Halloween Contest Feedback

[Phlipper]

Originally Posted by markiegiscool

Do you listen to Chris Moyles? He constanly makes fun of this.

"It was only when both of his hands got torn off by a rabid dog that Mark decided enough was enough - He was going to learn the piano, and play as a tribute to all people with no hands. Let's see what the judges think of his Halloween song..."

LOL! No... I don't listen to him... but that really isn't too far from the truth these days; primary school teachers who say "I just want to show the children that they can achieve their dreams - this would mean so much to them (weep, weep)"
I always wonder what, exactly, would mean so much to them - is it when teacher quits her job and they don't see her arse for dust!?

[brandondrury]

Okay, I do see the problem with "get your friends to vote". In terms of promoting a website, it's usually a great thing to pull in traffic from friends.

I think if it I could require a minimum of 5-10 posts before a person could vote that would take care of it. Few friends are going to join and post 10 times just to vote.

What if you split the contest up into 2 categories?

I thought about it, but I've decided against it. The big reason is this essentially becomes two contests then. Getting double the prizes donated will be difficult.

I've got an outline of "tips to win contests". I'll post that with the next contest. I'll just make it perfectly clear that most laymen are more likely to vote higher for a song with words. It seems recording guys are more leniant to it. If a person wants to use strategy to really win, great! I'm all for giving the public what they want.

With that said, I did not care if I won. I did not want to win! (Seriously). I think quite a few people entered the contest for fun as their main reason and not because of BFD2 or Voxengo Elephant. With that said, these prizes may be enough in the future to sway a person who was going to make a movie score to make a radio friendly type of song.

In the end, an instrumental won. So maybe all these points are moot.

Brandon

[Phlipper]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

It seems recording guys are more leniant to it. If a person wants to use strategy to really win, great! I'm all for giving the public what they want.
Brandon

I think, like anything, recording guys see the recording itself as an art... joe public only care about the end result

[DT Chris]

IMO,

1)Make submissions requirements more strict, and less lax. If it's a Halloween song contest, you can be guaranteed judges in a 'real' competition would take that requirement seriously. Most of the songs submitted to this contest wouldn't even have made it to the voting booth, because they had no flavour of Halloween in either sound, feel or lyrics.

So, some kind of pre-screening should be done. If the song submitted fails to meet the criteria of the contest, it is moved to the "Bash This Song" section with an appropriate topic name change and the author contacted.

People need to learn how to follow instructions when submitting to a contest, too. Judges in 'real life' contests have no problem throwing submissions in the garbage if they didn't even start to meet the expectations of the contest. This helps them from sorting through thousands of non-related submissions.

2) Strictly keep to the contest 'theme'. There were probably only 3-5 songs I considered even remotely being Halloween.

I have no problem with instrumentals and regular songs be submitted. However, the instrumental will have a harder time to meet the criteria of the contest, because without lyrics or vocals, will have to convey through music the feel of the contest theme.

** The title of many of the submission topics is really irritating me. After about the 10th submission entitled "My Halloween Contest Song", I stopped even looking. Brandon needs to be a Forum Nazi with this, if he wants the contest to be successful.

The guidelines should read "Name your topic thusly; ie.,Halloween Song: Death By Pumpkin"

I could go into more detail, but Brandon, you need to tighten up the guidelines bigtime, and eliminate some submissions if you have to. Being nice is only going to get you a bloated contest with too many submissions for anyone to review.

3) We should all remember that contests on RR.com are for fun - with a 'reward' for the 'winner'. None of us should take the contest so seriously that we're worried about who won or not, or why. Submit a song because you want to participate.

Enter the contest because you want to say "Hey, listen to this! It's Halloweeny! The lyrics are funny/scary, etc! Enjoy". If the votes are not in your favour, so what? It's the internet. The internet has never been a good gauge of what you are doing right or wrong.

[Dime]

Judging the actual song sounds like a better fit for a contest at an artists forum...

This being Recording Review it only seems fit to hold a contest in which the recording, not the music is judged.

