JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum What happened to JPF Awards

Anyone knows what happened to the JPF Awards this year?

The awards don't happen every year. They're such a massive undertaking that they're only held every few years.

Andy's right. Unlike the Grammys, the JPF awards are not based on record sales, or who happens to be popular at the time. Everyone has a chance. The judges actually listen to the music.

Brian knows the stats, and I'm sure he'll chime in.

It's a grueling, thankless, daunting labor of love under the direction of our fearless leader, Brian, and those qualified to help him sift through the songs. If I remember correctly, the last awards show, there were 1/2 a MILLION songs submitted! THAT'S why there isn't an award show every year.

The awards happened in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2009 (correct me if I am wrong.)
So do we see an erratic pattern here? They skipped one year in (2003) then another in (2005) then 2 years in (2007, 2008) and now three? I hope not
Rather than have one individual organize everything, why not add more volunteers (or whatever it takes) to help and make it happen?
I'm willing to help.

Brian I'm sure will elaborate more, but the awards *do* already involve volunteers - thousands of them! However, volunteers still need to be managed. Thus, to some extent, the very act of seeking extra help and putting it to use is very time-consuming and resource-intensive.

John,

First off, welcome to JPF! Hope you hang around and DO become involved.

But the pattern isn't actually "erratic". It's a pattern of growth, huge growth. Simple as that. It really is a massive undertaking, and these things take time....

So relax, maybe get involved in the "critique" boards and get your next submission Award Ready.

Best

Midnite

Anyone who wants to be involved and really find out what it is like, should volunteer and judge. There are hundreds of thousands of songs and it takes forever to go through all of those. There is only so much time in the day and it is a Volunteer thing. Most people have other lives as well so if you want to see it done again soon, make sure you step up to the plate.

MAB

I am ready (as I 'm sure others are.) Let's do it.
Let's not let it go for another 3 years before it happens again.

Hi John,

Hey one thing no one has mentioned so far--Brian was severely sick for many months with multiple strokes--and if he is the one that heads up everything then no wonder some things have been pushed back. I'm just thankful Brian seems to be doing better

JohnK, welcome. Your enthusiasm and desire are getting in the way of the practicalities. As several folks have pointed out, it's a huge job, and with Brian's need to recover, I would not ask or expect him to do it.

And it's not as easy as "let's do it". It takes up a tremendous amount of time for the co ordinator...in fact, it's pretty well a full time job for several months.

So I'm sorry to have to tell you that if you are looking for awards, this is not currently the place for you.

Awards of any kind are a very superficial nature. The true awards are people being interested in your music. Get into your community, build a following, sell CD's, expand your territory, or hook up with people who are doing just that and attach your journey with them. Write better songs. Build people who like your music. That is the true award. Everything else is just a bunch of pat on the backs by people who don't really purchase music.

MAB

MAB,

But sometimes when other things aren't quite where they should be, a pat on the back is a very welcomed thing.

Just sayin'.

~Bubbles

I'm with you on this, well said.

Sometimes an award can be as simple as someone saying--Dude I loved your song. LOl

Bubbles,

The fact that someone cares enough to actually purchase your music or pass it on to other people, IS the pat on the back. And it is a tangible award, something that you can measure. Awards depend on a very fickle set of circumstances and are rarely too much to depend on. They almost never bring any additional revenue in, unless of course you get a big boost in sales from something like a Grammy or CMA. But very few measure up to that.

So outside of that, building a real relationship with REAL people, is the best award of all.

MAB

Of course I agree that the building up a relationship with REAL people is a good thing - but why does there have to be a tangible, measurable monetary amount attached to it for it to be of value?

Not everyone is out there to make a buck with each and every song. Sometimes it is just as valuable for a person to be heard and maybe have someone (even an audience of one) understand - if only for a brief 3-3:30 minutes.

~Bubbles

Bubbles,

I didn't say just that. I also said that "people who pass music on and tell other people about it." Most music makes no money, even award winners. But the key to music for most people are at least trying to not lose money. It is an expensive game to be in at any level. Even if you record in your own home with your computer, it still costs money for software, taking time, etc.

