Once upon a time, scouts were rewarded for their ability to accurately score a track based on public opinion and commercial viability. In other words – scoring as close to the ‘public average’ as possible. Unfortunately, the law of numbers dictates that this average by its very nature will always lie within the central area of the scoreboard. This led to widespread tactical voting, with many scouts voting in a narrow range (4-7) to maintain high accuracy, leaving the accuracy killing extremities of the scoreboard alone.
To put a stop to this, Slicethepie introduced an algorithm known as the ‘Spread‘. Put simply, scouts are now penalised should they fail to use the full spread (1-10) of the scoreboard within their last 30 reviews. The theory is that over a 30 review period, a scouts scoring pattern (1-10) should fit into a bell curve, with the most scores being given in the central range (4-7), decreasing in frequency for the extremities (1-3) and (8-10). The problem is that in order to satisfy the ‘spread’ algorithm, more often than not, you lose accuracy! Similarly, even if you are exceptionally accurate, you may find yourself losing stars because of an unsatisfactory spread.
As such, the ‘spread’ has become infamous within the scouting community as a major obstacle, between them and their higher scout ratings/stars.
Visit the Slicethepie FAQ for futher details
Love the video – made me laugh and explains the spread so clearly. Will recommend to STP newbies is requested on the forum.
what do i do if i get 30 songs in a row that are very very average that don’t deserve a 2 neither an 8?
@ Demonchild – a good question.
Piewatch recommend that scouts should not put their wallets before the music/artists. Only give the score you feel the track deserves – trying to satisfy the spread by giving a score that doesn’t fit the track will only hammer your accuracy. Skipping tracks using F5 can sometimes help spur on a bad/good track, though it is pretty likely you will have a bad/good track in every batch of 30. Remember that the spread works on a rolling 30 tracks.
If you do get a run of 30 ‘straight down the middle’ average tracks…unlucky.
“trying to satisfy the spread by giving a score that doesn’t fit the track will only hammer your accuracy”
question based on this statement. who decides what “fits” the track? someone could really like the song and another would hate it. taking out those tracks which are poorly produced (poor vocals etc)
one would have to assume that being accurate is agreeing with everyone else ergo statistics and bellcurves. does this not defeat the purpose of “spread”?
if not then the other assumption is that someone with more power has already decided what the track is. that person would have to be the most eclectic person in the world which would only leave the actual performance of the track as the variable and in today’s world you can create something very professional on your home pc with little effort.