2021 Audio Verse Awards Patch Notes and Process

From the Chair

Ideas are always easier than their execution. 11 years ago, I was involved in a conversation with Audio Drama creators about the execution of the only awards that allowed podcasts at the time. It was a black box process, where we’d send off our hard work and hope that it might get recognition. We were unhappy with it. And everyone agreed on one point: that we needed an award that knew something about the shows it was recognizing and would be focused on newer and smaller shows.

What we wanted were awards that weren’t a popularity contest, where an indie production with a small crew and phenomenal work could win over a large production with funding but lower quality. Ultimately, we wanted awards that would recognize that there are people doing good work in this space and raise awareness of the shows that exist within it. Not just the major ones that everyone knows about, but newer and smaller shows also.

For those of you who have been with us over the past nine years, you’ve seen how we’ve changed. Each year, we keep what worked and try something new to fix what didn’t. Numerous attempts to game our systems led us to implement measures to prevent cheating. Every year, we go back to the drawing board and revisit our process as a team to figure out what is objectively better for everyone who participates.

In nine years, the AVAs have recognized hundreds of people and productions. We’ve heard stories about how we’ve opened doors or started conversations. We’ve also achieved our main objective of getting people to check out new shows. Every award has to create legitimacy based on its criteria for recognizing its winners, and you know an AVA Finalist or Winner had hundreds or thousands of people who ranked them. We use a Modified Borda Count specifically because its flaw as a voting system is that the most popular choice might not be the most preferred choice. 

The people who work on these awards are lovers of audio fiction, who listen to a wide variety of shows and we’ve worked as unpaid volunteers this entire time. It’s not a small investment, we work long hours with quick turnarounds for the 4 months it takes to release the final results. We make decisions not based on what one person says, but with informed knowledge of what we’re hearing within our community. 

The tools we need for these awards to have fair results, and to handle the amount of interest we receive, aren’t free or low-cost to use. At our inception, I funded the awards out of my own pocket, and over the past couple of years, we’ve been able to barely clear our operational budget needed for the awards through crowdfunding, donations, and merch.

Yet, the recognition we give is why people look to these awards every year. We give people new podcasts to check out, and our nominee showcase to binge on. The audio fiction community is best and brightest when it’s celebrating everyone and their success, together. In the wake of fiction becoming a category in Apple Podcasts and Spotify making audio fiction more accessible on their platform, there’s been an explosion of creativity and passion that continues to build and grow. 

That growth is half of our challenge. We consistently receive feedback that we allow too many shows to be nominated. This is a side effect of not gatekeeping, which some argue we should do, although we have been careful to keep the awards open to all. We’ve steadily raised our nomination gate for how many people need to nominate a production, but that isn’t sustainable – minor fluctuations in data entry require us to manually review each submission. We can’t simply keep raising the nomination gate; eventually, we’ll hit 100 people needed to nominate something, and a small indie show would be unable to participate at all. 

We’ve decided to solve these problems with this adjustment. While voting will always remain free so that passive and active members of the community can submit a ballot, we will be charging $25 to nominate a production.

We know this will be controversial, and the absolute last thing we want is for a show to not participate in these awards because they need those funds to go to the cast and crew. To avoid that, and in lieu of a crowdfunding campaign, we’re allowing anyone to sponsor a show’s entry fee. Producers may submit their show for sponsorship in their entry form. And community members who wish to support that show and the awards can do so. 

The form for nominating a production will ask for everything about that production, all of its cast and crew, the intro, and an episode for our nominee showcase. Yet visible upon our list of nominees will just be the show name, and its cover art, which will link to the show’s website.

Our finalist ballot, which will be free to cast, asks people to rank the productions within the overarching category. From there, the finalist announcement will have the cast and crew details we collected in the nomination phase. This does mean we’ll have more than ten finalists in categories such as players, performers, and music, but our hope is that it’ll reduce the overload for our list of nominees.

Our winner announcement video was well received last year. This year we’re going to ask previous winners to record the finalists in categories they’ve won previously. Hopefully, with the changes to our nominations, we’ll be able to compensate those people for their help. Our hope is that once we have validated the final ballots and certified their results, we can edit and release that video quickly.

