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April 2017 Michael Monroe Nominated for 5 JPF Music Awards!

April 2017 Michael Monroe Nominated for 5 JPF Music Awards!

 
I am indeed honored to have been nominated for 5 JPF Music Awards by the great organization JPF! Read below about how the process works with screening and judging!

BEST ALBUM Cover Songs: FOLK LEGENDS 
BEST Cover Tribute Album: FOLK LEGENDS 
BEST Cover Tribute Song: I Dig Rock and Roll on Folk Legends
BEST Instrumental Song: Dawn Moon on Time To Get Away
BEST Male Singer Songwriter: Time Out Of Mind (Whippoorwill)
on Time To Get Away
JPF NOMINATION PROCESS:
JPF believes judging should be on the individual terms of the listeners.  Everyone who listens to music brings their own biases, desires and preferences to it.  We think they should use those unique viewpoints when choosing the music in our judging process.  Our only criteria for judging music, therefore, is one simple question: Does the music move you?  
 
We start all albums or collections (in the case where less than a full album was submitted) in a genre based on a preliminary pass-through of all the CD's simply to give them a starting genre based on previous years genre collections.  (Throughout the process, individual songs can change genres multiple times, as can albums.)  
 
In the first 5 rounds, it's a simple yes/no answer to the "Does It Move You" question.  Judges are also welcomed, but not required, to leave notes on what they heard which can cover a wide range of feedback they felt compelled to share.  These notes follow that song or album throughout the process but only to our main staff of volunteers, not the next round judges.  Every song on every album or collection is screened by each assigned judge. We trim the numbers based on a formula we use based on several factors including how many entries in a given genre, how many songs/albums received at least a single affirmative Yes vote, and so on.  All music is blind-screened, meaning we do not offer information on any artist, album, or song someone is screening.  So whether you are famous or unknown by everyone, you have the same fair chance.  It's impressive to me how often complete unknowns can bypass a well-known artist/writer as well as how often famous artists still rise to the top without their fame and reputation to bias judges in their favor.  We've had our share of famous winners and nominees and, in truth, a much larger collection of them who failed to reach nominations in a given year. This year is no different.  
 
In the 6th round (when nominations are decided), we choose the songs and albums with the most "yes" answers through all rounds and we group them again with similar music from other artists who also rose to the top. When we find a genre has too few qualifying remaining songs/albums, we cut the genre and disperse those songs/albums to a similar genre. When there are too many (a very common occurrence), we use all the notes and suggestions made about each song/album such as possible genre changes or uniqueness within a genre (meaning production, subject matter, or other characteristic) which may indicate an opportunity to widen our view on a genre.  Let's face it, some songs and albums are a mix of genres (some are old school or cutting edge, some take unusual approaches) and we feel if you take musical or lyrical risks AND succeed in moving people, we should find a home in a genre somewhere).  
 
Our target numbers in most genres are 20-25 songs and 9-11 albums (some small genres it was fewer).  The two singer-songwriter categories (the two largest in nearly every awards) look for the top 12-14 albums.  So in that 6th round, we take the ties, consider all of the above, and try to hit our target goal in terms of numbers.  Even though it may seem like we have too many nominees compared to say the Grammy's, consider that we received roughly 17 times more albums than they do for consideration.   Using that math, their 5 nominees would be akin to us having 85 nominees per category.  Another reason why we choose to shoot for 20/10 nominees per genre is we really want the final round judges (which totalled over 10K people last time around) to decide the winners.  
 
Once we have a collection of songs and a genre that best fits them, we're set.  We are not genre purists, we are the opposite. (For a complete explanation about how we use genres and how we defined them this year, please visit our FAQ page for all that info.  Here's the link: http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1124101/2017-music-awards-faq-and-genres-explained.html#Post1124101  In summary: We use genres as simple tools to include rather than exclude music. 
 
Finally, who judges this music?  We have 3 distinct groups of judges: Music Industry Professionals (Managers, Producers, Engineers, Attorneys, Label Execs, Organizations, Radio, Film and TV Music Supervisors, Booking Agents etc.), Musician and Songwriting Peers (in essence, people like yourselves, including some of your fellow nominees, judging genres their music was not part of), and Music Fans who don't fit the first two categories.  All are volunteers and collectively, they donated hundreds of thousands of hours over an 18 month period to judge the collective music from the first entries to the last one we received just before we cut things off.  (For the record, even though we didn't advertise it, we included every piece of music we received from the last music awards’ entry cut off date until months after the entry deadline this year, so that we literally had no more CD's here at HQ to deal with again as we plan to move to only digital music going forward.  The days of CD's, at least for us, have come to an end.  

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