Just Plain Folks - Music Organization

Just Plain Folks is a community of over 51,500 Songwriters, Recording Artists and Music Industry Professionals — and host to the world's largest independent music awards. Our organization was created to provide a network of cooporation and inclusion for musicians. We welcome you to join us — membership is free!

The Just Plain Folks Music Awards

We're excited to announce the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Award winners and nominees. (Click the button below to see who made it). Congratulations to all the nominees and winners — and a special thank you to our volunteers who worked to screen the 42K albums and 560K songs submitted in the largest music awards of any kind in world history!

The Just Plain Folks Music Awards were started in 1999 as a simple way to recognize the best music submitted by members. JPF Founder Brian Austin Whitney felt the music made by the "other 98%" of the music world often ignored by the mainstream televised music awards shows deserved its own recognition. The judging criteria is based around one basic concept: Does the music move you? This one encompassing criteria has since been adopted across much of the mainstream music industry to measure the very best quality of the best music being made today. Once again, we start our quest to find the music that moves us most and recognize it with admiration, fairness and dignity (and a cool JPF Awards trophy).

Visit our Awards page for more information on entering, or read the 2008-2009 Awards FAQ.

The Just Plain Forums

We have one of the busiest message boards in the music industry — the Just Plain Forums — and there is something to be found for everyone! You can ask questions for our professional Mentor Staff, post your lyrics and MP3s for critiques and feedback, share your thoughts and opinions on a myriad of music related topics and even learn more about music theory and instrument technique. There are also Chapter Message Boards for some active cities and regions so you can see what is going on in your area, or help start a chapter yourself. You must register separately to post on the message boards, but it is very easy to do.

JPF On Tour

Each year thousands of members join together for our road trip showcases. In the last 9 years we've visited most of the US and Canada during one of our Just Plain Folks Roadtrips. We've hosted hundreds of Showcases featuring thousands of artist performances. We also host workshops, chapter meetings, networking events and gatherings of all types and even take a little time for tourism when we can. We hope to expand our Roadtrips to include Europe and Australia as our membership grows in those areas. If you'd like to get involved, follow the listings of the Roadtrips in our newsletter and sign up for events anywhere you are interested in participating. Below, you can see some pictures of the folks we've met and things we've seen along the way

Our Sponsors

Just Plain Folks and entry into the awards is free, thanks in part to the Community Partner Sponsors below. Please click their logos below for more about these outstanding companies. Be sure tell them thanks for their year round support of the entire JPF community!