My previous attempt at highlighting the unknown failed (perhaps not miserably, but it failed nonetheless) for a couple of reasons. In this game I'll attempt to find a way around these problems and hopefully introduce people to some new (favorite) albums.

The previous attempt had three main problems:
1. There were too many rules, scaring away some potential participants;
2. There was too wide a pool of albums in the game due to everyone loving something else, and;
3. There was no motivation for people to search out new albums.

I will attempt to remedy this by:
1. Using the format of the World Cup as a basis for the game, one of the simplest but most entertaining games we've seen on the forum recently;
2. Using initial nomination rounds based on regions, followed by;
3. Weekly match ups per region to determine who will represent their region in the final round.

I will track down the albums and upload them to Rapidshare so we can have a maximum possible number of participants. I think we should maybe stick to four albums a week so people have some time to listen to the albums, which hopefully hardly anyone has heard.

There are a few matters still to be determined, the most important of which are:
- How many and, more importantly, which regions do we use?
- How many albums can be nominated in the regionals?
- How many albums will progress to the global finals?
- Which albums do we exclude? I propose we exclude the US and the UK, but it would hardly be fair for Bob Marley to participate so maybe the top x artists/albums on AM should be excluded as well.
- Does anyone have a major moral problem with me uploading these albums to Rapidshare? Most importantly, is it a problem for you Henrik? If it is, we could leave the uploading part out and work with the participants we can get. However, I feel making these unknown artists more well known will, if anything, benefit their sales.

Discuss.

To answer a few of my own questions:

This is a list of regions we could use, based in part on the World Tour:

Africa:
Arabic (Northern Africa and Middle East)
Western African
Central African
Eastern African

America:
Brazilian
Caribbean
Northern Latin
Southern Latin

Asia:
East Asian (Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam)
South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka)
Southeast Asian (Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, East Timor, Laos, Singapore and Brunei)
Australia/New Zealand

Europe:*
Northern European
Eastern European (including Russia)
Western European
Southern European
*Not too sure where which countries in Europe would end up yet.

We nominate 16 albums for each regional, each person gets to nominate 1 album and if we don't have enough after 1 round we'll have another round. 4 of these albums will, through either simple elimination or a group round, make it to the final round. Above I've come up with 16 regions, which will mean 64 albums in the finals which will compete for the crown.

The main problem with this is that it will require people to listen to 256 albums, which is quite a lot. We could stick to 8 albums per region, 4 of which would move on to the globals (for a total of 128 albums), but it's still a lot.

As an alternative, each region could be represented by different albums in the different matches. Each region would face 3 teams from their continent, meaning we have 12 albums per continent and (with 2 regions progressing per continent) a further 14 albums in the elimination round. 62 albums in total. The question here would be: who selects these albums? Teams of managers?

Finally, I propose we exclude all albums with more than 1000 votes on RYM and all artists in the top 500 on AM

If you want participation I would go with singles.

Great !! You forgot Central Asia but it could be included to one of the subregions (not that there are amny bands from Uzbekistan or Mongolia that I know of).
And you can add Polynesia and Pacific islands to Aus/Nz ??
And what about the Antarctic ?

I can help for the country subdivision, especially for Africa.

I'd really like to try it with albums, but if it doesn't work out we can do it with songs. That'll also make the 256 version much easier to handle.Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I reckon these are the biggest regions in terms of music and this way every 'continent' has 4 regions.Yep, definitely.I already used your and Alex D's division from the World Tour discussion on the subject, but if there is enough enthusiasm for this project and we work out the other kinks, I'll definitely call on you to work out the country specifics!

If you do it with albums, coordinate with Brad, because we really shouldn't do this and Moderate at the same time.

256 is definitely too much for albums.

Are we going to be allowing anglophone music from non-anglophone countries? I ask because there's a ton of Scandanavian stuff that's in English and is reasonably popular in the indie communities already.

