#FSN2017 – Nusic.org.uk

Information on the 2017 Future Sound of Nottingham will first be announced (as always) on the Nusic New Music Podcast.

Followed by announcements on our social media – FeelTheNusic on facebook, twitter and youtube.

The #FSN2017 Final date is May 7th.

#FSN2017

KEY DETAILS ANNOUNCED:

– 07/05/17 – The #FSN2017 final took place at Rock City.

– 11am 24/04/17 – The New Music Podcast has announced the Music Industry Expert Panel for the final.

– 11am 10/04/17 – The New Music Podcast has announced the #FSN2017 finalists.

– 11pm 27/03/17 – Voting is LIVE. Click here. The voting link is located within the podcast post, at the top. This year Voting is direct via our website nusic.org.uk. We are using an online poll verified by email submission that:

– Drives people to the website, hopefully building audience and therefore resulting in more people listening to your music (we acknowledge this aspiration is undermined once artists work out the direct link to the vote and start sharing that link, we ask them not to, let them know it makes us sad and kills a New Music Fairy everytime they do it, but can’t stop them – banning them from doing so is impossible to police so not an option).

– Lets you see scores (helps artists know how they’re doing).

– Lets peeps share and publish the poll all over social media (if that functionality is working).

– Requires a verified email address to vote (which means once a vote is placed a link with be sent to that email address requiring verification), this is to stop multiple voting.

– We also have some code that let’s the website recognise emails, this serves a dual purpose of preventing multiple voting and helping you work out if your vote has counted.

– Let’s us see a list of all emails registered so will be able to see any cheating.

– Allows us to keep the votes secret in the last 24 hours of voting, we do this to drive audience to the podcast (wanting to find the result) giving your music more exposure.

We ask voters if they’d like to sign up to the Nusic and the LeftLion email newsletters, this is optional, any voter not wishing to do that will miss out on the joy of our newsletters in their inbox but their vote will still count.

For the record Nusic team members do vote in the public vote, before it goes live, as part of the testing of the system, their votes will be discounted. At no point in the whole of FSN do Nusic members actually vote (for real) themselves.

You should also know that Al G from LeftLion is running this poll for us and he is a bit of an IT genius, if you cheat he will spot it. We will issue one warning if we see any suspicious emails (any more than five starts to raise eyebrows), two strikes and sadly you are out of FSN.

– 11am 27/03/17 – The New Music Podcast has announced the Semi-Finalists for #FSN2017.

– 11am 13/03/17 – The New Music Podcast has announced the judges for Round One.

– 11am 27/02/17 – The New Music Podcast has announced entry details for Round One.

– 11am 27/02/17 – Round One Rules are live. They can be found at the bottom of this page.

– 11am 13/02/17 – The New Music Podcast features the first news on #FSN2017, including the announcement of the FSN Final date.

////

FINAL RULES – AUDIENCE VOTE, PLUS MUSIC INDUSTRY EXPERT PANEL

FSN aspires to create for Notts musicians the opportunity to play in front of large audiences, on iconic stages, in front of music industry professionals that can help them.

The voting process is quite complicated, there is method in the apparent madness though! Every rule is about trying to create as epic an experience as possible for the musicians taking part, hopefully the best gig of their lives, one that might even change their lives.

It’s a mixed voting system, between audience vote and a ‘Music Industry Expert Panel’ vote. This is an attempt to get the best of both worlds in terms of fairness and also to create a system that helps stimulate a vibrant gig for the musicians. We appreciate there is a risk we simply end up pissing off everybody.

HAVING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY EXPERT PANEL:

– Addresses the natural numerical advantage of bands with audience votes, and so re-balances things a bit towards the solo artists.

– Makes sure raw talent, yet to build any following, is recognised.

– Gives you a chance to perform in front of well connected, music industry humans, who can help your career. On the Nottingham level this panel is huge, pretty much every major player in Nottingham is represented {the one exception is Dean Jackson from the BBC, who prefers to stay neutral (as we do, so we empathise)}. This in itself is a big opportunity regardless of the result. For example in both 2013 and 2012 FSN artists have so impressed the judge representing Splendour, that they have booked them for Splendour even though they didn’t win (Sam Jones in 2013, Indiana in 2012). In 2014 two of the six finalists secured management from judges, off the back of their performance. In 2015, one of the finalists secured management from a Final judge, off the back of their performance. In 2016 Lisa Hendricks played the FSN final, in 2017 she was booked for Splendour by one of the FSN judges.

