We all really need to study the art of FARC.

4 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

I don't think there is any conscious bias - although I know we've discussed this at length before on here. But I do think people might tend to - without realising - pay more attention to songs by countries they more often vote for and will therefore expect to enjoy, so it can become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, we did hold one BJSC anonymously many, many years ago (2010) and the same countries did well/badly as usual! Obviously it was a long time ago though, and also these days you don't tend to get the same countries in the top five every single month like you did back then. There are obviously some countries who consistently do well, but it's not AS consistently in the top five as the days of 2010-2014.

I am intrigued to know how people sort their rankings. Some people do a couple of listens and then rank right?

Others (myself included) give songs at least 5-6 listens before ranking. I try not to look at who has sent a song to avoid any unconcious bias. I find for me that works well as I then get a nice surprise (when it's a country I rarely vote for - e.g. I was so thrilled at being able to vote for someone I've been waiting to vote for forever in BJSC 174) or an 'awww, of course' reaction if it's someone I vote for frequently.

4 minutes ago, Herbs said:

I am intrigued to know how people sort their rankings. Some people do a couple of listens and then rank right?

Others (myself included) give songs at least 5-6 listens before ranking. I try not to look at who has sent a song to avoid any unconcious bias. I find for me that works well as I then get a nice surprise (when it's a country I rarely vote for - e.g. I was so thrilled at being able to vote for someone I've been waiting to vote for forever in BJSC 174) or an 'awww, of course' reaction if it's someone I vote for frequently.

My first listen is blind on Spotify which hopefully removes any bias. After that I will properly look at who sent what. Then often I'll have a second on the listenthrough, and then sift out any I'm definitely not going to vote for and have the rest on rotation until I come to vote.

3 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

My first listen is blind on Spotify which hopefully removes any bias. After that I will properly look at who sent what. Then often I'll have a second on the listenthrough, and then sift out any I'm definitely not going to vote for and have the rest on rotation until I come to vote.

Oooh that sounds like a good way of doing it.

I do similar - I create a youtube playlist and then eliminate x number of songs per listen until I'm left with a final 10-15

I try and do 3 listens. First is in song order completely blind on Spotify, second is shuffle on Spotify but that's when I start culling (so every song gets 2 chances) and then finally a third where I'm usually down to half the remaining songs left to rank.

Then I'll try and do at least one listen to the other semi before the final.

As one whose entries seem to specialise in getting low score-per-voter averages (e.g. ACRAZE finished 4th but with 35 votes, the 5th most in any contest in 2023; GusGus had votes from 21 out of 28 voters in its semi but still fell well short in the final), I feel like an entry that appeals to everyone but still doesn't win is what I'm subconsciously aiming for. As a single 18 wipes out a bunch of middle to low scores, it almost feels like the contest is more rewarding to a polarising entry than one that's universally liked, but in a way there's something more satisfying about the latter... or perhaps that sort of entry with lots of crossover appeal between genres is likely to be more to my taste as something I would send.

7 hours ago, Dobbo said:

Now I wonder if any song from any contest across this site has ever got points from all other participants. I'm sure that first winner of The Best Song Contest In The World Ever must have been close given how much it won by (although I was one of the few who didn't vote for it). Something tells me one of the early UP winners did it though but could be wrong...

Not sure about Vicious Pink but I definitely remember that in the third edition I was one of only 2 or 3 people who didn't vote for Saint Etienne!

The closest any song has come proportionally to a full house in the final was NINA - Automatic Call (feat. LAU) {Aeroche 121} which got 41 out of 52 votes (78.8%) - still really not that close in the grand scheme of things so I think the answer to the poll has to be a no at least for the final. (In terms of just raw vote count, Sara Bareilles and Stefy in BJSC 4 + t.A.T.u. in BJSC 5 all got votes from all but 5 countries but those were from a much smaller field of course - 14/19 for the first two and 16/21 for the latter).

I can't easily check semi-final data in the same way (plus some semi data is lost to time and what we have is prone to being unreliable) but I believe 'The Mother We Share' as already mentioned was the closest we've got to a full house there with 20 out of 22 votes, Eva Simons' 'Silly Boy' also coming close with 22 out of 25. Although there was also the singular semi-final of BJSC 5 where people were voting for 10 songs from a list of just 12 (11 for those who had a song on the list)... but even then nothing got a full house, the top 3 all got 19 out of 20 votes! I'd say for semi-finals it's still plausible, could be similar to the old question of 'will we ever get a 0 pointer?' which seemed for a long time like it'd just never happen as there'd always be one or two people sticking up for even the most hopeless entries but then it did eventually happen (twice in fact).

edit: quickly checking the other early semi-finals that I have the data for, I found 3 more songs which got votes from all but 2 countries in the semi - Little Jackie's 'The World Should Revolve Around Me' (17/19), Röyksopp's 'The Girl And The Robot' (24/26, so that's actually a better proportion than CHVRCHES) and despite only actually coming 3rd in its semi, Misty Miller's 'Remember' (17/19). I think it may be safe to assume there aren't any more after that as semi-finals got bigger and the music taste of the 'general BJSC public' started to diversify a lot more beyond BJSC 40-ish, so I'm not individually checking past then.

9 hours ago, Dobbo said:

I don't think this will ever ever happen, people's taste are just too diverse.

I think there was a similar convo a few years on this subject and someone said the closest any entry ever came to receiving votes from everyone was CHVRCHES - The Mother We Share? But nowadays the contest is even less pop-leaning...

You say that, but I was pipped to the post by a pop song!