Eurovision 2020 Online - The Rules

[Eurovision]

The Eurovision 2020 Online Dates


Semi-Final 1: Wednesday, 8 April 2020
Semi-Final 2: Friday, 10 April 2020
Final: Saturday, 25 April 2020


The voting in the Semi-Finals:
from 23 March to 5 April (2 weeks)
The voting for in the Final:
from 11 April to 19 April (9 days)​

In order to keep the Eurovision spirit alive and well, we intend to hold a full vote of our community here on the forum and enjoy what could have happened in May.

The Rules​

The Jury


APPLY HERE TO BE A JUROR

1. Every country's jury has 5 members. Anyone can join a jury before it is complete.

2. As a member of jury you can only take part from the country you are from. If your country has reached the 5 members max, you can still take part but you will be allocated to one of the countries listed in rule 3 (below).

3. If you are from a country outside of the participants of 2020 (USA, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey etc) then you can take part from countries with very few or no members, these include:

• Iceland
• Belarus
• Norway
• Czech Republic
• Georgia
• Malta
• Latvia
• Israel

4. During the voting you rank each song in the semi from 1 to 16 (if you vote in the 1st Semi-final), from 1 to 17 (if you vote in the 2nd Semi-final) not including your own country or from 1 to 17-18 (if you vote as jury of Big5 or The Netherlands), and then from 1 to 25 in the final (if your country participates) or 1 to 26 if it does not participate in the final. You must send your votes to your head of Jury.


Head of Jury

1. Each country will have 1 Head of Jury who you will send your votes to.

2. As Head of Jury, you are responsible for combing all of the ranks to create 1 set of 12, 10, 8-1 votes from the jury and then sending these votes to the main host by the specified deadline. Only be a HoJ if you’re a fully active member of the forum with time. We don’t want to be chasing the HoJ up to send votes.

3. After all 5 members cast their votes to the HOJ, the average place of each country will be counted, the highest ranked country gets 12 points and so on by Eurovision system. These points as well as the spreadsheet showing the juries full breakdown must be sent to the Eurovision account.

4. All details of your juries voting must be kept private to your jury until after the final results, or you will be disqualified. However, jurors can share how they voted with other members of their own jury. For example if you’re in the British Jury, you can show the other members of the British jury, but not the German Jury.

The Televoting

1. Every forum member can vote in the televoting of any Semifinal and/or Final.

2. As a televoter you will have 20 'SMS' votes to allocate as you wish among the songs. You cannot vote for the country you are from. You must send your 'SMS' votes to the host account Eurovision

3. All the televoting 'SMS' will be counted all together and translated (by percentage) to equal to juries number of points.


It is important to note that we intend to have a jury vote from every country. While we are hopeful we can achieve this, it does mean that should we fail to receive a jury vote from any country, we will create an aggregated jury vote for them based on the jury votes of their pot members (or the other PQ countries in the case of the big 5 + host). In the same style the EBU would in Eurovision with a disqualified jury.


Note that we can't predict for now how many people participate, so we can extend some rules according to situation

 

[Petar]

We probably start voting very soon when we get closer to have equipped jury (or at least 3-5 members in each and people still can join after) and have voting opened around 2 weeks. Televoting will be same.
In our plans to have live shows (probably on plug.dj) in mid April and on them after all songs we have results at once. No need to wait 2 month till May + we want to keep interest alive

This is amazing!

 

[lilka]

I received an invitation, but sorry, I'm afraid that I won't be able to participate.

 

[crashworld]

I hope that people in that case will at least try to be more critical and objective than they would be with their televotes. So, for example: here you have an uptempo dancesong, not really anything special and simple arrangement and lyrics. It is okay if you would give it a lot of televotes because you just love it for it's catchyness, singing and dancing along and so on, but it would be a little bit doubtful if you give it a lot of points as jury as well. Why are you a jury than? I don't want to be judgemental here, I just hope people will be able to make some sort of objective and critical judgements in their roles as a juror.

As a juror, I would be happy to give songs I might find a bit boring, but emotional, original and vocally strong a lot of points. While as a televoter I might ignore it. If there is no difference in your voting as juror or televoter, than there is no point of being a juror as well anymore, besides more influence.

That's true. I want to stay objective too. Will there be some sort of a guideline/criteria for the jury panel to adhere to when deciding their ranking?

 

[Trece]

That's true. I want to stay objective too. Will there be some sort of a guideline/criteria for the jury panel to adhere to when deciding their ranking?

Yes, you should vote for Sweden, Malta and Australia high

 

[midnightsun]

In case a juror wants to stick to the official rules

The voting: How does it work?

eurovision.tv

The other half of the result of both the Semi-Finals as well as the Final will be determined by professional juries. In each country, five music industry professionals, such as song writers, composers, radio presenters and singers, gather to listen to the songs with professional eyes and ears. They have been asked to judge the vocals, the quality and originality of the songs, the acts and the overall impression of the performance.

The Rules of the Contest 2024

This is the public version of the Rules for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin, Italy.

eurovision.tv

When voting, Jury Members shall use all their professional skill and experience without favouring any Contestant on the account of their nationality, gender or likeliness.

 

[Leydan]

"When voting, Jury Members shall use all their professional skill and experience without favouring any Contestant on the account of their nationality, gender or likeliness."

:'D yeah because juries listen to this one.

