Hmm.. yeah, we wouldn't want them to win every time

What about, the composer and/or musician/group that had the most outstanding year?: two fantasy albums released, a big jump in career, long-deserved attention? I know that's not easy to define, but Howard Shore doesn't write fantasy music every year, so only the years he scores a fantasy movie would he be eligible. Likewise, Jeremy Soule, if he's only doing first-person shooter scores in a given year, he wouldn't qualify for a Fantasy Award. As for the independents, if they released a good album, or got a lot of mileage from their Facebook page, or I remember the year Tinc made the jump from loops to fully-penned compositions? - that was a big (and successful) leap for her. What do you thinky?

Hmm.. yes this sounds interesting. Something of an extension to the "Horizon Award" we had earlier? I like it. It's more interesting to pick and chose something like this rather than just throw another vote on Jeremy Soule.

Are we wanting to roll out this "Break-out Composer" award for 2010? If so, it's November, so I hope you have some good ones in mind.

Hehe, yeah, we should be able to pick the nominees too. I will promise to launch this whole affair quicker this year. I think I've done most of the programming for this module for last year so it should be rather quick, if you help me with links and artwork

It's official then. I've added the "2010 Break-Out Artist" section to primary post. Need some nominees, now!

Ooh, great! If we don't come up with enough we can skip it when time comes. Better rub those brain cells now

Added Dynamedion's "Anno 1404" to the Best Game Soundtrack category. I'd almost forgotten that one. If you haven't had a chance to hear it, you really should track it down. It's got my vote for 2010, right now. Never did get clarity on the graphical art question. Let me say what I'd like, and they maybe you guys can refine it: I'd like to only nominate IndiNon-Commercial fantasy art, not necessarily from FoRR. There's some great stuff on the GuildWars sites from annual fan contests, more great stuff on DeviantArt from up & comers from all over the world, and I'm sure we can think of other sources. If we don't have a full slate of nominations by January, I can come up with a bag full of them in 30 minutes. BTW, I've got a general preference for helping out the up & comers where possible but I don't really want to slight the professionals either. While we may think that the Inon Zurs of the world don't need our help, they actually do. They may be pretty big in our niche, but I doubt Jeremy Soulle has sold out Wembley, lately. As long as the ignorant masses are spending all their music money on Lady Gaga & Miley Cyrus, we've got work to do. For "Break-out Act" - Dynamedion? They've certainly been busy this year. Or have they already "broken out" too much already?

Eh, I've got to keep up with RR more.... just difficult at the moment what with home life being the way it is... Anyway, just saw the two nominations for artwork for this year...TWO! Thank you!!!

I was wondering, is there a way to see musics ratings? This could be a good starting point for nominations.

Unfortunately you can only see each individual track by looking at the detail page for that track. I really should get something of our old functionality back for displaying more rating. I've removed individual artist and album ratings as this should be calculated from the tracks themselves. Grey, you are more than welcome to surf around the web to pick the best indie-art. The optimal way would be for people to submit to us, but we're not there yet. The music is easier since that's our niche. Oh, and if necessary I'd like to separate established composers such as Inon and others from our indie crowd. It wouldn't be fair if Inon won over some great indie composer just because they were put in the same genre. Hmm.. it's always tricky with this every year

RE: "Oh, and if necessary I'd like to separate established composers such as Inon and others from our indie crowd." I think we're covered here. Inon (and Jeremey, etc.) would be eligible for all categories except for "2010 Best Song by Independent Composer". I think it would be difficult to extend the separation any further, due to a lack of qualified candidates. "2010 Best Fantasy Artist" has been changed to "2010 Best Independent Fantasy Artist". Inon prolly wouldn't do well in this category, either.

Great! I'm looking forward to this new year. I think I need to do some updates to get the latest version of my CMS installed. Perhaps also need to tweak and work on the nomination scripts a little as well when that's installed. But this time around it should really be a faster process, if you help me out with links, images and texts. That's the part that takes the most time

Added a couple game soundtracks: Dynamedion - Arcania: Gothic 4 R.Brower, D.Duke, G.Stafford, N.Acree, D.Arkenstone - World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Not a big fan fan of the Cataclysm OST - nothing particularly catchy, but I'm sure there will be a few fanboys out there who think otherwise.

Interesting to see the Blizzard boys team up with David Arkenstone

Interesting to see the Blizzard boys team up with David Arkenstone Interesting, but not particularly engaging.

Haha, yeah true that. He (Arkenstone) creates extremely many tracks, not all are excellent

Added Dynamedion as a "Break Out Artist" nominee. Can't think of anyone else I really liked who did multiple releases this year. Erdenstern? Is there a new artist that really captured anyone's imagination? We have a little over a week to finish our nominees, per my own self-imposed deadline. Elrond - are you going to be ready with the poll stuff? Can you give this thread a shout-out in the "News" section so we can get a few more eyes on this? I like what we have so far, but I sure would like to get more community input into the nominees. When I started this thread, I was thinking this was going to be lame set of nominees, but it's really shaped up to be a pretty good year. Let's make sure we get this knocked out so we can give our contributors the recognition they deserve.

Thanks Grey for helping us out! I will give this a shout on the front page as well right now. This year we'll perhaps finish in good time

Wow! I cannot think of anything that's not already on the list. Grey, you've done a wonderful job with it. Unless anyone knows any songs by some of our independent composers that should be added. Like Richard J. Durand. I don't know if he has written any new music in 2010 for his Save Tara project, or has just been remixing & getting ready to release his album.