to come up so they can vote. If you think that's not happening, you don't know human nature. So if asked they'd likely either not acknowledge it or not respond at all. I see that same thing happen in our own awards. We have an honor system that people won't vote for their friends categories. (People who aren't members must state WHO brought them in to vote) and we carefully monitor to do our best to prevent any vote stacking. (There's also ways to determine vote stacking, many of which Ourstage likely also employs which we of course don't announce publicly which help eliminate cheating). But we've had people insist they weren't there to vote specifically for an artist even when we're told by the artists themselves that they are good friends and it's clear that's how they voted. After many years of doing this, you learn a lot about human nature.

Ourstage DOES encourage people to have their fans vote. HONESTLY. Most fans could care less about what Ourstage wants of course. And so there's no motivation for them to participate in some process as you describe because there is nothing positive it in it for them (and even that doesn't usually work to get the masses to do even the simplest things together and in the same way).. AND they may have the perception (on top of the no motivation problem) that it may discount when they vote for their favorites artists exclusively, even though it's permitted.

I know you may find it hard to believe, but when you've been on the other side of this long enough you have a very different awareness of how this works in the real world with real people. It never works logically or in a straight forward way. And any time you think a mass number of people will do ANYTHING by the rules or by request, you'll have a sad awakening. We've had thousands of people do the exact opposite or something totally different from what we asked them to do in our awards entries each year. It's just reality.

Brian


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I agree it is a perception issue. And based on your experience, I understand your hesitancy to endorse this idea. It would be interesting to do it just once just to see what percentage of the voters would identify themselves as neutral or biased voters.

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You can't just do something like this on 1 person's hunch. I know we get hundreds of suggestions from well meaning folks every year about what we should do to change our awards. They have good intentions, but the ideas are flawed most of the time and they just don't get it no matter how much you try and explain it. What you are suggestion is a non starter. I understand where you are coming from, but it's quite impractical and would fail even if tried. You can only be so demanding over masses of people for them to do something. It's really tough. If you send a request to people to do something, you're doing VERY well if you get single digit responses. (Most people with massive lists like Ourstage has now are happy with 1-2% response). And if you try to apply the info you learn from that small percentage and assume it applies to the larger numbers, you're making a grave mistake. It doesn't. People willing to participate and be responsive to a given request do NOT represent the average. It's a very skewed number that has little to do with how the other 90+ percent think or act. More damage than usefulness would occur in even spending the time to try. Unless you can get a 100% and ACCURATE response, then anything you do based on those results is flawed and likely wrong.

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Well, I think I'll try OurStage again in September. I have a newer song that I think is my "best" one so far (even though improvements can be made). So my questions are:

1.) Should I remain "blissfully ignorant" about the quality of the song or should I again give OurStage judges another chance to crush me and stomp my ego into the ground (LOL!)?

2.) Does it pass the 15-30 second rule (this is a major problem with my stuff)?

3.) What genre should I stick it in?

MP3: The Bells Ring: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6834520

Thanks,

Kevin


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Kevin,

I'd put it into the Jamband category. It's just an instinct that I have and may seem odd to you. The vocal's aren't particularly strong, but they aren't off key. In Jam band (assuming people judge it correctly) your vocal style actually fits in with that vibe (think Grateful Dead for example). I doubt this would do very well in any of the mainstream rock genres or even folk. Now I could be wrong and certainly can't control how people would vote, but I listened to some of the finalists there and there's some commonality in the vibe.

Good luck,

Brian



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I am not surprised that the voting system throws up some peculiar results. There are many reasons why.
First of all TASTES differ dramatically therefore what is crap to someone is genius to others.
Motives are different and some people do not vote fairly IMO that is a given.
Even people who try to vote fairly will make different judgements depending on the mood they are in. Sometimes the genre and style of song takes precedence over the performance due to genre preferences. A fairly poor rock song might get a rock fan's vote over a very good country song and vice versa.
I view the results as just a rough guide as I still think there are problems with the system and the way the contests are "randomly" put up. I have seen songs that I vote on as being better by far and most people agree still remain many places below the other song. Does not make sense.
All that said Ourstage is a neat place to showcase songs but I do not put too much credance on the CHART positions.

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Dang it, I've been somewhere between #1 and #4 in Comedy for the last couple weeks, but now I'm down at #18 with six hours to go. Lots of bouncing around today.

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Mark. I voted all 190 battles in Comedy while OurStage was unable to show updated rankings. In most of the battles I was ahead or near 50/50 - so were you. Once OurStage was able to show updated rankings, I fell big time. So draw your own conclusions.

