You're looking back in time: Jamglue ran from 2006 to 2010. This page is a retrospective built from the public record.
The contest banner as it ran on Jamglue, from February 2009. Recovered from Jamglue's own static image bucket.
The B-Real “Fire” Remix Contest
In February 2009, Jamglue and Duck Down Records opened up “Fire,” B-Real's track with Damian Jr. Gong Marley from the solo album Smoke n' Mirrors. This one was stripped down to four stems, an acapella and three instrument tracks, and B-Real listened to the field and picked his own favorite. It drew 1,063 entries in the end, and produced nine prizes across three categories, shared among eight mixes.
The page below is rebuilt from a capture of the live contest page and a capture of the same URL after the results went up.
About the Contest
“Jamglue is excited to bring you a remix contest featuring ‘Fire’ by Duck Down recording artist B-Real.” The four steps, quoted as they read on February 19, 2009:
Enter the contest by creating your own version of the official contest mix. The easiest way to do this is to click the “Start Mixing Now!” button and then “SAVE A COPY” in the Mixer.
Remix the song by adding new sounds, rearranging the clips, etc. using the Jamglue Mixer. You can even add your own voice using the Jamglue Recorder in the Mixer. Be creative, and don't forget to publish your mix when you're done so that people can vote for it!
Promote your mix: embed it in your MySpace and email a link to all of your friends. The “Popular Vote” winning mixes are determined by how many people mark them as a Favorite, so break out your address book and encourage your friends to vote for yours!
Win great prizes!
How the judging worked. From the official rules: “B-Real will listen to the entries and personally choose one (1) Grand Prize winner. The Five (5) Runners Up will be the five (5) Remixes with the most votes, determined by the number of Jamglue users who called the Remix ‘A Favorite.’” The rules are internally inconsistent about the count, opening the prize section with “One (1) Grand Prize winner and (2) Runners Up” and then awarding five; the page as published, and the results, went with five. Jamglue Inc. ran the contest from 7319 Baltimore Ave, Takoma Park, Maryland, with Duck Down Records of 341 Lafayette Street, New York.
The Materials
“Here's what you have to work with.” The leanest kit of any of these contests: the official contest mix plus four separate tracks.
| Fire - Contest Mix | the starting point |
| Acapella - Fire | not recovered |
| Drums - Fire | not recovered |
| Guitar - Fire | not recovered |
| Bass - Fire | not recovered |
A single acapella instead of split vocal stems, which is why so many of the entries below are full rebuilds rather than edits. None of the audio has turned up in any crawl or in the surviving S3 buckets.
Licensing. The stems were “licensed for use solely under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license,” with all other rights reserved by Duck Down Records, and entrants had to attribute the source in exactly these words: “Remix using elements from B-Real/Duck Down Records.” Finished remixes went out to the world under the same license.
The Prizes
“The Grand Prize winning remix will be chosen by B-Real himself. The winner gets a $100 Gift Certificate to Best Buy, an autographed copy of the B-Real's new ‘Smoke n' Mirrors’ Album, a custom B-Real T-shirt, and a featured spot on DUCKDOWN.COM and myspace.com/brealonline. Five Popular Vote winners will be chosen by the Jamglue community. Each winner gets an autographed B-Real ‘Smoke n' Mirrors’ album and a Jamglue prize pack.”
The rules valued the Grand Prize at $147.98 and each Popular Vote prize at $34.98: the album, ten Jamglue stickers and a Jamglue T-shirt.
The Deadlines
| Feb 16, 2009 | The entry period opens at approximately 8:00 p.m. PT. |
| Feb 19, 2009 | The Wayback Machine catches the live contest page: 182 entries created in the first three days. |
| Feb 22, 2009 | The entries list is crawled, the only surviving view of the field mid-contest. |
| Mar 29, 2009 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| Apr 12, 2009 | Voting closes, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| Apr 3, 2010 | The last archived capture: results posted, 1,063 entries created in total. |
Winners
“The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” Nine mixes were named: one Grand Prize picked by B-Real, five Popular Vote winners decided by favorites, and three more that B-Real called out while he was choosing. RPproductionz appears twice, in the popular vote and in B-Real's own shortlist. Every name and title below is taken verbatim from the archived results page.
Grand Prize Winner
Fire (Original Rmx) - B-Real/Damian Marley by raysdankbeats
“This was B-Real's favorite! The winning remix will be featured on his MySpace and on Duckdown.com, and raysdankbeats will get a $100 Best Buy gift card, an autographed copy of ‘Smoke n' Mirrors,’ and a custom B-Real T-shirt!”
Popular Vote
“Our Popular Vote winners were chosen by you, the Jamglue community! Winners get an autographed copy of ‘Smoke n' Mirrors’ and a Jamglue prize pack including a T-shirt and stickers.”
| Le M3LODiST RMX B.REAL-FIRE | Pr1moNyno |
| Fire - FROZEN MAMMOTH MIX 4OUR | FROZENMAMMOTH |
| B-Real Feat. Damian Marley “Fire (RP Remix)” | RPproductionz |
| Dj Alexz - Fire! Jos Cenzura! (Contest Mix) feat. B-Real and Parazitii | alexzp |
| Fire (Contest Mix) - B Real ft. Damian Marley & Big Berd | bigBerd |
Runners Up
“These were B-Real's runner-up picks as he chose the grand prize winner. We just wanted to give them a shout out!”
| B-Real Feat. Damian Marley “Fire (RP Remix)” | RPproductionz |
| Fire - Contest Mix 1 | chenyatta |
| B-Real Feat Damian Marley -(Nitrous)Fire - DnB Contest Mix Drum and Bass (GeemiX) SlickMalik Prod | SLicKMaliK |
What survives: eight names, eight titles across nine prize slots, and a sense of how far the field reached: one of the popular vote winners is credited to B-Real and Parazitii. The audio does not survive. Jamglue put mix downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files, and none of these remixes has been found anywhere else.
About B-Real
The bio on the contest page: “B-Real is the lead MC from the legendary west coast group Cypress Hill. Over the course of its 17-year history, Cypress Hill has sold more than 17 million albums worldwide, including more than 11 million records in the U.S. alone, all the while breaking down the musical and cultural barriers between hip-hop, alternative, metal, rock, reggae, ska and Latin music.”
The album the contest was promoting: “B-Real Now Preps ‘SMOKE N MIRRORS,’ featuring SNOOP DOGG, DAMIAN MARLEY, BUCKSHOT, SEAN PRICE and SEN DOG, of Cypress Hill. Production includes tracks from DJ Quick, Fredwreck, Scoop Deville, and B-Real himself for Audio Hustlerz, Inc.”
The Page Skin
Every Jamglue contest got its own skin: a banner, a background painting, and a stylesheet that repainted the whole site in the artist's colors for the length of the campaign. Here is the background art that sat behind this one.
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/breal three days in: the description, the four steps, the deadlines, the four stems, the prizes, and the entry count.
The same URL after judging: all nine winners, the final entry count, the artist bio, and the complete official rules. This capture is the source for every name on this page.
The field six days into the contest: titles and usernames, no audio.
static.jamglue.com
The banner and background art on this page, pulled from Jamglue's own image bucket, which outlived the site.
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