So earning something from your work is the same whether it is music, plumbing, computer work, whatever. It is not always required to make a lot of money. What I am talking about is other people finding value in what you do.

MAB

OK, from all your responses I gathered the following:

1- The Awards are being managed by one person (true or false?)

2- It seems to me that the Awards are micromanaged. If something happens to that person the Awards won't happen!?
If that's the case then:
a) I hope he is getting better and he is on the road to recovery.
b) Life is measured by every breath we take. My advice is to let someone else take care of the nutty gritty details and he manages the big picture. You don't have to oversee every single minor detail. Most people in the industry who are micromanagers end up with major health problems. We need to help that person by realizing he is doing too much and for no reason. He seems to have the gift to put good Award shows. He needs to take care of the big picture and let the minor details to others. It's ok to let others help, after all as musicians we succeed when we collaborate (studio engineers, musicians etc. etc.)

3- As for Award Shows, in general, they ARE a pat on the back. I love them. I make no apology for that. I loved them in college and I love them now. They are a great thing. And whether you love them or hate them, tons of people do, including me, and that’s what makes them popular

4- What will happen to the JPF Awards if -God forbid- something happens to that person? It will disappear forever? Not cool.

Bubbles, listened to one of your songs...you're cuter than a bug's ear and I LOVE your voice and your music!

JohnK...this is a waiting game. There are vultures circling to see what Brian can do. We are all family here, and on Brian's side! Would we like to see the awards show happen? YES! For some very important and specific reasons, Brian HAS to be in charge. You might not understand that, but that's the way it is. If your intentions are true, and you're not just self-serving, then just be patient. If you're looking for an awards show to happen RIGHT NOW, then go find one, and good luck, we wish you well!

I'm just curious why someone who's only posted here 4 times is so obsessed with the process.

I vote That John K starts the John K awards. John, if it seems to be so easy, just start your own. You can spend 15-16 hours a day doing press, orgainizing things, you can spend a lot of your own money doing advertising, establishing your own site, you can screen the thousands and thousands of songs that come in, deal with thousands of CD's coming to your mailbox littering your living room, bed room, garage, car, you can deal with packages that arrive with postage due, you can deal with every day having 200-300 MP3's in your email box, phone calls at all hours of the morning and night from different time zones, and you can get dozens and dozens of viruses that are sent when people send you something meant to crash your system.

You can deal with trying to find judges who will donate 20 hours a month going through thousands of songs and CD's for free, dealing with judging criteria. Missunderstood rules and confused judges.

It is no problem at all if you want to take on two hour angry phone calls from people not getting the results they want or satisfaction because they guarantee you that THEY have the greatest song in the world and YOU are just too stupid to see it.

You can deal with phone calls of people wanting to "just drop by your house because they are less than an hour from you and wanted to deliver their CD personally."

And you can set the awards up in a different town, make sure people have lodging, get a banquet room for the awards, accomodate everyone and their desires, etc. And be on the line for paying for all of it yourself.

There is nothing stopping you from doing that. It is always a little different when you are actually involved with doing it than on the outside wanting other people to do it.

Unless you want to do all that, might just want to be patient and see if it will happen. In the meantime, CMT, NSAI, John Lennon,and hundreds of contests are run nation and world wide. There is no problem with you entering in any of those.

MAB

Getting Myself in Trouble Again.
One of my original frustrations on this site was finding any information on "The world's Biggest Song Contest". When I clicked on the home page to "learn more", all I got was links to the past. Not a single word as to the fact that there is currently no song contest on this site. If you offer a link to "learn more" (about the "World's Biggest Song Contest") shouldn't you at least appraise a new poster to the fact that there is no current song contest?
Marc: I disagree with two of your comments.
1) "Awards of any kind are a very superficial nature". As a songwriter, I enter songwriting contests. I can't go play gigs, or do any of those things a band or singer/songwriter would do. I need every bit of credibility I can get, and the awards I've won are not, to me, "superficial". They are highly satisfying. Care to share with me any "superficial" awards you've won and disdained?
2) "I vote that John K starts the John K Awards." What's with the condescension? Just like me, this guy couldn't find on the JPF homepage the fact that the "World's Biggest Song Contest" currently has no song contest. Why should he have to go fishing around the forums to find out this simple fact?
Ott

Maybe a disclaimer needs to be made right now, just like when there is construction on a highway..."Due to certain circumstances, the next awards show is TBA." That should be good enough!

