A new approach to the monthly Challenges
When we started the "New Challenges" Ian Wolstenholme wanted to feature the 'Winner(s)' on his Radio Show, “Community Keyboards” - Oldham Community Radio 99.7FM. So we needed a 'Winner'. As Admin didn't want to get involved in choosing 'Winners', we decided to let the Members VOTE on the entries and come up with a Winner that way. As it would be difficult to choose just one song from such a variety of entries, Brian Dawson (Brian007) suggested we gave everyone three votes .. and this has worked well.
Since we started the Challenges in August 2018 (that's 5 years this has been going!) several things have cropped up making it more difficult to continue the Challenges in their present form. For starters, by having the rule that you can't enter something you had entered in a previous challenge it is becoming more and more difficult to remember (or even find out, as 'searches' don't always work) if we had entered a song in a previous Challenge. We then had a restriction of three entries in a Challenge .. and sometimes this means we are missing out on some very interesting music to listen to! And now that Ian Wolstenholme has taken over the running of Oldham Community Radio, the organ program he ran has come to an end.
So what we have decided is that from now on (starting with the October 2023 Challenge) you can enter any song that meets the criteria of the Challenge. No restriction on the number of entries; and no worries if you have entered the song in a previous Challenge .. or even won a Challenge with that song. And there will be no Voting at the end of the month.
In a nutshell, the Challenge will be a place to post music for others to listen to .. following the theme of the Challenge. And there will be one more difference. The Challenge section (as from October 2023) will be available for anyone, anywhere to listen to, so posting a song in here will be different to posting a song in Instrumentals, as the Instrumentals board can be listened to by Members only. Note that if you allow your music to be 'downloaded' then anyone, anywhere will be able to see it, listen to it and download it. If you don't want your music to be downloaded by anyone else, there are options in audio.com and Box to prevent people from downloading your music. I personally am not bothered about this .. at my age! If anyone wants to download my music (eg. so they can play it in their car whilst driving), I am really chuffed that they should want to do that!
Hugh
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