Those experts are:

Revealed on the New Music Podcast on 24th April 2017.

Our primary brief is to curate a panel full of the Nottingham residents most able to help our finalists. We also seek to ensure demographic diversity too. Our brief is to find:

– Individuals who have a significant audience (which we define as thousands to tens of thousands) plus the freedom to give exposure to local musicians.

– Individuals with significant professional music industry connections, such that could lead to high profile gigs or even management/ label introductions.

– The majority of our judges will have both.

AUDIENCE VOTE:

– Helps mobilise your fans. Knowing they can make a difference encourages friends, family and fans to come down and support, in the process creating a vibey crowd and better atmosphere for all artists. That’s really key, it’s a better vibe for everyone.

– Ensures that talent talented enough to have built a following gets recognised. It is ironic when people moan, ‘they only won because they have more fans than us’, why do they have fans? A significant following implies you’re creating music that is connecting with people. Our ‘no covers’ policy ensures good looks and the ability to play someone else’s three chord hit is not enough.

AUDIENCE VOTE METHOD

– Three announced ‘audience votes’ throughout the night via a decibel-o-meter on stage taking precise Db readings of audience volume level (from the same location). The thinking:

– A decibel-o-meter on the stage encourages the crowd to come to the front and get boisterous, not awkwardly stand quietly at the back like a school disco.

– Taking three ‘audience votes’ throughout the night ensures fans of all artists are encouraged to watch all artists thereby creating a better atmosphere for all.

– Having three specific announced ‘audience vote moments’ means everyone will know when the vote is being taken and when to make extra noise for their fav. It also means at all other times they can get behind all artists not worrying about being seen as ‘unfaithful’! Creating a better atmosphere for all.

We will announce these audience vote moments on stage, we will then read out each artist name and precisely measure the noise from the crowd for each artist. This will be done near the start at 7pm, near the last artist and one time at random.

The Judges will be marking you out of ten on these criteria:

– Stage Presence – swagger, presence, engagement with audience.

– Raw Talent – as perceived by the individual judge.

– Quality of Performance – in time, in tune, hitting notes etc

– Quality of Songs – as perceived by the individual judge.

– Splendour Suitability – would you ‘work’ opening the main stage?

Eight experts scoring you out of 50, the top score and bottom score will be removed, the remaining six will form a score out of 300. We remove the top and bottom score to help ensure independence and fairness. We want our judging process to be impartial and independent. Striving for that over time we have realised it’s IMPOSSIBLE to put together a panel of individuals with knowledge of the Nottingham Music scene who do not have connections with musicians in that scene, everyone has their favourites. By excluding the top vote you make sure any ‘freak’ 50 out of 50 given to the act who features one of the panel’s neighbour’s sons girlfriends does not bias the result. By excluding the bottom vote you make sure any ‘freak’ 0 out of 50 given to the act who features the bully of one the panels kids at school does not bias the result.

Each of the three ‘audience votes’ will be out of 50, scores will be allocated like this:

Highest Db – 50

2nd – 45

3rd – 40

4th – 35

5th – 30

6th – 25

After three votes we will have a second score out of 150 giving each artist an overall score out of 450. Needless to say the highest score out of 450 wins that main stage slot at Splendour.

Complicated yes, but all aimed at creating the best possible atmosphere for all, as well as seeking a winning artist talented enough to win the love of the ‘experts’ and the people.

Should there be a tie, the artist with the highest overall ‘Splendour Suitability’ score from the panel, becomes the FSN Champ. Should scores still be tied, the Splendour representative on the music industry experts panel, will cast the deciding vote.

FINALLY… Performance rules:

– Be nice.

– Sets must be no longer than 15 minutes.

– Sets may comprise no more than 3 songs.

– No covers. We roll with the Wikipedia definition: “a new performance or recording of a previously recorded, commercially released song by someone other than the original artist or composer.”

– You can swear if you wanna, but it probably ain’t gonna help your ‘Splendour Suitability’ score.

– Samples must not be so long they sound like covers, our broad rule of thumb is that a sample longer than four bars starts to raise eyebrows, longer than eight bars and we may well feel unable to allow it. Obviously the sample can be looped ad infinitum. Official HipHop term that.