Ott,

The condensenion comes when people start posting and wanting something to happen when they have been told how difficult it is to pull things together, that the owner is in poor health and then they go listing things that should be done. If you want to do things you have to do more than just talk about it. But there are tons of other contests out there if you are a songwriter you should have no problem finding them, Google song contests and they are every where. Join them. As far as "why should they have to go fishing?"what planet do you live on? EVERY SONGWRITER HAS to go fishing every day. That is what the business is.

Whether it is fishing for someone to cut your song, fishing for potential co-writers, fishing for avenues to get your song out, guess what, Fishging for the right studio and demo sound, fishing to get publishers to listen to your songs, you are fishing on a lake with about 30 million people and about 2 billion songs so get ready to bait a lot of hooks.

As far as my awards, I have entire boxes and boxes of awards, plaques, honorable mentions, etc. All in my attic, because that is where they belong. My first one was in 1984 winning the Miller High Life Rock To Riches national Battle of the bands out of 30,000 people nationwide. The MCA contract and the endorsements from Miller Beer, were nice for a few months and then they moved on to the next contest. The last was about six months ago where I won a "Telly Award' for a video I did. That is at the home of a friend. Looks like an Oscar and makes a great paperweight. But it is nice.

If contests are something you enjoy, do them. There is no shame and a good chance to get a pat on the back. But very few contests go much farther than that. A nice award or plaque, possibly some press, sometimes money or prizes, fine. Nothing wrong with that. Beats getting hit in the head with a brick.

But generally once they are over, they are over and the contest is on to the next one. No hit songs come out of contests because those are in a different world. Even for American idol, the biggest contest, very few people actually benefit from it much past the top few contenders.

This particular thread was about the JPF awards, which is an enormous undertaking and all the things I mentioned for John K is what Brian has to go through. The last contest had about 500,000 songs entered on 57,000 CD's. That takes an enormous amount of work.

So anyone who wants to do contests have mega opportunities. Just got to find them.

MAB

No worries about getting yourself in trouble again Ott. That's one of the specialties of the regulars around here:-)

But since you brought up fishing around, a quick "SEARCH" of "AWARDS THREADS" brings up a lot of information. But put aside using the SEARCH function. At the top of EVERY forum is a Thread about the awards that includes one from Brian dated early this September about how they need to rethink the approach in order to do the next awards properly.

The "condensation" didn't come until 4 days after the original post, and several people trying to gently say that this wasn't as easy as Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney saying "Hey kids, let's put on a show."

I had a VERY limited roll in the early rounds of judging the last contest, and even in my limited listening, I spent three hours a day for about a month listening to submissions...And that was to submissions that had already been filtered down from the initial reviewings...Other Members spent wayyyyy more time in their categories.

So we're talking dozens, if not hundreds, of volunteers spending endless hours sifting through, "fishing" if you will, hundreds of thousands of songs, trying to find something worth shouting about.

And now, someone just signs up and says "Hey, what happened to the Awards this year?"...I don't know John K from John Q, but he had 4 days before the condescending response to do some searching and discover that the "someone" is named Brian Austin. Whitney...I'm sure his name is viewable somewhere on this site.

John's enthusiasm is commendable, and maybe the internet age has us in a state of wanting instant, all encompassing, answers. But the truth is, a little fishing never did no one no harm, except, perhaps, the fish.

Golly, I sound cranky:-)....I'll back off now and let Marc carry on taking the flack for injecting uncontained realism.