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Well.. the song in first is a JPF member.. he was the best last month but didn't win.

I see Shandy Lawson is #1 in Acoustic. What other JPF members are in the running?


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I hope Russ gets it this time--that's a truly funny song.

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I'm at #4 in Folk, apparently. Where on the site do you find a list of the semi-finalists? I have trouble navigating the site. Then again, I have trouble navigating an abacus.
Good luck to all.
Steve R.

http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/

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Steve,

Yes, you are in 4th in that genre and JPF member and former award nominee Amy Speace is in first right now. I think there's a couple other JPF members in the top 10 but I haven't had a chance to really look at it.

Brian


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Originally Posted by Brian Austin Whitney, Re: The Bells Ring
I'd put it into the Jamband category. It's just an instinct that I have and may seem odd to you. The vocal's aren't particularly strong, but they aren't off key. In Jam band (assuming people judge it correctly) your vocal style actually fits in with that vibe (think Grateful Dead for example). I doubt this would do very well in any of the mainstream rock genres or even folk.


Jam Band is an interesting choice and I hadn't thought about that for this song. While I was going down the list of genres, I was going No, No, No, ... to most of them also. Even if it is my "best" song, I can't see it doing well in the mainstream genres -- it just doesn't pass the 15-30 second test, in my opinion.

Thanks for the idea -- at the moment I don't think it is "jammy" enough for Jam Band, but I have a few days to decide. I went and listened to the current top 10 in Jam Band and some pretty good stuff there, too!

Kevin


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There are several reasons why OurStage cannot mandate that the channel winner be the one selected for a performance opportunity:

1. The festival must feel they have a wide degree of latitude for creative control. Else they wouldn't even offer us these opportunities.

2. The winner of a contest might have a great recording, but not a great live show or enough live experience. Again, creative control.

3. The fans voting might not be the same folks attending the festival. So the winning artist could have won the popular vote, but again the sound isn't what the festival sponsors are after.

4. There is no real winner for contests that run multiple months. There are multiple channel winners in these cases.

We TRY with each opportunity to have the festival organizations give specific feedback to the channel winners only as to why they weren't chosen, specifically to help the artist and provide valuable feedback. We also announce opportunity winners on our Web site (albeit, not always easy to find). Certainly an area of us to improve upon. Check the "In the News Section" where we tend to feature these.

Lastly, MANY great opportunities are moving into the Marketplace. So make sure you keep your EPK up-to-date, activate it and apply.

Quote

From Jillian's post re: selecting winners for festival opportunities and such: "I brought this up once in the past, but nothing has come of it, and it's still irking me: Why is there no list of the artists who are actually winning the industry sponsored prizes? I'm certainly not trying to make any accusations, but I think it'd be nice if that information could be made public. Artists could potentially learn a lot from seeing who actually gets picked; it seems only logical."


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Kevin,

We have 2 modes of Judging. Head-2-Head and Sort 4. You can access either mode from the judging page. So if you prefer the old style vs. the new you can do that.

Originally Posted by Kevin Emmrich
Anyone else dislike the "Pick 4" judging. I thought I was going to love it -- but I found a showstopper for me. I like to click on one song, wait for the "chorus" and then go on to songs # 2-4. I then go back and re-listen to the songs again. For the pick 4 it always starts over back at the beginning of the tune!!! The old style (head to head) started playing where you left off.

Is there anyway to do the old style of judging anymore?

Kevin

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Ghosty,

Not sure what this is supposed to mean? And how are you accessing info about a band that you are only a fan of? That seems odd since you said you weren't actually connected to the band?

Brian


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It's not a matter of musicians only, but that we want folks to speak for themselves AND the post in question had no explanation or information on what we were supposed to learn from it? Did it mean something? Was there a point being made?

We have all sorts of folks here including some music fans. But since you use the bands name and post exclusively about that band, but then say you actually aren't connected to the band, it certainly can confuse people. Why not just be yourself and then tell us about who you like and why? I don't even know if you've given your own name? I'm Brian, who are you?

Brian


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I entered a song in Rock instrumental a few months ago and it did ok, bounced around in the top 50 for the most part but did not make final rounds.

It appears that it keeps getting re-entered each month though, this month included. Has anybody else encountered this? Not that its a problem, but I just thought you entered month and then had to enter again if you wanted to keep going

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With the current rules, the top 50% or so in the channel at month-end automatically get re-entered the next month. You can withdraw and enter someplace else. From my understanding, the exact cutoff spot is subject to the judgment of Ourstage staff.


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cool, thanks Doug. More spins are a good thing

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