Future Rock Legends - Projects - Voting Idea

One idea that I've been thinking about (I'm not suggesting it be implemented for this project, but I find it to be an interesting concept) is to have the voting for this type of project run similarly to the way the Baseball Hall Of Fame voting is run. There are aspects of the Baseball Hall Of Fame voting that wouldn't work well with this type of project (eliminating players who don't get a certain number of votes, voting on a yes/no basis rather than a Pick 30 basis), but I think it would be interesting to consider the impact of a Senior Committee type voting system could have on this type of project.

In the Baseball Hall of Fame voting, players are eligible 5 years after they retire. They then have 15 years of eligibility in which they must either be voted into the Hall or no longer be eligible for regular induction. They could still be considered for induction by the Senior Committee, but the number of inductions by this committee is significantly lower than the regular Hall.

Songs would still become eligible 25 years after they were first released. They would then have 15 years to make the Hall of Fame before they got bumped to the "Early Influences" or "Senior Circuit" or whatever we'd want to call it. Every year voters would select a set number of songs from the currently eligible songs and a set number of songs whose "eligibility" had expired. A balance that favored currently eligible songs (25/5, 20/10) would help ensure that voters took the expiration deadline seriously. The deadline would make it less likely that songs would be forgotten when a flood of new songs became eligible every year.

The existence of the "senior circuit" would allow for the possibility of overlooked songs getting a second chance, though it would be much more difficult for songs to get into the Hall this way. The selection process could involve, for example, every voter getting to nominate 3 songs and then every voter getting to pick their 5 favorite from the nominees with the top 5 vote getters gaining induction.

Again, it's way too late in the project to even consider something like this, but I think it's an interesting idea for any future projects of this type.