 

[mauve]

In case a juror wants to stick to the official rules

The voting: How does it work?

eurovision.tv

The Rules of the Contest 2024

This is the public version of the Rules for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin, Italy.

eurovision.tv

That's actually what I did today. Relistening to the songs of semi 1 and judge objectively with regard to singing skills, radio-friendlyness and originality. I had to seperate official videos from NFs though. It's hard in this aspect in some cases (when they have both) because the NF is rather unimpressive compared to the official video and vice versa.

 

[Zeus]

Radio-friendlyness is not really a objective criteria though. If you think of it: imagine yourself the most original and quality song, I don't think it would be really radiofriendly. For example: was Jamala's 1944 radiofriendly? Or Salvador Sobrals entry? Sometimes a song which not a lot of people would get or jam along with, is exactly the type of song that can be described as original and quality.

 

[JSSArcos]

How HoJ will be chosen ?

 

[Zonne147]

That's actually what I did today. Relistening to the songs of semi 1 and judge objectively with regard to singing skills, radio-friendlyness and originality. I had to seperate official videos from NFs though. It's hard in this aspect in some cases (when they have both) because the NF is rather unimpressive compared to the official video and vice versa.

I also made a judgement before Eurovision was cancelled and my objective results were WAY different from the subjective ones... There are two options for me:
- I will judge vocally every song by the official videos
- I will judge each one according to the NF performance and check other live performances from artists that didn't present live their song live

 

[crashworld]

"When voting, Jury Members shall use all their professional skill and experience without favouring any Contestant on the account of their nationality, gender or likeliness."

:'D yeah because juries listen to this one.

LOL! I think most of us will fail at this. BUT I SHALL BE OBJECTIVE!

 

[crashworld]

Yes, you should vote for Sweden, Malta and Australia high

LOL! Considering I will be part of the Australian jury, I can't vote for Australia (for obvious reason). But for Sweden and Malta, MAYBE....................................

 

[mauve]

Radio-friendlyness is not really a objective criteria though. If you think of it: imagine yourself the most original and quality song, I don't think it would be really radiofriendly. For example: was Jamala's 1944 radiofriendly? Or Salvador Sobrals entry? Sometimes a song which not a lot of people would get or jam along with, is exactly the type of song that can be described as original and quality.

I used the wrong word. I mean dated or not dated. In that sense.

 

[mauve]

I also made a judgement before Eurovision was cancelled and my objective results were WAY different from the subjective ones... There are two options for me:
- I will judge vocally every song by the official videos
- I will judge by NF performance and check other live performances from the artists that didn't present live their song live

Yes, I will also try to judge songs by live performances in case there are any.

 

[Leydan]

Most of us will probably end up being more professional than the actual juries. I'm sure most just show up and are like "lol this is nice" *ranks last by accident and goes home*

 

[midnightsun]

Radio-friendlyness is not really a objective criteria though. If you think of it: imagine yourself the most original and quality song, I don't think it would be really radiofriendly.

Many winners in the past were what you would call radio-friendly (at their time). Even in the 60, 70s...

And even if I often prefer songs that you would call quality-songs I can also appreciate a so-called radio friendly song. Appealing to masses (that‘s „radio friendly in other words“) is also a sign for quality. The quality to be able to entertain millions of people.

 

[Trece]

For years since jury introduced in Eurovision i have seen so many different votes from juries and single jurors, as well as diaspora votings etc that i am not bought by 'the is very jury entry' anymore, and i think most of us really would vote more fair and according to personal preferences or trying to judge objectively, then many real Eurovision jurors like "oh my husband is Armenian so i put it first"

 

[Gera11]

For years since jury introduced in Eurovision i have seen so many different votes from juries and single jurors, as well as diaspora votings etc that i am not bought by 'the is very jury entry' anymore, and i think most of us really would vote more fair and according to personal preferences or trying to judge objectively, then many real Eurovision jurors like "oh my husband is Armenian so i put it first"

We need the achieve the supreme level of competence the real Eurovision juries have and send our votes upside-down

 

[ESC94]

I don´t know yet how I´ll rate the songs.

 

[dogmeat]

I hope that people in that case will at least try to be more critical and objective than they would be with their televotes. So, for example: here you have an uptempo dancesong, not really anything special and simple arrangement and lyrics. It is okay if you would give it a lot of televotes because you just love it for it's catchyness, singing and dancing along and so on, but it would be a little bit doubtful if you give it a lot of points as jury as well. Why are you a jury than? I don't want to be judgemental here, I just hope people will be able to make some sort of objective and critical judgements in their roles as a juror.

As a juror, I would be happy to give songs I might find a bit boring, but emotional, original and vocally strong a lot of points. While as a televoter I might ignore it. If there is no difference in your voting as juror or televoter, than there is no point of being a juror as well anymore, besides more influence.

That boils down to the old question "is music taste objective or subjective?" I believe it's subjective. Music's role is to initiate emotional response from the listener. And I don't know a better way to measure it than observing your own emotional response.
If you find it emotional, you won't find it boring and vice versa. Originality alone is not a factor. I could go out on stage with wooden sticks in hands and 5 naked people and beat their butts repeatedly for 3 minutes. That would be original, but awful quality-wise. Strong vocals are a factor to consider, but vocals alone won't save an otherwise bad song.
I can't even imagine how I could possibly vote "objectively". If I tried, I'd probably end up going for what I guess majority would like. Which is a really bad way to judge. I'll vote just how I would in NSC (where I can sometimes spend an hour listening to 2 songs back to back on repea to decide between 2 and 3 points xD)