[brandondrury]

People need to learn how to follow instructions when submitting to a contest, too. Judges in 'real life' contests have no problem throwing submissions in the garbage if they didn't even start to meet the expectations of the contest. This helps them from sorting through thousands of non-related submissions.

I like your view on this. I see no reason why I can't have a "real life" contest. Why should I contaminate it?

This will require clear cut rules that explain what we want in future contests, and as long as we can make it clear that this IS a Halloween Song Contest, there is no reason why shouldn't move the songs to Bash This Recording when they don't meet those requirements.

There were probably only 3-5 songs I considered even remotely being Halloween.

I wouldn't have gone that far. This is where it gets tricky and it's the biggest reason I haven't enforced stricter rules.

For example, my Halloween song did not have any stereotypical Halloween sound effects. It didn't have the word Halloween in it and it used modern electronic/dance style production but it did have lyrics about candy, chocolate, and demons slaughtering people on a certain night that only happens once per year.

It's clear that if only 5 songs met the rules, my song wasn't one of them because there were many more songs that felt like Halloween more than mine.

So where do we draw the line? Christmas is coming up. I have to admit that I haven't been wound up about new Christmas songs in years. I like the old stuff that I grew up listening to. However, somewhere sometime had to have written new Christmas songs. Otherwise, we woudn't have any.

So is the criteria simply "regular" new songs with Christmas slanted lyrics and cliched sound effects? What if the song is about "giving" and doesn't have bells jingling?

I guess I could enforce a stricter policy in this regard. A part of me is hesitant, but I decided after the Halloween Contest that all my songs need to be IMMEDIATELY obvious as to which holiday the song is about.

I could flat out say "If I don't feel the song is Christmasy enough, it's out". Maybe the contestants shouldn't even bother posting songs that are on the line. We need flat out, obvious Christmas songs.

I do have to admit that listening to all 83 submissions was a damn chore by the end. Some were excellent, but I couldn't imagine a person who wasn't running the contest would make it through all submissions.

Brandon needs to be a Forum Nazi with this, if he wants the contest to be successful.

The guidelines should read "Name your topic thusly; ie.,Halloween Song: Death By Pumpkin"

I agree with this.

Being nice is only going to get you a bloated contest with too many submissions for anyone to review.

"Being nice" is not the issue. No one I know considers me a nice person. I'm an asshole who does things (even unselfish things at times) for my own benefit. I intentionally kept the contest relaxed. Last Christmas we had 20 submissions. There was no need to cripple the contest with excessive rules and beaucracy. The Halloween Contest was four times larger and I threw that together late. The Christmas Contest coming up will be bigger. It requires higher quality control.

None of us should take the contest so seriously that we're worried about who won or not, or why. Submit a song because you want to participate.

Agreed. Music is not a competition. You make music. If people like it, you get a reward sometimes.

[wheatgrinder]

why not simply require voting for all submissions to the contest, make one of the voting options being "off topic." That way, the "subjective" idea of what a "Christmas song" really is, can be accounted for. Obviously, if someone votes your song as "off topic" its not a vote for "great Christmas song" so if everyone agrees that your song is off topic, then your out of the running...problem solved. :-)

[brandondrury]

Judging the actual song sounds like a better fit for a contest at an artists forum...

This being Recording Review it only seems fit to hold a contest in which the recording, not the music is judged.

Well Dime,

Before I disagree with you, can you explain to me how you would go about conducting such a contest that didn't involve music?

[brandondrury]

why not simply require voting for all submissions to the contest, make one of the voting options being "off topic."

Well, you did say "simply". That wouldn't be a simple programming change. It may be doable, but I would expect that one to be highly labor intensive. I'll have to think about that one.

At this stage of the game, it's generally less time consuming for me to manually deal with an issue than it is for me to program a fix.

Brandon

[Phlipper]

Originally Posted by DT Chris

IMO,
...Brandon needs to be a Forum Nazi with this, if he wants the contest to be successful...
...but Brandon, you need to tighten up the guidelines bigtime, and eliminate some submissions if you have to. Being nice is only going to get you a bloated contest with too many submissions for anyone to review....

...We should all remember that contests on RR.com are for fun[/b]...

Remind me not to go to your parties!?