Best
Midnite

We started the JPF awards as an after thought when I finished personally listening to the app. 800 albums I had handed to me in 1998 and 1999. In addition many demos full of songs not released on albums and we had app 10K songs as well. So at the end of 1999 we started a judging process with a few dozen judges and eventually by the last round just under 100. We had a amall fun awards show that was just me sitting on stage handing out awards in about 17 genres give or take. The next time we decided to organize a better process with more people involved at the start of the process and we did an awards show in 2001. But it was by now growing. We had roughly 2400 albums and 36,000 songs. (I am doing this from a sketchy long term memory, so I may be a little off, my apologies if I am). The next time we partnered with Derek Sivers and CD Baby and the process jumped to 7800 albums and over 100,000 songs. We called them the 2002 awards but the show actually took place in Hollywood in March of 2003. We immediately started up the next process for 2004 and we got app. 13,000 albums and 150K songs. Because we needed to get back out on the road, we took a break and toured for nearly a full year (plus I had some health issues) and we didn't do the next one until 2006. That year we had 26K albums and just under 300,000 songs. We oversaw 8000 judges that time around. We decided we liked having a life so we tour Europe and the USA all of 2007 and then started up the new process, this time mostly digital for the first time. Little did we know we'd get 32,000 digital albums and 410,000 digital songs and another 10,000 CD's and 150,000 songs. We had to have a million dollar digital judging interface built to handle it all. We worked 17 non stop months judging all the music through 5 rounds. By this time, the diversity of music we got from over 160 countries spanned 100 genres of music. We needed a large number of specialist judges just to properly sort through the 100+ languages we had. The judging system was donated to us for that year but unfortunately the technology is now controlled by a new company that is not friendly towards JPF (or anyone we are partnered with). So if we do it all again, even if it didn't grow, we'd need 10-12K volunteer judges who together donated over a half million hours of free work to do it all properly and we'd need to find a new company (and I have been trying) to build us a new custom judging software package also likely with a street value of over a million dollars. We'd also need someone to oversee it all who could use his 15 years experience to dig up the right mix of judges with the proper skills to do justice to it all. And remember, this person ALSO has to donate all their time and cover all costs out of his own pocket. I worked 12-18 hours a day on the awards for 17 straight months without a break. We never saw a movie over that time, never went out to dinner, never played golf and had no life outside of the process.

If you can demonstrate the needed connections, and proof that you can stick with it for no pay for 12-24 months without pay, let me know John K or Ott and perhaps you can take over.

Last year, the awards show alone cost me over 10K out of pocket even with $50 dollar tickets and 650 attendees (about 200 of which got in free because they said they couldn't afford tickets so we let any nominee come free if they couldn't affort it). We held the show at the Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville after years of complaints from East Coasters that we never did it closer to them. Guess how many people can from Atlantic Coast states? 10. Over 180 came from Los Angeles. (Only about 50 came from Tennessee, they are obviously burned out on awards shows).

So, if we do it again, it will either be in Los Angeles or Indianapolis. Venues in Los Angeles in any of the cool areas that can hold 500+ people cost a fortune. We lost money on all those shows as well.

Overall the JPF awards are a major labor of love and frankly a crazy challenge I took on that got a bit out of control. No other awards show of any kind had even a fraction of the entries. (The Grammys usually consider less than 1000 albums a year and only have 7 song categories compared to over 85 for JPF (and 100 album categories).

The JPF Awards are about giving honest, unbiased recognition to some excellent music that might not otherwise get the recognition it deserves. We had a mix of people from Rock Hall of Fame members and County Music Royalty to people who had never performed their music live. Half the music we got was extremely sub standard compared to what it takes to get a nomination and is fairly easy to eliminate. But if it's a small genre the standard sometimes is higher, but also sometimes lower, so the person overseeing it all must know which genres require the highest levels and which may get by with less. If you cut too little, you waste valuable judging time. If you cut too much, you find you simply don't have enough to move forward and you must start the genre over again with a different bar.

