I don't know about you, but at this stage of 2022, I think many of us are feeling, "what a year!" The pandemic rages on, there's war in Europe, the Queen died and Elon Musk bought Twitter! I think we need to bring on some Christmas cheer, right now. Once again, Mushroom Fm is here to do exactly that with our holiday countdown and party.
We know many of our regular listeners look forward to our holiday countdown and party every year, but even if you think you know the drill, read on, because there are a couple of important differences this year. If you don't know what it's all about, well, read on even closer.
Once again, votes are open for our popular holiday event, where we ask listeners to vote for their top 10 holiday songs, and we play the top 100 as tabulated by a fancy algorithm. People's preferences change from year to year, so we never know what the countdown is going to sound like.
Voting is accessible and easy. Just type your top 10 using the edit fields, or if you need inspiration, choose each position using a combo box containing a huge list of holiday songs.
Holiday countdowns are everywhere, but what makes ours special is the way we bring listeners together to party. When you vote, we'll email you an invitation to our virtual Christmas party which runs in conjunction with the countdown, this year to be held on Saturday 17 December. Not only is it on a Saturday this year for the first time, but the time is different too. It starts at 7 AM Eastern, 12 PM in the UK and concludes at 5 PM Eastern, 10 PM in the UK. This means that when we get to the all-important top 10, it is a much more friendly hour for more people, especially those in Europe.
Of course, it's always the middle of the night somewhere, so if you can't hear the whole thing live, be assured it will be replayed around Christmas day.
While being on social media is not at all required for you to cast your vote and listen to the top 100, the party aspect of the countdown is fun and interactive, and takes place on social media. You'll be amazed how much fun it is. The day of the party, Saturday 17 December, you'll learn to which table you have been allocated. Will you be on the Dasher, Dancer, Prancer or Vixen table? We'll publish a list of who's at what table, and there are fun ways to compete for points via social media or email on the day, a bit like house points in Harry Potter.
With uncertainty surrounding Twitter at present, this year our countdown fun will be taking place on Mastodon. We're giving you plenty of notice of this so that if you have not set up an account on a Mastodon instance yet, and we know many of you have already, you still have plenty of time. We recommend Tweesecake.social as a good place to get started but there are many other ways.
So, Mastodon is where it's at for all the party fun this year.
Things sure get busy at this time of year, don't they? So, why not do a bit of the good old early voting while you remember. It's open right now at MushroomFM.com/CountDown2022.
If you've enjoyed our countdowns over the years, we would really appreciate you sharing this far and wide on social media, forwarding to email lists of relevance, and telling colleagues, friends and family. The more votes we get, the more interesting and diverse the countdown is, so we'd be very grateful for your help spreading the word.
We have done all we can to ensure the voting system is easy to use and fully accessible, but if you are having difficulty with it, you can hear a demonstration of how to vote in episode 160 of the Mosen At Large Podcast. This was recorded in 2021, but with the exception of the Twitter field changing to a Mastodon field, the process is the same. If you're still stuck, any of the fun guys would be happy to help. We don't want to exclude anyone from participating because of tech challenges.
Thanks for voting, and we look forward to finding out who and what you vote number one.