I will gladly participate if this is about songs, but for albums it is just too much to spotify with so little time that I can see myself losing interest after a couple of weeks.

I was intending not to allow those. Might be covered by the RYM votes rule too, which we might have to lower to 500 depending on the type of game we end up playing.

I think another thing that could difficult it in the albums case is that the final of '00s poll is coming close. So if this game happens yet this year, than songs would lead to more participation.

Let's think about the right MOMENT too. Toni's right. There was a moment (by last summer) when we had many many games playing simultaneously, and that couls explain the failure of yours and Alex D's geographical game, which didn't attract that many people.
So we'll have to coordinate our efforts.
Will we go back to a 90's poll next year ? Or will we do this instead ?
We should think GLOBAL

Anyway, maybe this game won't interest all the AMers and it's explainable. Some among the youngest AMers may have still a lot to discover in the rock canon that constitutes thye AM3000 lists, and won't feel the need to go find some new music. (the ? is for my English too it's late )

^ I think there will be hissy fits if we don't do the 90s poll next year.

This Foreign World Cup is a great idea, but I just wonder if enough people would find time to listen to albums. A songs game would be fun and would definitely attract more people. And if someone hears a song he or she likes then they might check out that artist's catalogue anyway.

Dan's suggestion is a good one. I think that 256 albums is too much

My original plan for the AM World Cup was to use albums, but I was talked out of it becuase not only do albums take a long time to listen to, they get repetative near the end of the game.
I would go with songs (or maybe artists and pick different songs).

Seems like most people would prefer songs, so here's what I think should be possible in that case.

We nominate 16 songs per region, meaning we'll eventually end up with 256 songs. The first nomination round will run for one week during which everyone will be allowed to pick 1 song for every region (or as many regions you know a song for), after which we'll have another round of one week, which will most likely fill up all the nominations. I think we have enough people here to make it work in two weeks, but in case we don't we'll have a third round.

The regions are still up for debate but I'd like to stick to four regions per 'continent'. I've listed some of the changes and problems still to be resolved below:

Africa:
There was quite a bit of discussion in the World Tour topic about which country should belong where. Can I leave it up to you, nicolas, to set up a list of the countries belonging to what region? This is the map Alex came up with. Do we include Turkey with 'Middle-East'?

America:
Northern Latin (Everything above Peru)
Southern Latin (Peru and below)
Using Peru as a dividing line seems quite rigorous but I don't have enough knowledge of the music there to make a more informed decision. Anyone?)

Asia:
Australia/New Zealand/Pacific Islands/Polynesia

Europe:
Northern European (Scandinavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Iceland, Greenland?)
Eastern European (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, etc.)
Western European (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland)
Southern European (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece)
Ideally I'd add a 'Central European' here, but that would give only Europe 5 regions. I've excluded the UK on purpose.

When we've nominated our 256 songs we'll take one week for each 8 match ups (16 songs), so 16 weeks total, followed by regional semi-finals and finals, and global semi-finals and finals. Ultimately this'll take exactly 20 weeks.

I think it would be best to match songs from the same region against each other initially, but if the majority feel we should use random match ups that's fine by me too.

Now, for songs it becomes a little harder to exclude things, but I think the easiest way is to exclude songs on albums that have more than 1000 votes and songs from artists in the top 500 on AM. Also, no English language (with the exception of Pidgin English).

Thoughts?

a few comments

1) ok for Africa. Alex map wasn't bad, but as I said before, Nigerian really belongs to the West African block (geographically and musically). I'll post the list a little later

2) You didn't give us the 4 Asian regions

3) You chose to exclude the British Islands but kept Australia and NZ. Do you mean that we will only pick native music in Oceania with the no English rule ? And what about Irish music in gaelic ? Maybe it should go with Western E.

a few comments

1) ok for Africa. Alex map wasn't bad, but as I said before, Nigerian really belongs to the West African block (geographically and musically). I'll post the list a little later

2) You didn't give us the 4 Asian regions

3) You chose to exclude the British Islands but kept Australia and NZ. Do you mean that we will only pick native music in Oceania with the no English rule ? And what about Irish music in gaelic ? Maybe it should go with Western E.

