zircon Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Welcome back! This month, lots of OCR artists entered into the April OurStage contest in a variety of different genres. Last month, though there will millions of votes cast total, the OCR community made a difference in helping myself, pixietricks, and sgx ascend to the top of the rankings, and ultimately, Jill's grand prize win. There were other artists who had MANY more fans sign up to the site to vote for them, of course, so if you think you've somehow "cheated" another artist... don't worry about it. In fact, there was one band who had recruited more people than Jill and myself combined - just goes to show, it's the public taste that wins out, in the end Anyway, excitement abound as we've again made it past the first, grueling round of judging... Update 3: 4/30/08 We're in the FINALS now, with $5,000 up for grabs. Thank you for all of your votes thus far - there are over 900 available rounds so you can vote a whole lot in the next 24 hours should you choose (and we'll love you if you do!) The three songs that made it were "Coactive", "Red July", and "Visions". Update 2: 4/28/08 All four of us have made it into the semifinals of our respective category. sgx and myself in Electronic, Audix in Techno/Club/Dance, Jill & myself in New Age/World. This represents the top 10 of each category. Thanks for the support so far, OCR! Update 1: 4/24/08 We're in the quarter finals, where less than 10% of the original entered songs remain - only the top 20 of each category. Here's who made it from OCR... Audix - "Visions" - Techno/Club/Dance pixietricks (Jillian Goldin) w/ zircon - "Red July" - New Age/World sgx - "Coactive" - Electronic zircon - "Throwdown" - Electronic As with last month, your support is greatly appreciated. Simply go to www.ourstage.com and click "Judge", select a category, and pick which songs you like most as they are paired up against each other. You do have to register an account on the site first, but it hardly takes any time, and once you get into the groove of judging it's actually quite fun. I've discovered lots of great new music through my own judging there. What's in it for me? We all really appreciate any votes, whether you only cast a few, or you judge literally as much as humanly possible. Besides that, you're helping OCR musicians get more exposure and possibly money, too. All of us who made it this far are at least part-time musicians, and several of us want to do it as a career. You're making an impact and helping us toward that goal. But in addition to all that, I personally would like to offer an incentive. Anyone that judges in each final of the month (assuming I make it into the next ones) and posts here by the end will have a shot at winning any CD of mine (their choice). I'll be giving them out to two randomly selected people. Last month, it was Master_Yoshi. Don't be an ass, though; if you didn't judge at all, don't post. Jill has offered up a similar prize. If you vote for "Red July" in New Age/World for all the stages of the contest that she makes it to (quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals), you'll have a chance to win her new CD, "Origins"! She asks that you post in the thread to update her on your participation in each stage, as otherwise it will be tough to keep track. Here's Audix: Similar to zircon's offer, I will enter anyone who "becomes a fan" of me on ourstage and judges in all the future rounds that I may be involved in into a drawing to receive my upcoming first CD release (now 95% complete) for free. I do have to ask for your patience as I'm wrapping up with school over the next few weeks, but it should be finished over the next month or so.Just leave a message either on my board at ourstage or here in this thread. To "Become a Fan", you simply click the button "Become a Fan" on an artist's profile... and here are our profile links, though you don't need to do this to be eligible for either my or Jill's giveaway. http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/audix http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/jilliangoldin http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/sgx http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/zircon Thank you in advance for helping us out! Judging FAQ Q. I want to support you guys more. Can I make multiple OurStage accounts using different emails? A. NO! OurStage is not only excellent at detecting (and discarding) votes like that, but I think I speak for all the OCR artists involved when I say we don't want to win by cheating. OurStage strongly encourages people to ask their fans to vote, but don't vote dishonestly like that. Q. Do I HAVE to listen to every song for at least 15 seconds? A. Yes, but only once. That is, after you hear a particular song for at least 15 seconds, you never have to listen to any of that song again. This will allow you to go through "battles" more quickly once you've heard most or all of the songs. Q. How many times can I vote? A. It depends on the round. You can judge up to 190 battles (song matchups) in the quarterfinals, 45 in the semifinals, and ~600-800 in the finals. Basically, every song gets matched up with every other song once, so you can vote on literally every combination. Q. Does using the "Add to Favorites" feature or clicking on Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down help or hurt a song? A. Those actions don't affect rankings at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhsu Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Weird...I coulda sworn Shnabubula and LongeBane were also in the running for New Age, but now I can't find the track. Oh well, congrats to everyone in the quarterfinals! They should rename the site to OCRStage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jillian Aversa Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 I noticed