If in doubt Chair of Judges Jackie P and Nusic Founder Mark Del will make final judgement call, where clarity is lacking due to no precise rule currently relating to the precise matter arising, decision will be made in the context of this question, “does this align with the spirit of FSN?”

For context a reminder of that spirit – to create for Notts musicians the opportunity to play in front of large audiences, on iconic stages, in front of music industry professionals that can help them.

Oh.

And be nice.

PRE FINAL PROMOTION

We try hard to secure as many unique promo opportunities as possible for the finalists, in fact it’s one of the big ‘music helping’ features of FSN – musicians get a big boost in profile from all the promo that comes with making the final. We treat all artists equally and offer all opportunities to all artists, whether they take up those opportunities or not is obvs up to them. In other words any significant differences you observe in artist promo levels will be down to the artists’ level of proactivity and/ or their strategy, some artists don’t like doing promo, they don’t feel it’s part of their brand.

The other ‘extenuating circumstance’ is musicians from parts of Notts that have their own ultra local media outlets, places like Mansfield that have their own paper and radio station. Artists from those areas may secure extra promo from their ‘home support’, student musicians may secure support from student media etc.

SEMI FINAL (ROUND TWO) RULES – THE PUBLIC VOTE

In contrast to Round One which was a music industry experts panel, the Semi-Finals are a public vote. We deliberately mix things up, an expert vote ensures new talent (that’s really good) yet to build a fanbase gets a chance (as well as solo artists who often miss out in public votes simply due to there being less of them in the ‘musical entity’), a public vote ensures local musicians who have been good enough to build a fanbase get to acknowledge that, additionally the public vote is accompanied by a dedicated version of the NEW MUSIC PODCAST offering the public an easy way to hear all the Semi-Finalists.

The public vote is open from 11pm Monday 27th March 2017 through to 11.59pm Wednesday 5th April 2017. It will be an ‘open’ vote (in that you can see who is winning) until 11.59pm Tuesday 4th April 2017. At this point we intend to (technology allowing) make the vote private, this will drive audience to the NEW MUSIC PODCAST (giving more exposure, to more musicians) where we will announce the results exclusively, from 11am on Monday 10th April 2017.

Re our musical inclusivity rules:

– Solo artists. At least two solo artists must make the final six. This would normally mean if four bands (definition = non session musician featuring musical combos of two or more) take the top four places in the public vote then the 3rd and 4th place bands will be replaced by the highest placed solo artists.

But.

The Indi Rule means two artists are already in the final, and this year they both happen to be solo artists (as defined below). Therefore the fourteen artists in the Semi-Final vote will be competing for four places, with no ‘solo artist rule’ in play.

Our definition of a band (above) does allow for solo artists who are not playing solo. An act with more than one person playing on stage that is named after the lead singer (who writes their songs without contribution from any session musicians they play with), and in which the other musicians are effectively session musicians (and so are significantly less motivated to put the effort in to secure a Final place), is deemed a solo act. We’ll be direct with you, this is probably the trickiest grey area to address in the whole of FSN. Over the years we have found this definition to be the best compromise, we know it’s not perfect.

– Musical Diversity. Our enhanced musical diversity rules (which you can read about in full in the Round One rules) have proved effective in the best way possible, they have encouraged a doubling in entries from the targeted genres. One of those made it straight through to the final (HASHTAGOBI), an additional four artists from the targeted genres made it into the Round Two Public Vote, again of their own right, with no need for the musical diversity rule.

Re our ‘new talent gets the opportunity’ rules:

– Previous FSN Finalists – One previous FSN finalist has made it through to the semi-final (LISA HENDRICK AND THE PROJECT-US BAND).

– Artist who have already played Splendour – None of the artists in the Semi Finals have played Splendour before.

BREAKING NEWS

– The awkward last place tie has returned, with three artists hanging on in there. This means there are fourteen artists in the Semi Finals, with four places up for grabs to join the two artists already in the Final at Rock City on June 19th.

– Transparency declarations: No member of any of the Semi Finalists are current intern members of the #NusicVolunteers team.

