In the past, in real life ie retail ecommerce, I have commissioned developers to install star rating reviews on product pages. If we had this, whenever we each did a normal review we would also get the chance to add a star rating.
I think this is where I have a bit of a problem with star ratings or votes for songs - they are simply not “products”
I have made no secret that I personally don’t like the idea of songwriting “competitions” as it is soooo subjective and despite the “it is all just a bit of fun” element some songwriters/artistic types have very fragile egos so I can’t help thinking that the 1 winner is “happy” but everyone else is disappointed
I also think it would be very demoralising for someone new to songwriting, and the forum, to keep getting “1 star” scores for every song they post - which is why the ethos of the song reviewing is all about “supportive, constructive criticism” - which I think this forum strikes the right balance of more than any other forum I have seen (which is all down to you guys
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HOWEVER - I do like the concept of “SOTM” to highlight some of the outstanding songs that are constantly being posted and I agree that there should be some kind of formal recognition on a regular basis - but how we effectively manage this without introducing a system that would discourage aspiring writers is a bit of a challenge
Perhaps we should look at this from a different angle...
How about reducing the frequency (quarterly?) and
each member is eligible to SUBMIT 1 song for consideration that has been posted in the previous quarterThis would then put the onus on the members to submit the songs (perhaps in to a separate forum area we could create) by a specific deadline
This would mean those that don’t want to be “put up” don’t have to and it will cut the time taken to trawl through loads of forum posts and check dates etc. as the member would do this as part of their submission
We could then have a “panel” of people review the songs and decide a winner and a few “panel picks” that we can do something to showcase for the next quarter
Then this is the bit I think would address my nervousness about the competition element...
A condition of entry would be that if you win you need to give a brief summary of how you wrote, recorded, produced the song - eg like a magazine interview - which would not only give the winner some kudos - but it would also directly help aspiring writers improve, which must remain the primary role of this forum
My $0.02 to help the discussion