You're looking back in time: Jamglue ran from 2006 to 2010. This page is a retrospective built from the public record.
The banner from the contest hub page, recovered from the static.jamglue.com S3 bucket.
The Blue Scholars “Fire for the People” Contests
In the summer and fall of 2007, Jamglue ran not one contest but two, both on the same song: “Fire for the People” from Blue Scholars’ album Bayani, with Rawkus Records and MASSLINE. Blue Scholars are two people, an MC and a DJ, so Jamglue split the contest the same way. In the MC contest you recorded a guest verse against Geologic’s chorus. In the DJ contest you got the contest mix and eight stems and rebuilt the track. Geologic judged the first, Sabzi judged the second.
It was a hometown contest: Blue Scholars were a Seattle group and Jamglue was a Seattle company. Three pages ran the thing, a hub at /contests/bluescholars and one page per side, and the Wayback Machine caught all three. This page puts them back together.
One thing survives here that survives nowhere else in the Jamglue contest run: two of the entries were turned into commercial ringtones, sold on the contest page next to the original.
About the Contests
The hub page introduced the two sides in a line each:
The MC Contest. Join the conversation. Add your vocals to the mix. Raise your voice and be heard!
The DJ Contest. Chop things up, add new parts, and make your own custom remix.
The blog announcement explained why the contest had that shape:
“All this amazing music comes from just two super-talented guys: Geologic, the emcee, and Sabzi, the deejay and producer. So to give a nod to this classic hip-hop format, we’ve got an MC Contest, where you add your guest verse to Geologic’s chorus, and a DJ Contest, where you show DJ Sabzi your mixing skills! Geo and Sabzi will be choosing the final winners.”
Divya Bhat, “Blue Scholars Contest!”, the Jamglue Blog, August 29, 2007
Halfway through, Geologic and Sabzi each picked a favorite to keep things moving: samuelvictor’s drum and bass rework on the DJ side, werdna3523’s guest verse on the MC side. Those two mid-contest picks are the ones that became ringtones.
Ringtones
The hub page sold three ringtones side by side at $1.99 each: the original song, and two remixes made by Jamglue users during the contest. Users’ work priced the same as the band’s, on the band’s own page. The listing as it read on September 13, 2007:
| Fire for the People Blue Scholars · the original | $1.99 |
| Drum and Bass Remix by Samuel Victor Blue Scholars and Jamglue user Samuel Victor | $1.99 |
| Guest Verse by Werdna3523 Blue Scholars and Jamglue user Werdna3523 | $1.99 |
“For more ringtones, see the Blue Scholars’ MySpace.” The two contest ringtones correspond to Fire for the People - DJ Contest Mix (SamuelVictor’s Drum’n’Bass Attempt) and werdna3523’s Blue Scholars Duet. No audio for either survives.
The MC contest banner: “add your verse.”
The MC Contest
The MC contest had no stems and no mixer. It had a recorder. You signed in, put on headphones, hit record, and rapped over the backing track in your browser; Jamglue then lined your take up against the band’s track and handed you back a finished duet to publish. The instruction that made it a duet rather than a cover was one sentence on the page:
“You have the first 40 seconds to yourself, then MC Geologic comes in with the pre-chorus. So keep an eye on the counter in the recorder above!”
The page also warned people to use headphones “so that the sample track doesn’t get recorded into your microphone,” and explained that the preview you heard back was your recording alone: “you may hear silence for the parts where you didn’t add vocals.” 67 entries were created in all.
Grand Prize
Solomon’s Blue Scholars Duet by Solomon
“This was Geologic’s personal choice! This fresh verse will soon be featured on Rawkus.com and Blue Scholars’ MySpace. Solomon will also get an autographed copy of Bayani, and limited edition Blue Scholars poster. Congratulations, Solomon!”
First Prize
| Solomon’s Blue Scholars Duet | Solomon |
| GOAT w/Blue Scholars | GradesOfAbsoluteTruth |
| Leez and Da Blue Scholars Duet | leesdanaka |
| Fire for the People - MC Contest Mix [copy] | soulisity |
| Fire for the People - MC Contest Mix [copy] | soulisity |
“Since Solomon already won the Grand Prize, we decided to add an extra First Prize. And since 4th place was a tie between two verses, both by soulisity, she gets a prize too! Congratulations to all the First Prize winners!” That is why the MC side ended up awarding five first prizes off a rules sheet that promised three.
Honorable Mention
werdna3523’s Blue Scholars Duet by werdna3523
“This was Geo’s mid-contest favorite, so we wanted to recognize this great verse with a Jamglue t-shirt. Congratulations werdna3523!” This is the verse that also became a ringtone.
The DJ contest banner: “start mixing.”
The DJ Contest
The DJ side was the conventional one: nine pieces of the song, opened up. 151 entries were created in all, against 67 on the MC side.
