Re: Proof that Azerbaijan cheats in Eurovision voting
Well another way would be to just ban advertisement for ESC entries. I can't see San Marino anytime soon having the money to advertise their entries all over the web. It's a bit unfair. A youtube video of the entry should be enough.
Punishing all countries because a few countries are poor in the name of fairness is stupid. This is like putting a handicap on sports competitions. "Those guys are really bad at running, so nobody is allowed to run fast in this upcoming football match!". It is ridiculous to impose arbitrary rules on all countries to make the contest more "fair" to countries with less means.
What's next, no lavish stage shows?
Trust me, I met quite a few people who liked 'Drip Drop', 'Running Scared' and this year's entry - so all 12 points were expected + most Azeri artists come here to promote, so unless people have proof, stop dragging my country in all this Azerbaijan BS drama. If anything, the EBU is partly to blame for not releasing the split results by country. Some hidden agenda? I don't know!
Well, Malta has always been a bit weird. In 2008, you guy gave Sweden's Charlotte Perelli 12 friggin' points.
Well spending money on youtube viewer boosting bots isn't right (i'm not saying thats what has happened).
What the heck do you think that really accomplishes? So let's say Azerbaijan has been spending as bajillion dollars/Euros/Yen/armadillos boosting Youtube views to random videos connected to their entry (like, say, a video of a random South African woman wishing their entry good luck).
What will that accomplish?! What, people are going to look at the Youtube view counts of all of the entries and even random videos of people wishing the artists good luck and go "Oh my God! 72,000 people have watched this video of a random woman wishing Farid good luck! I must vote for him
now!" Or do you think it'll give him and his entry publicity? And? It just means that more people will be likely to check his videos out. If they don't like them or his live performance,
they won't vote for him.
Boosting Youtube view counts is basically just another way to advertise, only much less direct and likely much less effective. What's so friggin' wrong about it? In my eyes, it's pretty meaningless.
The vast majority of the viewers don't see most of the performances 'til the semi-finals/final, anyway. So spending money on inflating Youtube view counts won't net Azerbaijan many extra points.
It's just all this splashing cash about doesn't seem very fair especially when all this cash splashing has lead to such high results and through showing no culture either.
Well, boo-hoo, cry me a river.
Every year I see the same people complaining about how the contest is no longer about showing the world your national spirit, what your national music sounds like, etc., etc., etc. Well guess what, Eurovision viewers no longer like ethnic songs unless they're really good or just really mainstream. Bulgaria decided to do something ethnic this year. Aaaaand they didn't make the final.
Who cares?! If you love ethnic music so much, go out and search for it yourself. Buy it yourself. The average Eurovision viewer don't want to see the Eurovision Ethnic Contest anymore. They want songs they can relate to. Sometimes those are ethnic, most of the time they aren't. Azerbaijan sent a pretty ethnic-sounding song in 2009 ("Always"). The fact that it wasn't sung in their language doesn't mean the composition wasn't ethnic.
You can't compare this to that. It's not the same stuff at all...
Because...?
I was actually thinking more of the smaller countries and micro states anyway that can't afford to spam their artists faces everywhere I go over the internet.
That's what you get for being poor. Most winning entries in the past few years were promoted like crazy. "Euphoria", "Satellite", "Fairytale". Quickly, to the Whine-mobile about Sweden, Germany and Norway engaging in unfair practices.
Malta sure done badly, being so poor and all and not being able to afford food or whatever. 8th place this year. Whoo, what a bad placing! Oh my God!
You know what, I have never once seen Azerbaijan's entries being advertised in Sweden or on any of the pages I visit. Either they just hate Sweden and love the U.K., you just visit mostly sites concerning Eurovision or you're lying through your teeth. Even if what you say is true, who cares?
Woe are the poor smaller nations who can't afford to do extensive advertising. Let's ban advertising all around because of them! While we're at it, let's ban pyrotechnics, paying established professional artists with international careers and set a limit to how much a country can pay the songwriters and composers for an entry so you can't just waltz up to someone like Timbaland and have him write your entry.
Because, you know, San Marino!
No, it's not like that - but over-advertising is. I had Safura plastered all over my laptop back then, each time I browse on the internet, ads were plastered everywhere!!
