One hour ago, my Color Theory song “We’re Not Getting Any Younger” was voted #1 out of 383 entries in the Electronic/Electro-Pop category on OurStage, a partner site of AOL.
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Until midnight EST tonight (GMT-5, 9 p.m. Pacific), the song will compete in the finals against the top song in each of the other categories. Winning means huge exposure on AOL Music, one of the most popular sites on the web, and $5,000 cash! With your help, I honestly believe that we can pull this off.
Out of respect for your time, I’m going to skip the details and lay out exactly what I’m asking you to do. If you’d like more background on the site and my experience so far, please read my previous post.
1. Register for an account. For judging purposes, it doesn’t matter if you register as a music fan or an artist. I suggest doing this right now, because the site may slow down as the deadline approaches.
2. Click on “judge.” If the stuff below seems to complicated, don’t bother with it. Just vote your gut and have fun. My song may not come up right away, but it WILL come up eventually. You’re allowed to vote 1,128 times (!), so you’ll see my song many times if you stick with it, and each vote counts!
3. Judge the songs using my ratings. In each round, you’re asked to compare two randomly selected songs. I’ve listed them alphabetically with a number from 1 to 10, 10 being best [since the contest is over now, I removed the link]. Use those numbers to determine how to vote. For maximum impact, your ratings need to be consistent with each other, which is why it’s important to use a written list. Ideally, you’d create your own ratings based on your personal taste.
4. Judge as many rounds as you can. Please don’t quit after voting for my song once, because it will continue to show up. You’re forced to listen to 15 seconds of each song the first time it appears, but after you’ve heard them all once you can fly through them without listening.
That’s it!
I’m not normally the “vote for me” type, but I’ve never had an opportunity like this. Plenty of other bands have more fans, but I’m convinced we can outsmart them with this strategy. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I guarantee others will be doing the same thing next time. As Daffy Duck famously said, “I can only do this trick once!”
THANK YOU for your help! It means the world to me. Of course, no matter what the outcome, I’ll keep you posted.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Brian,
I continue to be struck by your talent, imagination, intelligence and ability to articulate and explain your views on the music, technology,
much larger ethical issues .
Just wanted to let you know that I do know how gifted and special you are and without any bias, I will register for this contest of yours and you have got my vote !!
With all best wishes always,
Edith
PS. The election is over ..YES !!.. but, the fight is still on , so if it is OK with you , I may send you some petitions , which you can read and sign via e mail (in your spare time , ha !) , since we cannot lose sight of the world around us , can we ?
I really appreciate it Edith!
I’m just waking up after catching a couple hours sleep, and the standings are all over the place. I was #5 and now I’m #22, the song that is #1 now was #23, and the guy that was dead last is #15. So don’t worry where I stand just yet. We should be able to make some reasonable judgments in a few hours.
1128 judging votes seems pretty steep, but after you listen to 15 seconds of it, it just flies! But it’s fairer than the last round because every song shows up the same amount of time, because if there’s 48 songs, the most one time one-on-one match-ups would be 48×47 songs, since you can’t go head to head against yourself. And I think they figured 2256 would be a bit much, so they cut it in half? That’s my guess, it sounds like you know a lot more about it than I do. Anyways as always, best of luck!
Sorry Brian. Tried to help you out but it didn’t work. Registered and started trying to judge but didn’t seem to be coming out right. Two bands would be listed but only one would play. The other one’s music player wouldn’t appear–maybe after listening to the whole song but I’m sorry that I don’t have time to do that for all the bands (15 seconds no problem though). Tried to reload the page several time to no avail. Maybe it was my connection.
Good luck! Let us know how it went.
Thanks so much for trying Andrea! I know it’s the middle of the night for you in Spain right now, so I appreciate it all the more. Maybe you’re just a victim of geography. It’s been moving along briskly for me. We’ll know the result when you wake up!
Two hours to go and my song is hanging on to #1. Let’s push it through! I’ll have done the full 1128 battles in twenty minutes or so.
An hour and a half, and I’m #2 behind “Tennessee.” This is going down to the wire!
tap tap tap….
Mike: It’s not 48×47 because then many matches would be counted twice. It is actually the sum of an arithmetic series of 1 to 47 [with a difference of 1] because each song is matched against each other song, but each match is only done once so when you get to the last song then all of its matches have been counted already. That is every possible pairing of 48 objects: The first song is matched to 47 others, the second song matched to 46 others (it’s been matched to the first already), the third matched to 45 and so on until the last is matched to none. So yes, if you vote in every round you do get to judge how well every single song compares to every single other song. You would vote that Color Theory is unbelievably better than another song exactly 47 times. The sum of the natural numbers from 1 to 47 is (47+1)*47/2=1128
I can hardly believe I remember that from high school. Who would have thought there’d be a use for it?
Wow, nice math skills Guy! I’m glad they didn’t employ the same formula for the “open” period before the quarter-finals, when there were 383 entries in the category. Instead they allowed 190, which isn’t such a big number when you spread it out over three weeks.
Ah, guess I couldn’t explain it well in words, i could have just put [47!]. Ah, Algebra II…