The Materials
“Here’s what you have to work with. Knock yourself out!”
| Fire for the People - DJ Contest Mix | the starting point |
| Geologic’s Acapella | not recovered |
| Bass · Full Track | not recovered |
| Piano · Full Track | not recovered |
| Snare - Shaker · Full Track | not recovered |
| Rally Sounds · Full Track | not recovered |
| Kicks · Full Track | not recovered |
| Synth · Full Track | not recovered |
| Elephant Horns · Full Track | not recovered |
“Rally Sounds” and “Elephant Horns” are the kind of stem names you only get when the band hands over the actual session. None of this audio survives: Jamglue put downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files.
The Deadlines
| Jul 27, 2007 | The entry period opens, per the official rules. |
| Aug 29, 2007 | The blog announces both contests and the two mid-contest favorites, already sold as ringtones. |
| Sep 9, 2007 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. “Publish your contest entry by September 9, 2007.” The blog had said September 7; the contest page and the rules both say the 9th. |
| Sep 13, 2007 | The Wayback Machine captures the hub page with the three ringtones on sale. |
| Sep 23, 2007 | Voting closes. |
| By Oct 25, 2007 | The MC page has been rewritten with results. The first archived results version of the DJ page is from February 2008. |
Grand Prize
“This was Sabzi’s pick. The remix will soon be featured on Rawkus.com and Blue Scholars’ MySpace. Semaj2u will also receive an autographed Bayani ablum and limited edition Blue Scholars poster. Congratulations, Semaj2u!” The typo is the original page’s.
First Prize
“Our First Prize winners were chosen by popular vote. Since Semaj2u already won the Grand Prize, we decided to add an extra First Prize. Congratulations to our First Prize winners, who will receive autographed CD’s, posters, and more!” Four names are listed, one of them the Grand Prize winner again; the results page names no fifth.
Honorable Mention
FFTP (Reprise #1) by Markis_Precise
“Sabzi told us this mix was his second favorite by a slim margin, so we wanted to recognize the great beats. Markis_Precise will win a Jamglue t-shirt. Congratulations!”
The Prizes
One set of official rules governed both sides. It promised two Grand Prizes, one from the DJ theme and one from the MC theme, each chosen by the band, and six First Prizes, three per theme, decided by “the number of Jamglue users who called the remix ‘A Favorite.’” Each Grand Prize was a week of the winning mix on myspace.com/bluescholars with a blog post there, an autographed Bayani, and an autographed limited edition poster, approximate retail value $35.98. Each First Prize was the album and the poster, also ARV $35.98.
What actually got awarded was looser than the rules sheet: one Grand Prize per side as promised, but five First Prizes on the MC side and four on the DJ side, plus a Jamglue t-shirt honorable mention on each. Both results pages explain the extras in plain language: the Grand Prize winner also topped the popular vote, so a slot was added, and a fourth-place tie on the MC side was resolved by paying both.
Licensing. The official rules stated that the tracks were “licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license (and that all rights that are not expressly granted under this license are reserved by Rawkus Records),” and that entrants must attribute Blue Scholars as well as Rawkus, for example “Remix using elements from Blue Scholars/Rawkus Records,” without implying endorsement. Entries themselves had to be published under the same CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. The contest was sponsored and run by Jamglue Inc. of Seattle and Rawkus Records of 65 Reade, New York.
About Blue Scholars
“In homage to hip-hop’s empirical formula, one DJ and one MC, and duos such as Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Gangstarr and Blackalicious, the Blue Scholars embody the chemistry that made these groups so consistent not only on wax, but live on stage as well. What results is the blend of poetic, raw vocal delivery with melodic boom-bap and turntablism, painted with politics and preservation. Residing where the hustle and the struggle coincide, Blue Scholars craft the soundtrack for everyday folks with everyday problems seeking everyday release.”
The artist bio as it ran on the Jamglue contest hub page, September 2007
What survives: three contest pages, the ringtone listing with its prices, the recorder instructions, the eight DJ stem names, and every winner with a working link to an archived mix page. What does not: any audio at all, including the two remixes that were sold commercially. There is also no archived capture of either sub-contest page from before the results went up, so the “how to enter” copy that ran on the MC and DJ pages during the entry period is lost; only the recorder instructions, which stayed on the page afterward, survive.
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/bluescholars: the two-contest split, the three ringtones and their prices, and the artist bio.
jamglue.com/contests/bluescholars_mc after judging: the MC winners, the recorder instructions, the 67-entry count, and the full official rules for both contests.
jamglue.com/contests/bluescholars_dj after judging: the DJ winners, the stems, the deadlines, and the 151-entry count.
“Blue Scholars Contest!” by Divya Bhat: why the contest was split in two, the mid-contest favorites, the ringtones, and the entry and voting dates.
static.jamglue.com
The three contest banners, still sitting in Jamglue’s original S3 bucket.
Jamglue.com has shut down. Thanks for all your support.
Rebuilt from the Wayback Machine, the original static.jamglue.com S3 bucket, and contemporaneous press · Y Combinator: Jamglue (S06) · the retrospective