[EM] Classical music countdown balloting

[Joseph Malkevitch]

For the last several years the classical music station in the New York City area WQXR  (which can also be listened to via the Internet) asks listers to vote, this year, for up to 5 pieces of music. The votes are tabulated and the pieces are played  starting somewhat earlier than New Year's Eve, counting down to the start of the new year with the most voted for piece being played just before the new year starts, New York time. Votes are tied to email addresses and a person is supposed to submit only one ballot. Instructions for this year's countdown appear at the link below including the suggestion that one pick as your 5th choice something outside your box.

https://www.wqxr.org/classical-countdown-2025/

Lists of pieces played in previous can be found via an Internet search.

Presumably the goal here is to get large numbers of listeners to the station in the period running up to the new year but individual people may be interested in learning about appealing music that other like minded people find worthwhile to know about and listen to. Newcomers to this kind of music may find this a venue to learn about people who made important contributions to this kind of music. Certainly if one has never listened to the music of Franz Joseph Haydn, one has  missed out but Haydn
wrote so much fascinating music that voters who vote for one valued piece may scatter votes for Haydn's music so that none of his music gets played. Looking at past results some pieces of an "obscure" nature appear that it seems possible that there was a coordinated effort by some person/group to vote for a truly not "broadly" popular piece.

I think there are some interesting issues in designing a voting scheme (ballot/decision method") here depending on the goal one hopes to achieve.

Best wishes,

Joe

——————————————
Joseph Malkevitch

Email:
jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu
Web page:
http://york.cuny.edu/~malk/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20251206/da4f013a/attachment.htm>