Aiyah, just ignore the stoopid bickering and quibbling lah. If you worry about these meaningless things all the time, things will
never get done.
It is a good idea and James can, as usual, garner sponsorship for the prizes and the organization of the event, from both businesses and individuals who feel they can contribute financially or otherwise.
Awards are after all usually results from consensus ie. we have a bunch of winners who earned the most number of votes in a category. It's as simple as that.
We may have an IP-tagged online voting system ie. only one IP address allowed for each vote in a voting category, or if anybody can think of a better way to garner and audit votes - please feel free to suggest cos I am not really familiar with all these web thingie.
Personally, I think it's important to create awards for real Singaporean musicians who are valid Soft members ie. those who have been actually active in the local music scene and contributed with information sharing on this forum. James knows who these users are, and with his trusty bunch of moderators can decide on who gets to be nominated.
This will be further validated by the fact that these individuals (the nominees) are recognized and known by fellow Softies, either personally or professionally, or through gigs and stuff.
For now, I imagine the Soft Awards show to be like a typical MTV Awards show where you have prominent Softies to come present the awards, the winners go up the stage and say a few things, and we have the privilege to watch the actual winners perform 'live'.
I don't know if it can be a free-for-all event, or a paid ticket event. It can be either, I think. If it's a paid ticket event, we can have the luxury of making it more glamorous and invite a few prominent VIPs to grace the show.
Main cost issue will of course be the venue because I am sure if cash or kind prizes are hard to get sponsored (maybe because of the financial crisis) - it is not that expensive to get a few trophies from the shops.
All in all, I think this kind of event will earn support from most Softies who are here genuinely to contribute to local music in any way, be it through sharing of information or ideas, or organizing of music-related casual events and meetings among Softies for the benefit of music in general.
It will be a nice validation of sorts for the effort and certainly an event to be remembered (if organized properly), and to show the world (and fellow Singaporeans in particular) that local music is well and alive.