We will continue to refine our process and change things depending on all the data we receive. Our team of volunteers will continue to clean and process the data, double and triple-checking to make sure voting is fair and the results are accurate for everyone who participates. Our hope is that this year is easier with these changes, not just for our team but for everyone who participates. 

No one else has created an award that exists in this space, that does what we do. That’s why we’re here, after all, and we welcome more peers to appear. We can’t wait to celebrate the new shows and old favorites we’ll hear about this year. 

I hope you’re as excited as I am. Are you ready to fall in love again?

-Colin J. Kelly

2021 Categories

In 2021, we will have 20 categories, which will be separated with half being specifically for new productions which premiered in the past year.

  • Music Categories
    • Instrumental Composition in a (new) Production
    • Vocal Composition in a (new) Production
  • Sound Categories
    • Action Sound Design in a (new) Production
    • Environment Sound Design in a (new) Production
  • Writing Categories
    • Writing of a (new) Storytelling Production
    • Writing of (a new/an) Audio Play Production
  • Directing Categories
    • Player Direction of a (new) Production
    • Vocal Direction of a (new) Production
    • Music Direction of a (new) Production
  • Performance, Players, and Storytellers
    • Storyteller in a (new) Storytelling Production
    • Player in an (new) Improvised Production
    • Guest in an Improvised Production
    • Performance of a Supporting Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
    • Performance of a Leading Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
    • Performance of a Role in an Ensemble Cast for (a new/an) Audio Play Production
    • Performance of a Guest Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
  • Art Categories
    • Cover Art for a (new) Production
  • Production Categories
    • (New) Storytelling Production
    • (New) Improvised Production
    • (New) Audio Play Production

New Categories: Music Direction and Guests

Not all productions have a composer creating scores for them, and the usage of music, even royalty-free music does influence the perception of the scene and how it’s playing out. Given the wide variety of ways that music can be used in audio fiction, Directing the Music describes the discipline we’re seeing best across most productions we’ve encountered. Specific songs are still nominated in the music categories, but given how those can be used, we felt this is a better description.

Guests are a complicated problem in the Performance, Players, and Storyteller categories. Roles that are only in one episode tend to be misnominated as ensemble roles instead of supporting, that category is for productions with no leading performer. We also want to separate reoccurring from singular appearances since the consensus is there’s a difference in the amount of work involved, and we prefer people to compete against their peers.

2021 Voting Process and its changes.

Open Nominations – Threeish Week Period, September 7th-30th

  • There is no longer a gate for multiple nominations. New Productions will no longer need 5 nominations to enter a category or seven nominations for older productions. One nomination is all a production needs.
  • Instead, there will be a $25 nomination fee, which covers entering the awards for all cast and crew of a production, checking for accuracy and eligibility, their nominee showcase episode, both rounds of voting being fair and accurate, and the creation of a graphics for each phase. It will go to the operation and crew that make the awards possible.
    • Productions may apply to be sponsored, and there will be a list of those productions freely available. If someone sponsors the show, it’ll automatically move to the list of nominees.
  • To repeat, one nomination, but all the details of the show are submitted. The Production is what’s nominated for the Awards. We’ll recognize the individuals at the finalist and winners announcements.
  • As you nominate the production, you may also submit your nominee showcase within the same form. We will be asking for a recorded intro, an episode or sample you want to submit, and a transcript of that content if you have one available.
  • The automation for this to happen is more involved than in previous years as we design it, which is why we’ll be opening Nominations officially on September 7th. We may soft-open the form to test it, if eagle-eyed participants notice it, we will honor complete nominations.