ROUND ONE MAIN RULES and JUDGING PROCESS:

– Pick your strongest, most appropriate, original track (no covers) and email it to us, one track only, along with confirmation of your ‘Nottingham-ness’ and that you are available to play on May 7th (Rock City Final) & July 22nd (Splendour).

– For full rules PLUS definition of NottinghamNESS look below at the rules. As Nusic is all about raw talent, we accept YouTube and SoundCloud links if you do not have studio recordings yet. But if you do have studio recordings, send us those.

– Email that MP3 or YouTube link with SUBJECT TITLE “FSN ENTRY”, confirmation of availability, your NotinghamNESS plus contact details, to the email address nusic@leftlion.co.uk

Do the above before 11.59pm on Monday 20th March 2016.

This LINK guides you to the page where we will confirm if you have successfully entered FSN.

For some FSN tips, check out this advice video at our youtube channel FeelTheNusic, click here.

ROUND ONE RULES

YOU MUST BE FROM NOTTS – See FAQ19 to see what qualifies as Notts in our #NusicFAQs: nusic.org.uk/faq

ALL INCLUSIVE – To encourage all musical genres and musical combinations to seize this opportunity, we have a number of rules that aspire to encourage a diversity of participants in FSN that reflects both the incredible musical diversity across Nottinghamshire as well as our own founding principle about supporting all genres. FSN is not just about bands, as awesome as the bands of Notts are. So:

We have a rule to ensure solo artists are not disadvantaged.
We have a rule to make FSN accessible to electronic artists, rappers and MCs (in other words, musicians who often perform purely with pre-recorded backing).
We have two rules to ensure artists performing Hip-Hop, Grime, Soul, Reggae, World, (any form of) Electronic Music plus any genre related to these six musical families, from whom we classically have less entries (proportionally), are encouraged to seize this opportunity.

Details on these rules below.

SOLO ARTISTS

There is no potential disadvantage for a solo artist in Round One, the rule to ensure solo artists are not disadvantaged in FSN, kicks in at the Semi Final (Round Two) stage. This will be clarified when the Semi-Final (Round Two) rules are announced, and will take a similar form as the last two years.

ACCESSIBILITY

The minimum requirement for playing live is a live vocal, singing over a backing cd, Ableton etc.

MUSICAL DIVERSITY

At least two of the twelve Semi-Finalists will be artists who perform Hip-Hop, Grime, Soul, Reggae, World, (any form of) Electronic Music plus any genre related to these six musical families. This (we acknowledge subjective) judgement call on which artists qualify will be made by Jackie P from Kemet FM and Mark Del. Their frame of reference is ‘Would this song be played on Kemet FM and/or BBC 1Xtra?’. This rule is not perfect, but it comes from a good place, aspiring to make sure FSN is open to all genres.
Strictly speaking this is a Semi Final (Round Two) rule but we thought you should know upfront… At least one of the six Finalists will be an artist who performs Hip-Hop, Grime, Soul, Reggae, World, (any form of) Electronic Music plus any genre related to these six musical families. This (we acknowledge subjective) judgement call on which artists qualify will be made by Judging Chairwoman Jackie P from Kemet FM and Nusic Founder Mark Del. This rule is not perfect, but it comes from a good place, to make sure the FSN Final embraces all genres.

RAW TALENT – We have three rules to ensure raw talent is recognised, to ensure that FSN recognises stand out raw talent and to ensure that FSN does not end up featuring purely artists who have already had the opportunity of playing either Splendour or the FSN Final.

Details on these rules below.

ENSURING NEW TALENT GETS THE OPPORTUNITY:

No more than six artists who have already played Splendour (in previous years) can make it through to the Semi-Finals. This means that should the judges (who vote ‘blind’) vote through seven acts who it turns out have played Splendour before, the seventh act would not make it through.
No more than two artists who have already played the Rock City FSN Final can make it through to the Finals.
Across the three rounds of FSN we try and mix democracy (public votes) with expertise (Judge votes), we feel this has worked quite well since 2009, for example the FSN2012 winners THE AFTERDARK MOVEMENT were in the top two in all three rounds. But we are always trying to make it better. In 2012 we also had an extreme case, an incredible raw talent who’d never done a single gig in their life entered FSN and rightly (as shown by their subsequent success) won Round One (the Judge vote) by a mile, the largest points victory ever in fact. Despite their clear stand out talent they did not get through Round Two, they were so new they had no following yet and not enough neutral voters took part to see them through. As Nusic is all about uncovering new talent we were frustrated that FSN was not able to ‘cope’ with such an extreme scenario (by extreme we mean so good whilst simultaneously so unknown, thereby winning Round One but totally out of it in Round Two), so we brought in a new rule in 2013, which we extended in 2014. The top two in the Round One expert vote will get automatic byes through to the Final.

