South By Southwest’s Jukebox Jury is over and the winner chosen. As previously reported, a panel comprised of five industry insiders—Alex Luke (Apple’s iTunes), Dan Dalton (artist management), Aaron Axelsen (program director for San Francisco’s Live 105 radio station), Michael Howe (A&R for Virgin records), and Jef Price (co-owner of SpinArts Records)—listened to two minute cuts of 10 records. Five of the recordings were the winners of as many demos listening sessions and five were chosen at random from the demos submitted to those sessions.
Alternating between a random track and a winning track, members of the panel and each audience member was allowed to rate each song with a Perception Analyzer—a small gray box featuring a red dial that tuned from 0 to 100. Audience members were told to choose a rating for each song they heard. Ratings were weighted evenly between the panel and the audience.
At the conclusion of each track, the panelists dialed in a rating and uploaded those rating to a central computer where the ratings were tabulated. The panelists then commented on each track. Audience ratings weren’t revealed until the end of the session.
When the last track was played, the four top songs were separated by only a point. When the audience ratings were figured into the final tally, the band listed fourth by the panel rocketed to the top of the charts. The song, “Only End Up Lonely” by Puerto Rican group ignaciopena, is a catchy pop-anthem that will be featured on iTunes’ home page on Tuesday.
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