Today, we have an update for all music fans, musicians, and anyone interested in voting on music, sounds, or other audio data. PollUnit music contests and audio data voting have received a comprehensive update.

A PollUnit music contest allows you to create your own competition for audio data. You can ask participants to submit their own music and let others vote on it. You have access to the familiar PollUnit features to customize your contest flexibly. This includes custom designs, custom forms, embedding the voting on your own website, and much more.

Not only do music fans benefit from the capabilities of our music voting platform, but musicians and creatives also have the opportunity to present their music to a broad audience and receive valuable feedback.

But now, let's talk about the latest updates in PollUnit music contests.

Cover Art

If your uploaded MP3s contain album cover art, we extract them and use the graphics in your contest for a more impressive music player. If your MP3s don't include cover data, you can also upload your own graphics. This can be useful even if you're not voting on music tracks but on other sounds or audio.

You can add your own cover via the context menu (three dots) of the respective audio option.

Choose between Gallery and Playlist View

As an organizer or creator of a music contest, you can now choose between two layout options. In Playlist Layout, your participants can quickly scroll through your audio data in a compact and modern player and vote directly in the audio player.

The new Gallery Layout, on the other hand, displays large covers and can show additional information like the artist directly on the cover. With optional search and filter functions, you can quickly find the right track.

Published at: 04/24/2024 09:24 AM

Music competitions and audi...

In the world of online voting, as well as in video and photo competitions, the participation of experts is invaluable. Their expert judgment can not only improve the quality of submitted entries but also ensure a fair and objective evaluation. This is where our new Jury Mode comes into play.

What is the Jury Mode?

The Jury Mode is a feature that allows selected jurors to have special rights to judge the submitted entries. In contrast to traditional voting by the general public, the Jury Mode enables the formation of an expert panel to evaluate the submitted works.

Participants visiting a PollUnit with the Jury Mode enabled can submit, review, and view the voting results. Voting is only possible for members of the jury. Of course, you can also configure your PollUnit so that the voting results or distribution of votes remain confidential.

What is the difference compared to invitations without Jury Mode?

You can also require an invitation in the security settings of your PollUnit without activating Jury Mode. Without Jury Mode, our system assumes that all visitors to your competition should be able to vote. Therefore, without Jury Mode, participants without an invitation will be shown an error message, stating that they need a valid invitation to vote. This error message is not displayed in Jury Mode.

Also, check out our article »Preventing Multiple Participation«.

Benefits of Voting with a Jury

Expert Judgment

With the Jury Mode, professionals from relevant industries or disciplines can be invited to evaluate the entries. Their expertise and experience contribute to ensuring a high-quality assessment and selecting the best works.

Objectivity and Fairness

The involvement of a jury ensures an objective and fair evaluation since decisions are not solely dependent on the opinions of the general public. This minimizes potential biases or manipulations and ensures a fair competition.

Improvement in Quality

The expertise of the jury helps to improve the quality of submitted entries, as they are able to assess technical aspects, recognize creative innovations, and identify works with high potential. This leads to a higher level of excellence and innovation in the results.

Versatility of Evaluation Criteria

Unlike purely quantitative voting, the Jury Mode allows for a more nuanced evaluation based on various criteria such as aesthetics, originality, message, and relevance. This considers more facets of the submitted entries and enables a more comprehensive assessment. For this PollUnit offers also a Voting Category Feature.

Appreciation for Experts

Involving professionals as jurors in voting and photo competitions contributes to the recognition and appreciation of their expertise. It provides them with a platform to showcase their knowledge and share their opinions on relevant topics.

Inviting Jurors

The Jury Mode can be activated in the "Advanced" step. After activation, you can invite jury members via email in the admin link of your PollUnit. Each member will then receive their own unique one-time link, ensuring that each juror can only vote once. Alternatively, you can also generate manual invitation links and distribute them yourself.

Published at: 04/10/2024 07:20 AM

Competitions with Jury Mode

The PollUnit Poll Maker have always allowed for files such as images to be directly provided as options for voting. We are now expanding this functionality to include file attachments.

By attaching data in various file formats, additional information can now be provided that goes beyond mere text or image. This can help explain complex topics better, present visual examples, or provide detailed instructions that enhance participants' understanding.

These file attachments can be associated with various objects in PollUnit, enabling a whole range of new use cases.

File Attachments in Surveys

Each online survey consists of at least one step. Each of these steps in your questionnaire consists of a title, an optional description, and the associated questions. The description can include not only text but also images and videos. With the new file attachments, you can now provide additional information and instructions, up to presenting product designs or other data such as PDFs, Excel documents, etc.

File Attachments in Votes

Each vote itself, as well as each voting option, can now be enriched with additional files. Whether it's a photo in a photo contest, text options, or a person in an online election. For example, resumes, candidate profiles, election programs, and much more can be added.

File Attachments in Idea Collections

If you create an online idea collection, ideas can be better visualized through images, graphics, or videos. This allows participating individuals to get a clearer picture of the proposed ideas and understand them better.

File attachments can provide additional information that complements or supports ideas. This can include relevant research results, statistics, case studies, or reference materials that help strengthen the credibility and relevance of the ideas. Complex or abstract ideas can be made more understandable by attaching diagrams, infographics, or presentations.

Published at: 03/06/2024 10:23 AM

Attach files to surveys and...

Self-voting refers to the ability of an individual to vote for their own submissions or suggestions. In a voting context, this means that participants have the permission to support their own choice or contribution. This can occur in various situations and use cases, including group or team voting, photo contests, and more.

The ability for self-voting can have both positive and negative implications, depending on the specific rules and objectives of the voting process.

Positive Aspects

• The ability for self-voting allows individuals to actively support their own preferences or contributions, leading to a stronger sense of self-expression.
• In certain contexts, self-voting can make the evaluation process more transparent, as participants can openly vote for their own contributions.

Negative Aspects

• In some cases, self-voting may lead to bias when individuals tend to favor their own options, regardless of the actual quality or relevance.
• In competitions or votes where fairness and equality are crucial, self-voting may be considered an unfair practice.

With our online poll creator, you can now specify whether participants have the ability to vote for their own submissions. If this topic interests you, you should also take a look at our tutorial on preventing multiple participations.

Published at: 12/06/2023 11:42 AM

Prevent self-voting

The pairwise comparison, also known as pair comparison analysis, or pair comparison method, is a technique for prioritizing and evaluating options. In this method, options are compared pairwise to determine which one is preferred. In the end, we obtain a ranking of the options.

PollUnit now allows you to create an online pairwise comparison. Options that compete in pairs can include free-text or images.

To generate the ranking, we use the ELO rating. The ELO rating is a metric used to assess the skill level of participants. Originally developed for chess players, it assigns points based on their results against stronger or weaker opponents.

The advantage of this system is that not every voter needs to compare all options. PollUnit allows you to configure the number of voting rounds per participant. Thus, for each participant, several pairs of options are randomly drawn. In each pair, the voter can choose their favorite. PollUnit then creates a relative ranking of all options.

Pairwise comparison is a powerful tool to effectively evaluate and prioritize situations with many options or images, such as selecting photos for websites, photo contests, social media, or in scientific studies. It reduces subjective influence, increases efficiency, and provides a structured method for decision-making.

Random allocation of pairs also makes fraud more difficult. Voters do not know in advance which pairs they will evaluate. This makes it harder for cheaters to focus on specific pairs they want to manipulate.

Published at: 10/26/2023 08:15 AM

Pairwise comparison voting