Our only judging criteria is: Does it move you? When we started that in 1998, no one used that phrase when talking about music. Now EVERYONE does. It's been stolen by nearly every TV music show including the Grammys. (And it was confirmed to be by them they got it from the JPF awards). Music that moves you is the only valid criteria in my opinion. Everyone has different things they love and hate about music. If you have other criteria, you force to them pretend to judge on those things versus picking what they really like. Yuck. Popularity means nothing. We have famous nominees and winners, but we have a ton more that lose out to unknowns. Other awards are biased, manipulated or even fixed. Those that do it for entry fees just view it as a job. All JPF judges and staff do it out of love for music because none of us have ever made a dime from doing it.

If you are interested in getting started, send me your resume and professional references and I will take a look. Otherwise, folks will have to wait until I am able to recuperate from several near death experiences this year and can figure out how we can approach a new round of awards.

And the website has not been updated because the company who was donating the site update quit mid way so it isn't working and I can't change it sadly. Until we can find another volunteer or raise enough donation or sponsor money to have it finished, we're stuck. The message boards are regularly updated and the very first post you see on all boards explained what was up with the awards if you bothered to take a look.

PS: Marc is a veteran who is a bit too jaded to really "get" our awards. I understand. He only views things through commercial glasses rather than artistic. JPF Awards only view our process through artistic lenses and we could care less about commerce. Neither is wrong, we're simply different. By the way, Marc didn't directly enter, but we came across many examples of people covering his songs. And of course he's right about most of the burden on anyone trying to do something honest and fair in the music industry. People are quick to complain and attack and slow to volunteer (and truly follow through) or fix it all themselves.

If you're going to enter a "contest" that's different than our awards anyway. We don't charge entry fees. We're not a business trying to make a buck. We're a community that probably donated more hours of time than perhaps ANY community organization in world history. No "contest" could ever do what we do because they couldn't hire enough people to judge the mass of music.

We have an "awards" program to recognize artist merit and music that most moved the most volunteer screeners throughout a mammoth process. Our volunteers included a mix of industry pro's, artist and writer peers and music fans. We think that mix results in the most interesting, fair and fresh results. The big time awards are all about corporate sales strategies and insider trading and much less about what music they love. If I am going for commercial success, give me a Grammy. If I want to be recognized for my abilty to connect with music fans and jaded professionals alike, then go for a JPF Award.

There's room for all of us. But in all cases, a few people behind the scenes are doing a lot of heavy lifting and a large amount of labor for the love of it.

Brian

Well, I Really Feel Quite The Ass
I was going to come back at Marc about contests & stuff, but I will congratulate him on his 1984 award. I suspect that it did not look bad on his resume'.
Midnight Bob informed me of information available on the top of each forum thread. But how am I to know that I'm supposed to click on that thread to get the info I want? Bob, you're not "cranky", I appreciated your response.
Brian: I can see why people like Polly turn into pitbulls regarding your guardianship of this site. You took the time to respond to my rants, and did it in a very classy manner. In way of an apology, I will say I did not appreciate the scope of what went on here. When you're used to looking at Walden Pond, why would you believe there's an Atlantic Ocean?
My best wishes to you.
Ott

Ott and Brian,

I have no problem with awards. They have a very important place and if that is a desire within the writer's life, they by all means should utilize them. As I said, it is fine if that is what they want to do. And as I said, I have had quite an experience with them.

Ott, the contest I was in, the 1984 Miller high Life Rock to Riches National Talent search was in it's fourth year when our band, 24 KARAT was involved. The thing about the winners of the contests were never heard from. But some of the finalists, basically the second runner's up, used the contest to pivot themselves to other opportunities.

In 1981 the second runner up was a group called "Twisted Sister". In 1982, the second runner up was named "Jon Bon Jovi."

The winners, were hooked into recording contracts that went no where. That is where the "superficial" comments that I made came from.

Being a judge in many other contests, the John Lennon, NSAI, etc. has given me experience from the "other side of the desk."

My main comments on all of this are that contests are a LOT of work and Brian has done an amazingly good job keeping any of them going at all. He has an amazing process, reaches a lot of people and does a very good job. I am proud to help out when I can and be a part of these pages.