Finalist Voting – Two Week Period, Projected October 3rd – 16th

  • This is dependent on us finalizing the list of nominees, hence the projected date. We may also delay this until all nominee showcases have been released in order to allow people more time to familiarize themselves with the nominees. We’ll base our timeline on those two factors.
  • Finalist Voting will be decided by a ballot of the overarching categories, with the productions listed for ranking in each, split across New or not, making the question on the ballot.
    • Ranking a production in the Music Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Instrumental Composition in a (new) Production
      • Vocal Composition in a (new) Production
      • Music Direction of a (new) Production
    • Ranking a production in the Sound Design Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Action Sound Design in a (new) Production
      • Environment Sound Design in a (new) Production
    • Ranking a production in the Writing Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Writing of a (new) Storytelling Production
      • Writing of (a new/an) Audio Play Production
    • Ranking a production in the Directing Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Player Direction of a (new) Production
      • Vocal Direction of a (new) Production
    • Ranking a production in the Performance, Players, and Storytellers Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Storyteller in a (new) Storytelling Production
      • Player in an (new) Improvised Production
      • Guest in an Improvised Production
      • Performance of a Supporting Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
      • Performance of a Leading Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
      • Performance of a Role in an Ensemble Cast for (a new/an) Audio Play Production
      • Performance of a Guest Role in (a new/an) Audio Play Production
    • Ranking a production in the Art Question will decide the finalists for 
      • Cover Art for a (new) Production
    • Ranking a production in the Production Question will decide the finalists for 
      • (New) Storytelling Production
      • (New) Improvised Production
      • (New) Audio Play Production
  • This does mean that the Composition, Performance, and Player categories will have 10 finalist productions, even if there are more than 10 finalists in that category. 
  • Our hope is that while we cannot do anything about the number of options in each question, without being arbitrary, reducing the number of questions should inconvenience the people only here to vote for one specific production less.
  • Remember, Modified Borda Count means that the more you rank, the more impact you have on the results, as your first choice is weighted by the number of rankings you give each category. This is how the people who listen to a wide variety of productions decide our outcome. If you rank 10 productions, your ballot is worth 55 points. If you rank one, it’s only one, they’re rather easy to spot in the data.
  • This is also why we’re not worried about people voting randomly in categories they’re unfamiliar with. We already randomize the options to attempt to fight Alphabetical bias, even if some think that’s present in our results. We will continue to ask you to rank at least one nominee in each category, as we continue to see that not doing that at this stage hurts smaller productions. 
  • That is separate from an accessibility issue. If there is a specific, actionable thing we can do to help you vote, we will make that happen. Please give us the tools you use, and how they are interacting poorly with our systems.

Winner Voting – Two Week Period, Projected October 24th – November 6th.

  • Again, This is dependent on us finalizing the list of Finalists, hence the projected date. As with last year, we aim to open voting for the winners at the same time we announce the finalists
  • There are no major changes to the voting systems. However, due to the redesigned FInalist phase, there may be more than 10 finalists in a category. We will still recognize five winners.
  • While the voting for the winners goes on, the AVAs team will be coordinating the winner announcement. Ideally, it’ll be a matter of trimming the final video to who’s won once we have the final results.

Winner announcement – Minimum a Month later, December 6th at earliest.

  • Allexandria Pal, Adam Blanford, and Colin Kelly each independently, do a pass of all ballots, looking for flags that indicate people trying to cheat our systems and disqualifying ballots. That needs to be completed before we can calculate the results, even if we’ve figured everything else out 

Introducing the Audio Verse Awards Hall of Fame

Nine years is a long time to be recognizing audio fiction, but for the shows that came out before the AVAs existed, they have little to no recognition while being part of the audio fiction history that’s often missed. Many modern attempts to chronicle the history of fiction podcasting start with 2012, with Welcome to Night Vale, or 2008 with We’re Alive. Those of us who have been around for longer have others that are left of that list, or created shows as far back as 2002 that were distributed by RSS feed.

As in other mediums, a Hall of Fame recognizes works that have stood the test of time. Our goal is to create exactly that, by inducting productions that have been part of this community, despite ending over ten years ago.

The eligibility for the AVAs Hall of Fame is the same as our awards eligibility with one major exception. The final episode of the production must have been released before September 30th, 2011. Nominations will be using our previous nomination system, where five separate individuals will need to nominate a production to be Inducted, and there will be a category during the finalist and winner phases to decide which five are inducted for this year.

The AVAs Hall of Fame will not charge for nominating a production to be inducted.