that too, Dhsu - yesterday. Looks like they were pulled from the contest. Longebane is gone from OurStage entirely... Anyway, I'd like to offer the same incentive as Andy. If you vote for "Red July" in New Age/World for all the stages of the contest that I make it to (quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals), you'll have a chance to win my CD! You gotta post in the thread to update me on your participation in each stage, though, otherwise it will be tough to keep track. ^_~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sole Signal Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Similar to zircon's offer, I will enter anyone who "becomes a fan" of me on ourstage and judges in all the future rounds that I may be involved in into a drawing to receive my upcoming first CD release (now 95% complete) for free. I do have to ask for your patience as I'm wrapping up with school over the next few weeks, but it should be finished over the next month or so. Just leave a message either on my board at ourstage or here in this thread. Thanks guys! Lets pull another OCR sweep! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Weird...I coulda sworn Shnabubula and LongeBane were also in the running for New Age, but now I can't find the track.Oh well, congrats to everyone in the quarterfinals! They should rename the site to OCRStage. I believe that they were trying to manipulate the system with Ari's help, as I know he specifically thinks Jill and Andy's success at OurStage was suspect and based on OCR "fanboys" as one of them put it. Looks like they failed. Let me put this in no uncertain terms: these three people, regardless of the musical talent they possess, have been consistently causing bullshit for OCR, vgmix, ThaSauce, and other sites, have been targeting Jill incessantly, spamming her site, attempting to hack OCR via all sorts of means (DragonArmy), and in general being hostile and unproductive. Collectively they've wasted hours of my time, time I'd much rather be spending working on the site. Sadly it seems like Jared Hudson is on board with them as well. It's the exact opposite of the awesome support we've seen this month from lurkers and veterans alike, donating to help with bandwidth costs - these actions directly affect my time and therefore my ability to run the site effectively. These individuals are calling Jill an "attention whore" and spamming their message on our IRC channel and trying to do the same on our forums. Who's the real attention whore, in that scenario? I don't understand why these talented and otherwise intelligent guys can't spend their time working towards productive goals. It seems like there always has to be an enemy, always has to be a (perceived) injustice, and that they always have to resort to the same tired means of expressing their thoughts, namely with hacks, spam, etc. It's downright boring. It's the original with drum loops on top. It's a MIDI rip, in the form of post-adolescent rage. If their creativity in this regard matched their musical creativity, perhaps they could create something new, a new website, instead of trying to continuously disrupt someone else's. Of course, I wouldn't recommend anyone register there, because they'd simply have their password stolen. When Ari essentially got kicked off this site and eventually banned, there were rumors he was working on a competitor site of his own. Indeed, it does look like he's spent at least a little time on songportal.org. And yet, sooooo many years later, it's basically live but totally broked. Nothing. Nada. Zilch to show for all the angst, all that planning, all those criticisms leveled at me and at OCR. Perhaps if he'd spent more time coding or working on more (excellent, btw) ReMixes, he'd have something more to show for himself, something that - instead of wasting my time and spreading hostility - was actually positive and appreciated. Instead these guys continually try to disrupt OCR and other sites, making personal threats aimed at Jill, all under the very cowardly protection of anonymous proxies. Actually, sometimes they forget to be oh-so very clever clever, and we actually get real IP addresses. It's sad. At any rate, sorry to totally derail this thread. I don't doubt that Sam in particular could put out a track capable of legitimately doing well at OurStage, but I believe in this instance it was yet another attempt at their version of ROFL, which is always at someone else's expense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhsu Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 ...wow. Maybe I just didn't hang around them enough, but I've never heard Sam or Long say, much less do, anything hostile regarding Jill, even in private. My impression was that the DragonArmy fiasco was simply a result of Ari offering to build a site for Sam, and Sam unwisely accepting that offer. I have a hard time believing he would harbor any actual malice for anyone though...how did this tampering come to light? Perhaps he wasn't intentionally involved...Ari's been known to act on people's "behalf" without their knowledge or permission. