We want your feedback!
It has long been our intention to give authors a way to publish new songs on Stanza. The time has come to create a process to approve songs for listing on the app, and we want your thoughts on it.
Our goal with this review process is to create a quality standard for Stanza that is similar to those maintained by other gospel song publishers while also giving our users access to new and popular songs. Following is a proposal of the way new or unpublished songs would be approved to be listed on Stanza.
How It Works
Each song is rated by anonymous reviewers on these four points:
1. Biblical: Pass or Fail
Do the lyrics align with the Bible? Are there themes or phrases that are potentially misleading or that could be misunderstood?
2. Inspirational: 1 – 5
Does it inspire? Is it fresh or unique? Is it enjoyable to sing?
3. Understandable: 1 – 5
Can you understand the message of the song? Does it have proper grammar?
4. Singable: 1 – 5
Is it singable for average-good singers? Can it be sung without extreme difficulty? (We strongly suggest you personally sing it before scoring on this point.)
All songs need a total score of 9.0 to pass. If any reviewer fails a song on Biblical and provides a valid reason, we ask the author to reconsider. Once we have at least 8 reviews for a song, we average the scores on each point and add them together to get the final score.
Feedback For New Songwriters
We would like to give young and new authors a way to have their songs published while also encouraging higher quality work. We would build one webpage where any Stanza user could sign in and submit individual songs and another webpage where Stanza users (by invitation) could sign in and review songs. It would be good to have at least 20 active reviewers and we could notify them when there are songs to review.
When a song passes review, it would go into a queue of approved songs. They would not be published individually for a few reasons: A song that is not in a book or collection in the app will not have good visibility and may never be sung, but new books will be featured in prominent places. We believe that requiring authors to publish songs together in a book will help to raise quality by moving away from quick publishing- e.g. “I wrote a song today, I’ll publish it tomorrow.”
Once we have enough songs for a Stanza book (around 20) we would contact the authors to see if they are interested in collaborating on a digital book. If so, those songs would move forward toward publication. If not, the authors are free to do whatever they choose with their songs.
When a song does not pass review, we would send the song back to the author with the final score and any helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers. If any reviewers were interested, they could contact the author to work with them and help them improve their songs. This could help build and foster relationships in the songwriting community.
Technical Details
Sign in to upload or review songs would be done with users’ current username and password. We would make sure we don’t give a reviewer their own songs, or give them the same song twice. We could take all the names off the songs to help get unbiased reviews. We would add a giant watermark on all the songs to discourage sharing of unpublished songs. A reviewer would not be able to choose the songs they want to review- the system would give them one and they would have to submit a review on that one before they get another one. The upload page should to be available to anyone who wants to upload. If it’s not, we will miss some good up-and-coming songwriters.
Again, we want your feedback! Message one of us or share your thoughts in the form below.