WHO CANNOT ENTER? –

Group One -Those who have won / headlined any previous NUSIC or NOTTS UNSIGNED ‘musician helping events’. For the avoidance of doubt this means SUPER FURNITURE, SUSPECT ALIBI, JOY MUMFORD, THE GORGEOUS CHANS, THE AFTERDARK MOVEMENT, KAPPA GAMMA, KAGOULE, THE MONEY, LONG DEAD SIGNAL, DOG IS DEAD, FRONTIERS and THE TURF. Previous runners-up and Finalists CAN enter.
Group Two – Any Nottingham artist already announced on the bill for THIS year’s Splendour.
Group Three – Musicians who are unable to perform at least three original tracks live. To clarify the minimum requirement for playing live is a live vocal, singing over a backing cd, Ableton etc.
Group Four – Artists who only play covers, no covers are allowed to be entered or performed, FSN (and Nusic generally) is all about encouraging original song writing.

Grey Area/s – What if you are a new act that includes members who used to be in one of the artists listed in ‘Group One’? This is where it gets reeaaalllll complicated. It wouldn’t be fair to have pretty much the same artist get to play that main stage again would it? But also it wouldn’t be fair for a band of six to be excluded because one of them played triangle as a session musician back in 2011 for THE MONEY. So. If your new act contains the same humans as before, you cannot enter. If your new act has two or more members of an act listed in ‘Group One’ it must be at least four years since your old act got through. If you are the only member of a ‘Group One’ act, in your new act, and there are at least three of you in total, you may enter now. Unless you are the lead singer / front person, in which case again it must be four years since your ‘Group One’ act made it. Sorry singers, but you are the key distinguisher of any act. Sometimes there are downsides to being the star, but hey, you get all the groupies.

JUDGES – Will be announced Monday 13th March via the New Music Podcast. As always we will put together a panel of the most ‘able-to-help’ industry peeps we can find in Nottingham, this means whether or not you ‘win’ you get your music heard by people who can help you. Our main concern with the panel is filling it with people who can help you.

JUDGING PROCESS – Each judge will twice mark each act out of ten, after listening to one track from each artist without knowing who the artist is. The first mark will be for ‘raw talent’ as perceived by that individual judge. The second mark will be for ‘Splendour main stage suitability’ as perceived by that individual judge. Scores from the judge giving the highest score will be excluded (explained below), as of 2015 the lowest score is also excluded. The other three Judges (as there will now be five in total) will have their scores all added together giving each act a Final mark out of 60. The top two (subject to the criteria outlined above and below) acts will go straight through to the FSN Final at Rock City (see raw talent rules above), the next ten acts go through to Semi-Finals (Public Vote). The 11th and 12th acts in the Semi-Final Public Vote will be the NOISE GEN and BANDEMONIUM champs (events we collaborate with to support young musicians in their first year or two of playing live).

WHO ARE THE JUDGES? – Listen to the New Music Podcast on 13th March to find out.

Our brief is to curate a judging panel full of the Nottingham residents most able to help the musicians entering FSN, ‘ability to help’ is the defining factor in our judge selections. We define that as:

– Individuals who have a significant audience (which we define as thousands to tens of thousands) plus the freedom to give exposure to local musicians.

– Individuals with significant professional music industry connections, such that could lead to high profile gigs or even management/ label introductions.

– The majority of our judges will have both.

WHY DO YOU EXCLUDE THE HIGHEST SCORE? – It’s about ensuring independence and fairness. We want our judging process to be impartial and independent, striving for that over time we have realised its intrinsically impossible to put together a judging panel of individuals with knowledge of the Nottingham Music scene who do not have connections with musicians in that scene, everyone has their favourites. By excluding the top vote you make sure any ‘freak’ 10 out of 10 given to the act who features one of the judge’s ‘neighbour’s son’s best friend’s girlfriend’ does not bias the result. This score will only be used if there is a tie.