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 ...wow. Maybe I just didn't hang around them enough, but I've never heard Sam or Long say, much less do, anything hostile regarding Jill, even in private. My impression was that the DragonArmy fiasco was simply a result of Ari offering to build a site for Sam, and Sam unwisely accepting that offer. I have a hard time believing he would harbor any actual malice for anyone though...how did this tampering come to light? Perhaps he wasn't intentionally involved...Ari's been known to act on people's "behalf" without their knowledge or permission. He certainly has, and it's difficult to know for sure, but we see stuff coming from Sam's IP. We had an issue with passwords leaking when Sam was a judge, as well. After a certain point, you have to ask yourself: if it's Sam being "duped" by Ari, how come he keeps getting duped.... over... and over... again? I know it seems like Sam wouldn't harbor any ill intent, and at the very least I don't think it's the same nature as Ari's, but he's either helping Ari out, or he's got the worst learning curve in the history of mankind, is the most gullible person on the planet, and refuses to take my advice to disassociate. I don't know, somehow the former seems more likely than the latter. Either way, it's a problem for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishy Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Wow... way to totally lose my respect. Theres only one thing more depressing then someone trying to disrupt creativity, and thats people disrupting creativity who have the potential to actually contribute in a significant way. Losers. Good luck to you 4 though, hope you all do well. Maybe I'll put something together for one month soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jillian Aversa Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Sam's other tracks are still on OurStage, though, so it would seem that Longebane was the one doing the cheating. I personally still think Sam is a generally cool guy and an amazing musician, but perhaps a little lost at times. As for Longebane, he definitely has had something against me for a while. There's no question about that. I'm not really surprised that he tried to manipulate OurStage, but it's nice to know that their system is advanced enough to detect that sort of thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Well, my tracks didn't break the top 20 in Electronic this month. I came in pretty late in the process, though, so hopefully they'll do better in the future. I'll keep up the voting this coming week. I've been voting quite a bit on and off throughout the month (especially the last week). I'd like to think I pushed coactive into the top 20 with a few well-placed votes near the end (though probably not ). (by the way, you can hear the two tracks I submitted there from the link in my sig: Run and Trajectory) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 I'm going crazy at work at the moment (just became team lead on one of my team's two projects, and the other lead is on vacation so I'm acting in his place as well). I probably won't have any time to judge the quarterfinals, but when the semis come up, I should be ok to do a solid block of judging. Good luck too all the OCR people! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Ascher-Weiss Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Congratulations all, I wish everybody the best of luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FR Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 I'm currently judged 63 out 190 battles in the Techno/Club/Dance channel and when I'm done with that I'm heading to the Electronic channel. Good Luck Guys. P.S. Audix, The only guys I see as competition for you are SHato and hudz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgx Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Just to be clear - I'm not yet offering a "vote for me and you get something" deal as I did last time. I might, but I'm pretty sure I'll get into semi's, so I'll think about it and talk about it when that comes around if I want to boost my semifinal votes. I still could use your votes now though! You get nothing other than my gratitude! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhsu Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Oh ho, someone's gettin' cocky! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindeffects Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 I'll be rocking the semi-finals and the finals, like before. On a side note, this song is made of two pirated mp3's and a crossfade, literaly. Yet, it's currently sitting at #5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhsu Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Report it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FR Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Report it! I just heard the song...It's not even that great; It's 6th now and zircon is #1! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jillian Aversa Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Wow, good find Sasa. Did you report it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindeffects Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Yes, I'm waiting for their response. I'm surprised they haven't taken care of it already, the author said it himself that he used two commercial songs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhiJayy Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Audix, you shouldn't have a problem with taking the top spot. "Visions" is awesome dude, but just to make sure you make the top ten we'll throw some votes your way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Congratulations all, I wish everybody the best of luck! Dhsu and others - the fact that Sam's created an alt account and persists with ban evasion should be evidence enough. The post in question was made from 69.200.95.107, his account. I know he seems like a nice guy, and I know he's got some issues, but there's no excuse for this type of shit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhsu Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Er, I thought Shnabubula was his regular account? And why would he be banned in the first place? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenrir Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 I'm lost here D: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattoco Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 I've got my votes in; best of luck to you all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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