Preselection at Evoke

In compos which are potentially crammed like the music compos, preselection is a necessary evil. Of course it is understandable that every participant wants to present his song over the party's PA to the audience. Yet it is not much of a benefit if the audience is not longer receptive after the half of the compo - assuming that all entered songs gets played. Evoke's MP3/OGG compo attracts between 30 and 50 entries each year, and playing all of them would not only weary the audience, but also make our timetable explode. 

So, preselection is inevitable. Yet, we at Evoke want to make this process as transparent and fair as possible, so that your entries get an equal chance. We believe that as a musician who invests hard work into a song, you deserve to have detailed insight into the preselection mechanism.

The following preselection model is used at Evoke for music compos with over 15-16 entries (such as the MP3/OGG compo): 

• Four people get chosen shortly before the party to be the preselection team. The nomination follows the principle of having a preselection team consisting of individuals with very contrary musical tastes, so that ideally no style of music gets discriminated aganist. Also, the team members have different "professional" approaches to music: ideally there should be three musicians (two scene musicians and one "reallife" musician) and one "consumer". The names of the preselection team members are not being disclosed to the public to protect them against harrassment from disappointed musicians, yet participants can be assured that the preselection team is composed with the aim to give your music the most weighted judgement. 
• After the deadline for submission is past, the preselection team gets summoned to listen through the entries. Without communicating with eachother and without knowing who composed the songs, they write down a value between 1 (worst) and 5 (best) for each song they listen to. The preselection team members are requested to value the songs not only according to their personal musical taste, but also judging the composer's productions skills and the grade of uniqueness/innovation.
• After the listening session, the music compo head collects the papersheets and counts the points for each entry. 15-16 songs which collected the highest amount of points are thus chosen to be played to the audience. 
• Unlike some other demoparties, we will NOT spread your entry if it didn't pass the preselection, so it is not counted as "released" and thus can be entered at any other party. So your hard work was not in vain, even if your entry didn't get played.