MMA Best of Year 2019 Public Voting Thread

Welcome to MMA's public vote for the best metal and related albums of 2019! Voting officially opens on January 1st however we are releasing the rules and voting thread a day early so it's ready and available. If you do make your votes before January 1st, don't worry, we will still count them. 

Anyone with an MMA account, from new members to admins.

The deadline for submitting your votes is February 15th 2020.

You may edit your submission at any point up until the closing date, so don't worry if you change your mind.

There is a little leeway for last minute edits, dependant on what time of the day we can look at the results. The vote only ends once an MMA admin posts in this thread saying that it is closed. After that point no new votes or edits will be counted. Be warned that we collect votes based on the order they appear in this voting thread, so the earlier you post, the earlier your votes be counted and the less leeway you will have to change them. We will not go back and change anyone's submission once it has been added to our tally. 

You may vote for any release that is tagged as 2019 on Metal Music Archives with some restrictions:

Release Sub-Genre: Non-Metal and Proto-Metal tagged releases may not be voted for. The latter is likely to only have been used for any archival releases that may have come out during the year. These are not be counted among the best 2019 albums. Metal Related tagged albums are permitted, however we expect voters to use their discretion with such albums and considered whether a Metal Related tagged release really deserves to be placed on a metal website's best of year list.

Release Type: Live Album, Single, Boxset/Compilation, Demo, Promo/Other and Split (unless that split can be considered a full, unique record in its own right* and is not just random tracks taken from the contributor's other releases) may not be voted for. EP's are generally okay to vote for so long as they are made up entirely of new studio material. Ask an admin to verify a particular release if in doubt.

* An examples of a split from a previous year that would count as acceptable is Spectral Lore/Mare Cognitum - Sol. 

You cannot vote for something that is not in our database at all. If it should be, then please suggest the artist for inclusion as soon as possible, or if the artist is here but not the release, report the need for an update or add it yourself. 

Additionally, while recording musicians are welcome to take part, you may not vote for any release in which you took a part in recording, to avoid accusations of bias or rigging. 

You may vote for up to 30 releases in your submission. There is no minimum, but it is preferable that you get as close to the maximum as you can without giving points away to releases that you don't actually like very much. 

Please only post one submission and edit it if you change your mind. We will work through adding everyone's votes from the start of this voting thread which means that your earliest submission will be the one that is counted. We will not go back and edit the one we have already taken if we encounter a second from the same member. 

Please lay your submission out in the following format only - others will not be counted.

Artist – Release

Artist – Release 

And so forth, where the album you list first is your top album of the year. 

To be perfectly clear, this means no numbering, no Release – Artist lists, no spaces between each line (your list should be a maximum of 30 lines long, one for each album) and no commentary on your choices, at least in line (you may talk about or campaign for your choices separately to your heart's content). 

You should also use the standard forum font and colour (you're reading it now!). It should not look like this. 

And especially important: no reverse lists even when the rest of this is taken into account: you don't want us to count your opinion in the wrong order and give the most points to your 30th ranked album instead of your first. 

Sticking to the requested format speeds up tallying the result considerably, so please be considerate and stick to it. Admins may edit the formatting before the tally but do not count on it!

MMA is a website run by a small group of volunteers who have to get most of their information about what they add from outside sources, rather than personal experience. Should you encounter a release placed in a sub-genre that is eligible, tagged as 2019 or as the wrong release type, but you know it's misplaced or mistagged (this is especially important if a release should actually be in Non-Metal), that doesn't mean you should ignore it and can go ahead and include it in your submission. We check every release that makes it onto our final tally and if we find a release that shouldn't have been included in anyone's votes, we often end up having to completely recalculate the whole result, which just wastes our time. So please, for the sake of everyone involved's sanity, report releases that are tagged wrong in some way. Don't just go ahead and try to get it into our results. Last year's presentation was almost ruined because of this. Thank you for your understanding. 

We will be using a score range of 1 to 100 points, rewarding higher placed albums on submitted lists with more points. The exact breakdown from 1st place to 30th is as follows:

1 – 100

2 – 85

3 – 70

4 – 60

5 – 55

6 – 50

7 – 47

8 – 44

9 – 41

10 – 38

11 – 35

12 – 32

13 – 29

14 – 26

15 – 23

16 – 20

17 – 18

18 – 16

19 – 14

20 – 12

21 – 10

22 – 9

23 – 8

24 – 7

25 – 6

26 – 5

27 – 4

28 – 3

29 – 2

30 - 1

The best way that you can help out is just spread that it is happening via word of mouth and to share that it is happening on social media. If you know others who like metal, both online and off, invite them to take part. This is a public vote, so we don't require those who take part to be MMA veterans.