All Change At Vienna's HoD Meet

With all forty songs in finally (thank you Montenegro for making us wait for your Zeljko B-side) all Heads of Delegation descended on Vienna for two days of tours and details in preparation for the Eurovision Song Contest 2015.

Formalities of their meeting included drawing Austria’s start position for the Grand Final, which perfectly is 14 so the First Half and Second Half both have 13 contestants (that would be a nice video to see - did they use balloons and strings like last year?). Another one of note is the biannual election for members on the EBU Reference Group ‘who control and guide’ the Song Contest. The headline here is that SVT’s Christer Björkman has not been returned to one of the three elected positions, the place going to his Dutch equivalent, who join a representative from Slovenia and Italy. While there everybody was taken to the arena and to the EuroClub as well as handing in all the required paperwork.

We also know about a nine minute percussion interval act for the Grand Final showing ‘how fascinating and diverse the Austrian music culture is.’ That's about as original as the opening to the Grand Final, where artists will walk across over a 'bridge of light.'

Change as well comes in the betting odds, with Måns’ victory in Melodifestivalen seeing him going into the middle game as favourite in-front of yet-to-be-revealed-in-three-minute-version Italy and Estonia.

What To Do Now We Must Wait

Firstly if you haven’t yet get yourself on the official YouTube channel where you will find all forty songs in a convenient playlists (hopefully this week in running order too). Then you can rank all your songs from first place to last place quite easy using the Gerbear sorter which asks you to rank two entries at a time to compute your final ranking list. Surely the EBU should give every jury this to help them decide... When you've done that maybe share your result with the world as anybody and everybody seems to be drawing up opinion polls, we like the ESCNation one best as it splits each vote into a country and then into projected semi final results as well.

Those desperate for National Final action can watch the ten songs that took part in Denmark’s MGPjr which was absolutely not their selection for Junior Eurovision. Alternatively you may want to watch Magnus Carlsson’s performance again from Melodifestivalen’s Final, but this time complete with Swedish sign language which is completely schlagertastic.

Remember too that Eurovision's Greatest Hits will be gracing our presence in the near future. The show is being filmed next Tuesday and some broadcasters have already confirmed their show times. The BBC is going big for their host show giving it a 21:00 showing on BBC One's schedule on Good Friday, with SVT showing the 90 minute production a day later.

Robertson's Reflection

Now we enter middle game, and this I argue now is the most important era of the modern Eurovision artist. Long game has happened, national finals have been won and the early favourites and no-hopers have been selected. Short game comes in Eurovision week itself in delivering on the night and ensuring there is enough boxes being ticked for both the jurors and televoters. Middle game is different, and as us fans twiddle our thumbs and refine our top 40 lists the artists need to be getting their resources out into collecting votes.

Conchita nailed middle game. Nobody last year worked harder travelling to each and every preview event and then some in an epic piece of co-ordination for flights across the continent. Attending preview parties and events gives an artist a great chance to show off and delivering a vocal performance to note will turn a few heads, but the immediate family of the Eurovision network is probably worth no more than a few points on the scoreboard. Conchita was more than a great vocal though, and wherever she travelled the attention and media craze was the main highlight. That’s not going to apply to most artists.

The key to middle game is about getting your song a steady and strong reputation beyond your country’s borders. This is where we are watching to see if iTunes sales or Spotify charts reveal anything about the spread of a song throughout the coming weeks and months. When Germany won in 2010 no doubt Lena had a perfect draw and a catchy song, but that wasn’t the key for winning both jury and televotes that year. In this middle game period ‘Satellite’ crashed through all of Germany’s bordering nations and sucked their points dry in Oslo. This kind of pressure is especially important with the current jury ranking system, which jury members would want their names attached to being somebody voting down an already hit song in their country? Few, I argue.

Looking through Spotify charts at the moment, I’m tempted to pull back my early prediction about Estonia being a potential winner, and not just because their Head of Delegation all but admitted defeat to Sweden during Melodifestivalen’s voting. The Spotify charts of Latvia don’t have our Estonian duo in the top 200, neither does Finland, and I'd be looking at these countries for picking it up far more quickly.

This is the kind of song which if coming on in the latter half of the show is going to be drowned out by the screams and frolics of Eurovision parties wherever they are, and people need to be ready and be listening to appreciate the drama of Estonia’s offering. They’re going to need to give it more than one listen. Probably in all honesty more than two, three or four. It’s rampage in Eesti Laul was build up mainly because it was being heard many times more than any of the other entrants in the contest on radio constantly. Walking through Tallinn before the show we arrived at the Song Festival Grounds on the outskirts of the city, where the radio was not just playing their competing song, but was going through Elina’s and Stig’s past Eesti Laul catalogue. This is the kind of impact that got them the resounding victory, those televotes and jury votes were pretty much already secured as long as they looked into the cameras at the right times.

‘Goodbye To Yesterday’ more than any other song this year needs to do the same penetration in other countries and fast. Creep into the market in neighbouring Latvia and Finland and generate radio airplay, and let it spread out from their beyond. Let the song and it’s saga play out to a generation who will not just sit up and take notice and vote come May, they will also steer the heads of jurors to the song knowing this song has built a reputation already and it would take a brave or foolish juror to knock it down. For 'Goodbye To Yesterday' to keep its favourite status it needs to more than an impressive music video, it needs to spread out beyond the simple Eurovision circles and encapsulate a middle game of tactical expansion.