1) How? What kind of webpages do you use?
2) Ad Block. Install it. Now.
Thinking about it, i'd actually say the same. I don't think it's exactly helping us being apart of this "elite" 5. Apart from guaranteeing us a place in the final, I don't think it does anything for us other than make it feel like theres a separation between us and all the other countries.
The disadvantage is being able to perform only once for the television audiences. Many songs have qualified to the final among the bottom 5 in their semi-final, yet gone on to do very well in the final, sometimes even making the top 10, way ahead of songs they "lost" to in the semi-final in a way that cannot be explained away by simply invoking block- and diaspora voting.
This year they were also searching for people who voted for Armenia just like in the previous years.
And you now this after less than 24 hours of the final and after
zero media sources have reported this how? Ar you one of the people tasked of investigating Azerbaijanis who voted for Armenia?
What would matter though would be if anyone was buying their youtube views. Thats cheating and shouldn't sit well with anyone. If any country were found out to be doing this, I think it would just be disgracefully embarrassing.
Cheating at what, exactly? The honor code? Youtube views do not in any way translate into automatic televotes.
Again i'll point out there's no proof of this going on with Azerbaijan. It's just speculation. As I said before, recently major record labels were exposed for this practice.
And recently Youtube introduces filters to counter-act bots artificially inflating view counts. If Azerbaijan's videos haven't been hit by said filters, it's more likely nothing untoward is taking place as opposed to Azerbaijan inventing new ways to hack Youtube.
In my opinion is better to have only public vote not jury , because it ‘s easy to make arrangements between countries if there is a jury.
How 'bout no? Last year, the televoters gave Loreen a mere 9 points more than they gave the Russian grannies.
Because it's something thats not allowed on the site. People caught using viewing bots are suspend from youtube. It's essentially the same as buying votes in a contest. You are buying "popularity". You are buying views. You are deceiving people. It's quite possibly one of the saddest, most pathetic things someone can do.
Who cares?! It doesn't impact the actual contest. You want certain videos removed from Youtube? Fine. But it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.
I'm not complaining about performing in other countries, promotional cd's etc. I'm complaining about deception. Deception is wrong. I don't know how anyone could think it's ok to cheat popularity.
Me telling you I have a 30 cm cockadoodle isn't going to do jack squat in the grand scheme of things. Is it deception? Yes. Is it damaging to anyone in any way? No.
So, have at it. I am a blond, blue-eyed, 180 cm, muscled god-like man with abs that must've been sculpted, pecs that can dance on command, a 30 cm joy-club that will make you squeal with pleasure and I've personally defeated 1469793 robbers. I am, in fact, Superman in disguise. Oh noes! I've totally just made the United Kingdom lose 183 points that they so rightfully deserve because people are totally going to vote for Sweden and not the United Kingdom next year because of my lie!
Well to prove you wrong immediately where I was yesterday watching eurovision, in sweden, in a average house, with a big average family who couldn't care less about eurovision - everyone (except me) liked russia, ukraine and azerbaijan. They despised Norway, Netherlands, which I happened to like.
So...
There we 8 people in my house. Of the 8 of us, not a single person wanted Denmark to win (we were actively rooting against it, hoping Ukraine or Azerbaijan would win). We supported the following entries:
* Ukraine
* Azerbaijan
* Romania
* Norway
stop playing the nazi card all the time ....
this has nothing to do with that.
Just because some people don't think Azerbaijan deserves the good placing there's no need to offend us!
S/he didn't mean that you literally are Nazis, only that you're acting
fascist (a word often exchanged with the word "Nazi").
I think this is true and I have always been thinking about this, as it also was in the newspaper that Azerbaijan was accused for buying votes from (an exampel) Maltese jury.
Because if Aftonbladet or Expressen said it, it must be true!
I liked the Polish entries (the ones I can remember) and couldn't understand why they withdraw.
They withdrew last year because they were co-hosting the World Cup (you know, football) and couldn't afford to do both the World Cup and Eurovision (participation fee and all). This was widely reported and even stated by the Swedish commentators. This year, they decided not to return, ostensibly due to financial problems (likely tied to hosting the World Cup last year).
all because Moldova complained about their performance. Christer Bjorkman must have been made really upset by them. Oh I do hope he's recovered 
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