Another year of the WRPCAs has come and gone, and you guys have had a lot to say about the winners. We were hoping you could take a second and think about the process of voting this year – what did you like? What worked/didn’t work? Any categories you think should be removed/added?
Question Tuesday
19 responses to “Question Tuesday”
-
I liked all the categories you had this year… but I would love to see more categories for the smaller bands. It’s so hard for us new bands to break into the “mainstream” if that’s the right word. I know I did gain more fans when I got nominated, but I also campaigned to all my RL friends to nominate me, and I’d like to see my friends like the Foundation of Fair Fortune have the same opportnity. I think that the pedia can have a huge influence with new bands and I’d like to see what you guys could do with that idea.
I think everyone who won this year are excellent people and musicians, and I’m so proud of their wins.
I know that one of my RL friends who voted for me had to re-do it because he didn’t choose two people in the international category, which annoyed him. I think that choosing two in that category should be reccomended but not forced.
-
I liked the process- until I found out that apparently you added some people to the nominations who didn’t get enough nominations to be on the ballot (If I read that correctly.) Everyone should have a FAIR chance, and I don’t think it was right of the wizrocklopedia to play favourites on the nominations. Please tell me if I read something wrong, but these are my thoughts. *shrug*
-
Considering all the problems with mass nominations, I found your methods perfect. Very rarely do any real awards allow mass nominations, so pat yourselves on the back for being brilliant.
-
Sylvie, in our post about the nominations, we VERY CLEARLY stated that we would be doing that:
“The last change we made may be a bit controversial, but overall, we decided it is a definite benefit to the nomination process. We will count the votes, and the top four nominees will automatically be on the final ballot. For the fifth nominee, we may take the fifth place nominee, or we may decide to choose something else to be the fifth choice. No one will know who we added (if anyone) except us. Since we are doing this, we will not be submitting our own nomination forms this year. This applies to me, Dinah, and Art, WRPCA tech guy extraordinaire.
Dinah and I spend a good portion of our time exploring the wizard rock scene to find things to write about and introduce you to. We feel that this means we are exposed to a broader range of wizard rock than the average listener, and we would like that knowledge to go into the WRPCAs. We have included Art in this to be an objective third party. The final votes will not be altered in any way, so you might discover someone new that you love through this process, even if you don’t end up voting for them. If anyone wants to discuss this, feel free to leave a comment or email me at freya@wizrocklopedia.com. As always, we love getting your feedback.”I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, but since neither you nor anyone else protested this when we announced it, we assumed everyone was behind the idea.
-
My comment for this year is the same as my comment for last year: I think there ought to be a Best Lyrics category.
-
Did some categories disappear after nominations/final round of voting? And I agree with Jacquelyn. It’s impossible for new bands to break into the “mainstream” without ruthless (sometimes annoying and spam-like) self-promotion. I suck at that, which is why after six months I have less than 300 song plays.
I’d be really interested to see complete lists of all the bands who were nominated. All of that new listening material? Without endless MySpace trolling? It would rock out loud! (Of course, we wouldn’t want to know how many TIMES or by WHOM each of those bands was nominated.) -
arodhwen – Some categories disappeared after the brainstorming we did as ‘pedia posts, but anything that was on the nomination form was in the final voting, plus the Lifetime Achievement Award.
And I have definitely seen some cases where new bands do get recognition without “ruthless self-promotion”. I Speak Tree and Undesirable #1 are two examples I can think of most recently. I think the problem is MySpace dying out, but I’ve been brainstorming about what we can do to fix that lately. I’ll keep you updated!
-
I liked the quantity of categories in the ’09 awards.
Not sure if this is practical, but would it work to maybe have 2 rounds of voting after the nominations? Example: You take your nominations, anyone who had a certain number of noms or above goes on the first ballot. People vote on the first ballot, then like the top 3-5 from each of those goes on the final ballot…
It seems really complicated, but if people are like me, they’ll go “Oh Yeah! I forgot about that band!” and it might spice up the variety a bit. *shrug* Just a thought. 🙂
Also, I think my comments might be being marked spam. Unless this one goes up, in which case one of mine was ‘Pedia chow.
-
I agree with Marauder that a Best Lyrics category would be cool. I liked the process with the two rounds of voting, because I did forget about a lot of the nominees who I voted for the second time around.
-
I’m not sure how i felt about the ranked pairs voting.
and i absolutely agree about best lyrics! that would be a great addition. -
Definitely add a Best Lyrics category! I also think there should be two winners for best Comedy Song and Best Kept Secret because there were way too many bands I wanted to vote for in those categories. And anything that helps the lesser known bands get some more recognition would be great.
-
Freya!
I don’t have anything to contribute here but I wanted to say THANKS for the mention! <3.
-
No problem, dude! You deserve the recognition. 😀
-
I think it went pretty well! I would like to have a category for best dance song (yeah, head of the dancing death eaters, big surprise, right?), since there are some really kickass songs out there that everyone loves dancing to.
And obscure bands definitely need more recognition!
