Seattle PlayBack Juror Process Example

Notes and communication examples from Seattle’s PlayBack collection and how they work with Community Jurors.

Basic PlayBack Community Juror Guidelines (as of spring 2019):

trying to use external jurors for signal boosts
just 1 meeting (with lunch!) after some narrowing of submissions
they provide a stipend equal to artist honorariums
Jurors can optionally listen and rate songs and they are given opportunity to do that in the same room.
Estimate total time 10 - 15 hours
3 external jurors have been with them from the beginning, a couple have moved on, generally 1 or 2 new people each round.

PlayBack Jurying Process (as of spring 2019):

Submission Period:

During the open submission period (1 month), jurists are encouraged to contact musicians directly to encourage them to submit. Optimally, a list should be kept and sent to the PlayBack PM. Community Jurors have 1 week between end of submission and beginning of internal jurist listening. Internal jurists get 3 weeks.

Fast-Track rating:

After the submission period ends, the list of artists who were directly contacted will be given an automatic “fast tracked” vote. In addition to this, community jurists will be asked to go over the complete list of artists who submitted and give another “fast track vote” to any artist who are well-known and found highly recommended to the jurist. These are also marked appropriately. Artists receiving multiple “Fast track votes” are weighted as such on the working list.

This method will hopefully produce a solid working list of about 25 “final” tracks, with multiple votes, (still negotiable if needed) with a good representation of different genres, as well as others that will be strong alternates. (We collect 50 albums per submission period.) The remainder of the tracks are divvied between internal SPL Jurists.

Track rating:

Each of the non-fast-tracked tracks is listened to and rated 1-5 by an SPL jurist. Tracks rated 4-5 are sent on for final consideration.

All Jurists Meeting:

All tracks that were fast tracked and rated 4-5 are assigned to each jurist for contemplation. We meet in person, both internal and community jurors. Last time was 2 hours (not long enough), this time 3 hours. First we look at the list of artists for which there is already some agreement. (Goal of 25 or half the final selection.) Generally these are pretty well known artists. We can fine tune this further if needed, but usually there’s no need, tho sometimes we remove someone if they have multiple albums in the collection already or if they’ve moved out of the greater Seattle area. Then, every juror gets to choose 1 artists to be added w/o discussion. (9 additional selections) That way, everyone has a stake in the final list. Then we listen to, discuss, and vote on the final tracks (about 16) to be included. Before coming to the meeting, I look what the genre representation is and come up with target goals. We then go through the tracks, listening and discussing, leaving Rock/Pop for last. Hip hop goes first, followed by Dance/Electronica, Jazz, Soul, R&B, etc. Here’s how it was broken down:

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