WHY DO YOU EXCLUDE THE LOWEST SCORE? – This was a new idea in 2015, and it worked well, it is about our continued efforts to ensure independence and fairness. We want our judging process to be impartial and independent, striving for that over time we have realised its intrinsically impossible to put together a judging panel of individuals with knowledge of the Nottingham Music scene who do not have connections with musicians in that scene, everyone has their favourites AND their biases. By excluding the bottom vote as well as the top vote you make sure any ‘freak’ 0 out of 10 scores given to an act who features the kid from school who used to bully the judge’s son, that makes music in a genre that a particular judge absolutely hates etc does not bias the result. Since 2015, we have had a fifth judge to ensure we have three ‘valid’ votes for each artist. There is also impact simply by virtue of having this rule re lowest score and the rule re highest score, as judges now know there is no point giving a ridiculously low or high score, hopefully the mere existence of the rule makes judges score more fairly and accurately.

I’M CONFUSED NOW! CAN YOU SUM THAT UP BRIEFLY PLS? – Well as you asked so nicely. Five judges. Top judge score excluded to prevent bias. Bottom judge score excluded to prevent bias. Remaining three judge scores make the traditional Round One score out of sixty.

CAN PEOPLE WHO WORK WITH/ FOR YOU ENTER? – After some thought on this one, yes, ish. We have a large number of volunteers from the Nottinghamshire scene who help and support us in helping you, many are musicians themselves. Not letting them enter would effectively ‘punish’ them for helping out. We will declare any potential internal conflicts of interest so that things are transparent. It’s worth remembering that none of the Nusic team vote. Any current member of the Nusic team who enters FSN will be asked to take time out from Nusic for the duration of their time in FSN.

2017 FSN Transparency Declarations (This will be updated weekly) =

No artists have yet entered this year, that are related, living with or in love with current members of the Nusic Team.
Any Nusic volunteers linked to FSN entries will be ‘firewalled’ from the judging process.
Any Nusic volunteer entering FSN will be asked to stand down from Nusic for the duration of FSN.

CAN PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE JUDGES ENTER? – Yes, and that’s why we exclude the top vote to prevent any bias (see above).

OK HOW DO YOU ENSURE NO BIAS? – By trying our best. Three specific points to the answer. None of us (those of us working on Nusic on a day to day basis) will be judges, in fact all our judges are music and/ or media professionals connected to Nottingham, who work elsewhere. Secondly, any acts who have specific links with us and make it through to the Semi-Finals (Round Two) we will declare so everything is transparent. Thirdly our cunning judging mechanics explained above.

CLARIFY YOUR DEFINTION/S OF ‘NOTTINGHAMNESS’ PLEASE? – Check FAQ19 in our #NusicFAQs: nusic.org.uk/faq

WHAT’s THE INDI RULE? – Across the three rounds of FSN we try and mix democracy (public votes) with expertise (Judge votes), we feel this has worked quite well since 2009, for example the FSN2012 champs THE AFTERDARK MOVEMENT were in the top two in all three rounds. But we are always trying to make it better. In 2012 we also had an extreme case, an incredible raw talent who’d never done a single gig in their life entered the competition and rightly (as shown by their subsequent success) won Round One (the Judge vote) by a mile, the largest points victory ever in fact. Despite their clear stand out talent they did not get through round two, they were so new they had no following yet and not enough neutral voters took part to see them through. As Nusic is all about uncovering new talent we were frustrated that FSN was not able to ‘cope’ with such an extreme scenario (by extreme we mean so good whilst simultaneously so unknown, thereby winning round one but totally out of it in round two), so we now have this rule. The top two in the Round One expert vote will get automatic byes through to the Final.

The ‘Semi-Final twelve’ will be announced on Mon 27th March via the New Music Podcast. The judges decision is Final, by entering #FSN2017 you agree to accept this and all the above.

We will not publish the specific scores for all artists for two reasons:

1) We want the judges to be able to score honestly and not worry about getting grief when musicians see the scores they gave them.

2) We don’t want to discourage people, if you see you came last with 3 points out of 60 that’s not very encouraging, and we’re all about encouraging.

That’s it, keep listening to the New Music Podcast for the latest!

Have we mentioned you need to listen to the New Music Podcast?