The funny part about things like contests I have had songs win, place and show in, were never entered by me. They were from my co-writers who entered them. It is fun and nice, but actually most contests have rules that prohibit professional writers from participating. And when Brian mentioned some of my songs ending up in the JPF contests, I remembered coming across several of them in my judging for JPF. I always tried to find one of the contestents other songs to vote for instead of mine.

My best contest is in the eye of the public. When I get emails, or letters, phone calls, etc.about people who passed on my songs to someone else, helped artists I work with get radio airplay, better gigs, etc. It is never about money with me. It is about touching lives. When someone plays a song I wrote for someone's funeral, for someone going through loss, someone who needs a boost, that is what my contest is. Financial is always nice, but that is fleeting as well. Touching people's lives positively is forever.

MAB

I think moving people with your music is the ultimate goal. If making money is the goal, go work on Wall Street or the local paint store for that matter. Music as art should hope to reach a human soul just as it likely reached into the creator. Commercial writing is often limited to rules that force some artistic concessions. It's just a different animal. But making music solely for money is just a job.

Our awards started simply to recognize some great music. There's SOOOOO much of it out there. And most never gets heard by more than a few dozen or hundred people. So getting a big thumbs up from a large collection of unbiased judges who don't know you and have no agenda beyond voting for what moves them is a validation that many of these artists may never get any other way. It may inspire them to create even more great work and to know that what they've done does reach and move people, and likely would move greater numbers if only we had a society with demand for all the supply. Someone like Marc doesn't need the boost or validation because he's gotten lots of it and has focused primarily on the money end (or pursuit of it at least) because his self confidence tank is apparently as full as he needs it to be to keep going. But humans need validation, from up close or from afar. And there's so little honest praise without agendas attached. The JPF Awards are, in my opinion, the best source of that in the world.

Brian

It was super fun judging the music a couple of times; extremely gratifying and something interesting I can bring up at appropriate times (it shocks people when they learn you listened to, for instance, 229 CD's in just one category and round alone as a judge!) The analogy on that I think of is when Brian tried out for this well-know game show (I forget which). They went through a room of potential contestants and each one droned on with mundane facts about themselves. When it came Brian's turn, he just stood up and said "I'm the founder of the world's largest songwriting group (or something to that effect)", and then he sat down. Both the way he did it, and what he said shocked the judge out of her bored daze, and he got the part...heheh. So anyway, being a judge, besides the enjoyment, can be interesting tidbit...

But, just doing that correctly involves a lot of time (Marc - 20 hours a month - ha - that seems low dude!), and in it's own small way is a *crazy* undertaking (as Brian mentioned about the whole program). Just imagine the time and drive the director (Brian) needs. And with really no pay or going in the hole.

Never say never, but to my mind there is no way this awards happens without Brian. He is a one of a kind, and this awards is one of a kind, period. Maybe if he mentors a *committee* of people/volunteers to pass on his part in it, or maybe if a corporation takes it over, then PERHAPS (a very long shot at best) it could be done, but this is a much trickier undertaking than say Derek Sivers (another interesting character) selling CDBABY to a corporation. Plus, a corporation would probably change it dramatically without Brian involved.

You know, sometimes in life there are things nearly impossible to replicate (like a lifelong friend or lover) and you just have to enjoy the ride in the moment and accept that things change (I fully expect Brian to figure out a way to do this again, but if not, his health is more important).

I also want to note that Brian and Marc are correct in that there is a LOT of interesting, professional quality music out there that never gets heard. Just as good or better than anything you will hear on the radio. In fact, that is one thing the awards proves dramatically. And I can vehemently argue that at least with the music categories I heard, some the of the best music didn't even win or become a finalist. (That's a testament to how hard it is to become a finalist, and some of the luck involved to get there when splitting minute hairs between fantastic music in the final rounds, it is not a slam on the process.) But, it did get heard. For example, right now I have a mix CD in my car player of all music I listened to and purchased doing the awards process, and I have boatloads of more music I purchased after/during judging on other CD's and on my computer. I've turned friends on to the music. In fact, I listen almost exclusively to these artists, and in some cases I may be only one of a handful of people that ever purchased their CD or single. It WAS a moving experience.

Anyway, enough for now...