Ok, thanks. Do keep in mind that we need the four groups a little equal in artist power, that might be more important than separating them by music style. That's just my thought though.

I didn't change the other 3, I just listed changes.

Good points. I didn't want to exclude Australia completely, but we do have to come up with some rule to exclude the booming indie scene in Australia; "no English" may do that, but it would also exclude an artist like Fela Kuti. At least some of his songs. And yeah, I think Gaelic can go with Western Europe.

Edit: I just edited my post above to include Ireland and a rule about English exempting Pidgin English. Also, if some very unknown artist from a completely unknown music scene sings in English we could allow it. We'll perform a bit of case law in these instances.

Another thing : where does "Middle East" end ? What about Iran ? Afghanistan and Central Asia ? They're not "big" countries musically but they're culturally just between the Arabic and the Indian world. I could add them to the ME because there are some common traits in Muslim music even between countries as far from each others as Uzbekistan and Mauritania.
let me study that a little bit and I'll come up with proposals.

I would agree with adding them to ME, although Afghanistan can be a little tricky because their folk music is more Persian (Middle-Eastern) while their classical music belongs to South Asia.

After looking at a map, why not

North Africa/Middle East (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Israel/Palestine, Lebannon, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Barhain, Iran)

I would put the -stan States with India and the rest in a South-Central Asian region, or else "Africa" will hold half of Asia !!

Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaidjan should be added to a big "Eastern Europe" that would actually hold almost all the European ex-communist countries

But that's your call Stephan

The rest of Africa
West Africa (Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso [My second country of adoption]) and Nigeria)

Central/East Africa (Chad, Republic of Centrafrica, South Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania, Seychelles, Uganda, RDC, Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi)

Southern Africa (Angola, Bostwana, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, Comoros, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland).

That could seem unbalanced because most of the music known by the Westerners is in the West African region (Mali/Sahel, Senegal, Nigeria), but there are extraordinary things to discover in the other 2. Ethiopian and Congolese music are at least as interesting as the music from the Sahel.
If it is too unbalanced, move Nigeria to region 2.
Southern Africa is mostly South Africa but there are great things in the neighboring countries and islands.

A game that doesn't only improve your knowledge of global music, but your knowledge of geography as well. Loving it already!

I really like this idea a lot.

Could we possibly try an albums one? 32 albums, just 4 albums to listen to a week? It would be utterly fascinating.

Also, pidgin English sounds hilarious!

Four albums per week is already prohibitive for me, and I imagine I'm not alone. I think a songs version of this game first might be a wise move.

32 albums would be 2 albums a week, and I'm open to doing that in addition to the songs poll, but I will definitely focus on songs. Maybe we can make it a small extra for the people with too much enough time. We'd have to find a way to decide which 2 albums to nominate from each region though.

This game sounds like entertaining and very enriching! Count me in.

Living in Germany doesn't make it easier to listen to all the music. With no access to spotify and some youtube movies being banned, it sometimes feels like living in China or Iran ...

Stephan, have you decided when to start the game ?

As you mentionned in the future games thread, I think now could be a good moment. There are no major polls planned outside of the decade poll.

Will you start with Africa ? I have started a recommendation thread with songs from North Africa and the Middle east

I was thinking we could do the nomination rounds on a global scale. Everyone gets to recommend 1 song from every region they know a song from. Some regions will most likely only have a few recommendations after the first week, but then the experts on that region can fill up the rest.

If we do a section every week it'll effectively double the amount of weeks this game will last. I'm up for it, I just don't think it would necessary.

Or would you prefer to run preliminaries (i.e. have people vote for a top 10 songs, the top 16 of which will go to the next round)? I'm not sure this would work due to the nature of the game.

The global nomination systrem is OK