Song of the Week
From SotW Wiki
Song of the Week (or SotW, for short) is an online, ongoing, weekly event. The purpose of this event is to promote the proliferation of quality video game music1 that is seldom heard amongst the society of VGM fans.
SotW takes place at both the Gamingforce General Game Music Discussion forum and at the Soundtrack Central Game Music Discussion forum. In these forums, SotW occurs as two concurrent phases each week. The first phase is the Nomination Phase, where a total of eight nominees are selected from people who wish to enter their songs of choice. The second phase is the Voting Phase, where a single winner (sometimes just referred to as "Song of the Week") and two runners-up are selected from the eight nominees through popular vote. Both phases are contained within the same thread each week. After these phases are complete, those top three tracks are then listed on the Song of the Week website. All listed songs, even those from previous weeks, are available for direct download.
Everyone is encouraged to participate in either, or both, of the phases. So go ahead and join in! Click on one of the following links to view the rules and information you will need to know before participating in a particular phase:
Please let us know if anything should be added to this (or any related) article. Thanks!
1 The term "video game music" (or "VGM", for short), is used to describe music contained within a video game (this can be a game playable on a personal computer, arcade machine, gaming console, portable system, mobile device, etc.).
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History
Song of the Week was proposed by Kaleb.G on August 3, 2004, to general approval. After several weeks of discussion about the proposed rules, the first nomination thread was created on September 13, and voting commenced three days later.
On April 25, 2005, after several weeks of delays due to time constraints, Kaleb.G called for help in running the normal operations of Song of the Week. Several participants stepped forward and offered their services, running the general operations like nominations and voting management while Kaleb continued to work on the backend, updating the site database and files and assisting with research. CHz and TCK turned out to be the most active contributors in this regard, along with Mo0, who tallied the weekly votes. _DH_ also contributed by writing code to make updating the site easier.
However, in conjunction with a general waning of interest in GFF, even this lightened workload proved too much for Kaleb. So, in September of 2005, even more responsibilities were transferred to the staff, allowing them to fully run Song of the Week and update the main site from Week 33 on. Kaleb still maintains a presence in the event by voting, nominating, and offering assistance and advice.
On June 2, 2006, Mo0 announced his retirement from the Song of the Week staff, after successfully completing his pet project, the Song of the Year contest. The reasons for his leaving were the same as Kaleb's, for the most part. A lack of free time to spend on Song of the Week led Mo0 to step down before he became a detriment to the staff. A second help thread was created by Kaleb to help find replacements for _DH_, who took a leave to celebrate his marriage, and for Mo0.
Related events
Slightly Dark
If you like the rare songs featured at SotW, then here's another great site for you. Slightly Dark features rare and out-of-print game soundtracks for full album download in mp3 format. Slightly Dark also used to be part of the SotW voting/nominating process. There's always something new and interesting to be found here, all of which is selected by our very own Secret Squirrel. Check back regularly, as a different album is posted every week.
VG Frequency
Larry Oji (a.k.a. Liontamer, of OC ReMix fame) has an excellent spotlight on video game music and the game mixing community with his online radio show, VG Frequency. For several episodes, Larry has played the SotW weekly winners. VG Frequency has now finished, but you can find the show at Ormgas.com
- Radio Link (WMRE) - requires RealPlayer or RealAlternative
- Direct Link: rtsp://realaudio.service.emory.edu/encoder/WMRE/wmre.rm
- IRC Channel (EnterTheGame / #VGF)
- Ormgas Forum
- OCR Forum Thread
