Input over the last few months from radio stations and promoters has led to two major changes for JazzWeek reporters beginning Feb. 10.
No more manual entry of missing releases
The most noticeable for stations is that the ability for stations to add CDs that appear to be missing has been removed. There are four primary reasons for this:
- Quite often CDs were entered this way that were already on the input form, sometimes leading to duplicate listings.
- Other times, stations would continue to report CDs that had already had their run as currents and were no longer on the form. Or a CD had not yet reached its add date and thus was not available to report.
- Many times, a CD would be from a local artist who is not distributing the CD nationally, or from a more adventurous or somewhat non-jazz artist that only one or two stations would play. Yet that CD would end up on the form for stations to report spins, making that much more difficult. (More on that below.)
- Promoters voiced the opinion that only artists, labels or promoters who participate in the JazzWeek community should be charted. Since anyone can register for a free subscription that gives them the ability to submit a CD (though without the benefit of data that paid subscribers receive) this should not be a hindrance to a DIY artist or to a small label.
If you are the one filling in the form for your reporting station and a CD on your playlist seems not to be on the form, please check to see if you’ve missed it by doing a control-F/command-F in your browser and searching for the CD on the page with the form. If that doesn’t turn up the CD, please consider searching for it on this page: http://www.jazzweek.com/releases/.
Also, feel free to encourage artists or labels you know are promoting their CD nationally to register with the JazzWeek.com site and to submit the CD here: http://www.jazzweek.com/submit-cds/
Shorter time on the form for releases
The second change involves reducing the amount of time a CD stays on the input form. First, the maximum time a CD will stay current is reduced to 26 weeks from 30 weeks.
Secondly, if a CD has been reported for 15 or more weeks and drops below 20 spins or below 5 stations, it will not be a current on the form beginning with the following week.
What this all means
After a few CDs age out of being currents, the number of CDs listed will drop from more than 800 to about 350-400. This should make it easier to complete the list. Please also remember that you can sort CDs either by first or last name. If you prepare your playlist tabulation sorted by artist, it will make completing your report much easier.
Roster of reporting stations
Along with this change, we will be pruning from stations listed as reporters those who have not participated in the last three months. In addition, stations who have been waiting to report will be added in the next two weeks.