Jukebox Fanworks Exchange

Thanks for all your nominations so far, and especially, thanks for links! Nominations end at 11:59pm EDT, Sunday 10 April (and see countdown).

Podfic
In this exchange, you can request and offer fic, art, and/or podfic.

In the last few years, the requirement for podfic has been 500-5000 words of original text, both written and recorded, based on the requester's chosen song. This year we are also bringing back a form of podfic matching I last tried in 2015, and so we have added "Podficcer's Choice of Fandom" to the tag set as a fandom.

If you request Podficcer's Choice of Fandom, you will get a podfic of an existing story. You can list DNWs, and suggest some general likes, but the choice of which story to record is otherwise up to your creator. The story merely needs to have been created as an original fanwork of a song.

If you are participating as a podfic artist and you are interested only in recording, not writing, you can make that clear in your offer notes and we will get in contact if there is no suitable request.

You can also take part as a podfic artist in the same way as in recent years - by offering specific songs and either both writing and recording for them, or teaming up with a friend who does the writing while you do the recording.

This information will be added to the AO3 FAQ shortly, but we welcome feedback to make it clearer or make it work better for you.

Hello! It is not quite Jukebox time again, but nearly!

Schedule
This is what I'm thinking for Jukebox's 2016 schedule.

Brainstorming post: before 15 March
Nominations: 18-26 March
Sign-ups: 28 March to 6 April
Assignments due: Sat 28 May
Works go live: Sat 4 June
Creators are revealed: Wed 8 June

Unless people point out significant problems with these dates, I don't plan to adjust any of them by more than a day in the final schedule. (For example, I may make go-live 3 June rather than 4 June.) These dates are mostly geared to my public holiday schedule, allowing me to put together the table of songs over Easter weekend, and to read works over Queen's Birthday Weekend. I realise that some periods of participant activity overlap religious dates - please let me know if you think that the overlap isn't workable.

Structure of requests & types of media
Art and podfic seemed to go pretty well last year, and did not cause any additional difficulty for pinch hits. Because of this, I am inclined to relax the rules about media in your offers and requests. You can request or offer whatever combination you want. If you want to request only podfic, you can. If you want to request only art, you can. I suspect that many participants willl want to continue asking for & offering fic only. That's fine too.

I don't plan to include vids.

More about podfic
My rules for podfic were complicated last year. Hagar_972, in particular, persuaded me that instead of my previous system, which went:

-Sign up offering (or requesting) "No Fandom"
-Create (or request) a podfic out of the existing pool of song-based fic with appropriate permissions, possibly to a theme suggested by the recipient

it would make more sense for a podfic gift to consist of 1 new story, in both written and podficced form, so that you would request and offer it as follows:

-Sign up offering songs or music videos from the tag set, and the freeform tag "podfic"
-Create (either by yourself or as part of a team) a story for that song or music video, with a minimum of 500 words, both written and recorded. (The minimum length for a fic-only gift would still be 1,000 words.)
-A writing/podficcing team counts as one participant, in the sense that such a team would receive one gift, not one per person.

Would you all prefer that? AND, if we switched to that, for podfic, should I keep the no-fandom version from last year's rules? I'm inclined to ditch it - for matching, anyway; you could still indicate in your prompts/letter that you'd be open to a podfic of an existing story as a gift.

Visibility of requests
More and more exchanges are making requests visible from the moment you sign up. I am tempted to do this for Jukebox - especially since it could be very useful to know which media people are requesting for their songs & music videos. How do people feel about that?



Please let me know any thoughts you have, or just let me know if what I have written isn't clear. You don't have to have participated before to have a say - though of course I'm very glad to hear from previous participants.

Hello!

FIRST: the full Jukebox 2015 schedule is under the cut.

( Schedule )


SECOND: I am going to open the challenge to podfic artists and visual artists this year.

Here's how it's going to work.

For visual artists:
Visual artists will be required to create one work of minimum 700x700 pixels, or up to three smaller pieces that add to a similar total area. The work must be original and complete.

The work that an artist creates must be a response to their recipient's prompt for a song or music video that is part of this year's tag set. (Same requirement as for writers.)


For podfic artists
Podfic artists must record a story that is based on a song or music video. It must be a minimum of 1,000 words in length. The writer must have given permission for their story to be recorded (either blanket permission, or permission specific to this exchange).

Now the complicated part.

It doesn't make sense to me to match podfic artists & recipients on specific fandoms, because there aren't enough existing stories about songs. So matching is going to have to work more loosely.

Recipients are encouraged to list specific stories that they are interested in receiving as a podfic. However, podfic artists are encouraged to see these as suggestions, rather than restrictions. Recipients are not guaranteed to get a specific story they have requested as a podfic.

Recipients are strongly encouraged to list themes and genres that they're interested in. Podfic artists should keep these in mind when choosing a story to record. Prompts like, "I love stories about ghosts and fairies, and similar supernatural creatures," or "I like stories grounded in the real world - no supernatural elements please," or "I'd prefer slash if possible," or "I'd prefer a story with a female protagonist," are encouraged.

Podfic artists are also encouraged to list themes they are fond of/ not fond of, so that I can tweak matches to try to ensure that artists & recipients have some point in common, or at least not diametrically opposite taste.

Podfic artists must abide by their recipients' Do-Not-Wants.


THIRD: I am going to structure offers and requests in the following manner.

-You can offer podfic only
-You can offer art only
-You can offer fanfic only
-Or you can offer any combination of the above.

-You can request fic only
-You can request fic or art
-You can request fic or podfic
-You can request fic or podfic or art
-HOWEVER, your requests must include a fic request. That is, you cannot request art only, podfic only, or podfic or art only.

(Note: this year I am increasing the maximum number of requests to 8.)

I realise that that could be disappointing to visual artists who only want to receive visual art, or podfic artists, ditto. I have two reasons for this restriction:

-As a mod, I want to be the final line of defense, so to speak, for last minute pinch hits, and fic is the only type of gift I can produce.

-This is the first year of including other media. I see the requirement of a fic request as an intermediary step that allows me some safeguards - especially in matching, because I anticipate that the majority of people will sign up to write.

Finally...
I'm still pondering the problem of anon periods, which I understand have a different impact on visual and podfic artists from their impact on writers. Suggestions welcome.

These rules are open for discussion for a few days - please, please feel free to comment! - and then I will consolidate them into an edited FAQ.

I could use some help with promotional materials. If anyone's willing to help make banners and promote Jukebox on Tumblr, for example, that'd be neat. I am willing to trade beta services? :)

I will put up a brainstorming post at some point around March 20.