so there’s one week left in the Fish contest – get your views in now, if you can! it’s crunch time, people. http://tinyurl.com/2el9vch

i seem to be hovering around 15th place or so in terms of view count, if you’re interested in such things. i’d love to breach the top 10, but that’s more in the hands of my friends and cohorts than it is in mine.

throughout the contest there have been a lot of whispers and rumors and grumbles about possible cheating – i myself have witnessed some people’s view counts shoot up by crazy amounts – on the order of 20k or so in a single day, haha – and figured they figured a way to game the system. apparently, however, the fish is aware of such things and sent the following email to all contestants, which you might be interested in:

–

You are receiving this message because you entered a video performance into our Opening Act competition.

There have been a lot of phone calls and e-mails from many of you asking about views counts and how we are tracking valid view counts for this contest. Per our official rules to the contest, we are using YouTube’s official policy for counting views to determine which video has the most views. We have no control over these counts, and we cannot change the counts as the view counts are completely in the hands of YouTube. With YouTube being the standard for personal videos on the internet, we are confident that this is the most accurate and fairest way to determine which videos get the most views.

However, we do realize there are ways to cheat this system using software and websites that will help you increase your views by paying them a fee. We are looking closely at every video and tracking the view count trends on a daily basis. Should we feel that there is an abnormal increase in the video view counts for any contestant, we will take the necessary steps to determine if any of the video views were gained artificially through any of these means. If we determine that this method was used, then we will discount those views gained through this manner as we determine the finalists for this competition.

We want this contest to be as fair as possible, and your cooperation in this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for taking part in Opening Act. We wish you all the best of luck, and feel free to contact me with any questions.

–

so there is that — good to know they’re more or less on top of the situation. seems like a big task to track daily trends on each video, that’s for sure.

apparently they are also going to watch every video that’s submitted, not just the top X or whatever, so that’s always good. i suppose they’ll probably have some kind of forumla that awards points based on the views and talent combination, but who knows?

either way it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out!

other than that, i’ve got a few events coming up, which is cool. i’ve actually got two spots opening for other bands, (thanks to the waltons) which seems like a pretty great thing. one is for a couple of bands at an event at West GA – the bands are True Story, which i’ve heard of, and another one called A Ransom Plea that i’m not familiar with. the other event is a fundraiser concert with a guy named Warren Barfield. i hadn’t heard of him prior, but have looked up his stuff and he’s quite good. so who knows if i’ll even get to talk with him or anything — not sure how the interaction goes between opening and main acts — but it should be fun in any case. i’ll be reporting on everything here for sure to let you know how it all goes!

that’s about it for now – just playing where i can, riding the wave and seeing where it goes.