Lastly, if we could comprise a list of bands’ House affiliations, that would be so helpful. I can never think of what band is with what house! The worst one was Ravenclaw, the only ones I could think of were the Myrtles (ineligible) and Madam Pince (who, IMHO, is the best!). Only House I had no problem with was Slytherin, because in my opinion most of the best music is 100% Slytherin (Malfoys, Parselmouths, Swish and Flick, RiddleTM, etc)
-
I totally agree with wanting a list of bands’ houses. Slytherin is easy, but the others not so much.
Also, to help more lesser known bands have more chances to win, I think there should be a category for Best Band You’ve Probably Never Heard Of. I know of some great bands that have less than 500 Myspace friends and lots that have less than 1,000. I would love to have more opportunities to vote for them. The Best Kept Secret category is great, but it’s not enough.
-
I think the process this year was great. There were, in effect, 3 rounds. The discussion threads before actual nominations was like a prelimary round where worthy candidates could get mentioned and people could familiarize themselves before actually submitting nominations. (I did disagree with some of the final results, and I wonder if that was because other voters really thought their choices were better, or if they just didn’t have time to listen to all the candidates, even the ones they were not familiar with.)
I think it would be helpful prior to the nominations to have a more complete list about what was eligible (for the year), but I understand that would be a lot of work for the ‘pedia to assemble. There were songs that I didn’t nominate because I didn’t realize they were eligible for 2009, and there was a lot of support in the discussion threads for several songs that were not eligible for 2009, and I imagine there must have been wasted nominations for ineligible songs.
-
Yeah, listing what albums/EPs/songs are eligible for the year would be so incredibly helpful, because there are some that I ended up very confused about (case in point: Swish and Flick’s EP “With Love and Poison” which was technically released in December but no one could really buy until January but had songs out for a few months beforehand…)
-
I think some potential categories for next year could be:
“Best rock/metal” since rap and punk get their own categories
“Best instrumental” since there is still instrumental/techno wrock
“Most MySpace bulletins sent in the fewest amount of minutes” since some people think whoring a band is just as good as having good songs
“Consecutive days requesting you like their band on Facebook” (see above reasoning)…and my personal favorite:
“Best ratio of highest number of song plays to lowest number of page views” because anyone with the dedication to keep hitting refresh and listening to their songs over and over and over again needs to be rewarded for their tenacity! -
It might be a bit interesting to have some editor’s choice awards too, just because I know that you guys have probably heard more of the wizard rock made during the year than people such as myself have. It’s not that I think people who aren’t in charge of a big wizard rock website aren’t as qualified to give an opinion on what’s their favorite, I just think that because you guys are so knowledgeable about wrock it would be really valuable to see what your favorites from the year were. I don’t even it has to be something done in conjunction with the WRPCAs. Maybe a list like “Ten Bands (in no particular order) That Don’t Get Half As Much Attention As They Deserve” or something like that. I think it might be a nice way to help bands who have made amazing music, but might not have the popularity to get the votes to win a WRPCA. It would help them get more fans. I think that stuff like Wrock Wednesday and the Daily Wrocket (By the way, whatever happened to that?) definitely help in that respect, but I’d love more ways to help get word to the wrock community about various bands.
Also, speaking of ways for newer bands to gain fans, there was a discussion somewhere else about how (other than Myspace) new bands might do that. I can’t seem to find it again, so I want to bring my input here. Personally, I think that an excellent way to get word out about your band is to get a Youtube channel. Look at Let’s Lumos. Although I definitely think they deserved the WRPCAs they won because the music was great, I think part of the reason they did win is because Jessica posts their songs on Youtube. Notice that the Youtube video of One Last Goodbye has over 20x as many views as the song on their Myspace has plays. That one video has almost as many views as their Myspace player has total plays. Also, they have 4,332 subscribers on Youtube versus 301 friends on Myspace. I found them through Youtube, and I’d be willing to bet that most of their other fans did as well.
The trend is the same with the more popular bands who are active on Youtube. Just look at Kristina Horner, Luke Conard, Jason Munday and Lauren Fairweather’s Youtube channels and you’ll see what I mean. This doesn’t even include videos of songs and live shows that various people, such as TGTSNBN put up. I think Youtube, which is much easier to navigate than Myspace (Not to mention they have the whole related videos tab.), is an excellent way for bands to get fans. I mean, I hate to bring this guy up, but look at Justin Bieber. He started out on Youtube and look at him now. And look at Stephanie and the Quaffles, just one of the many bands that do lots of self promotion on Myspace. I’ve seen her promote herself on the Myspaces of tons of wizard rock bands and I only -just- clicked on her to check out her music. I’ll admit that part of the reason I’ve overlooked her the last six months is because she didn’t have a really cool band name like Heliopath (Which, for the record, is my dream wizard rock band that I would listen to and adore no matter how terrible the music was.), but it was mostly because advertising on Myspace isn’t very affective. I think it’s likely that she–and other bands like her–would be doing much better if they had Youtube channels.
So to make a long story short (after you already read the long version xP) I think Youtube is going to be a huge part of the future of wizard rock, although many wrockers and their fans might not be aware of it yet.
Leave a Reply