UPDATE (Monday, 2 p.m.): See new voting ballot info in third-to-last paragraph.

It's been an interesting week. Rocks Off would like to thank everyone who participated in last week's write-ins for the 2014 HPMA ballot. It says a lot that even after their favorite local artists were left off this year, fans cared enough to speak up for them and tell us we were wrong.

Of course we expected some criticism of our revised nominating process. But we still felt it was an improvement on the previous system, which sometimes rewarded acts as much for their self-promotion skills as the actual music they made, and excluded some deserving artists who were simply not interested in dancing to that particular tune.

That's why the people we asked to participate this year were the most knowledgeable about the local music scene that we could think of (and who wanted to participate; ultimately all but a couple of people we asked did). Furthermore, they are, in our opinion, all people capable of being as objective as possible about a survey that hinges on the use of the word "best." They will also all stay safely anonymous.

So that's our story and we're sticking to it. But like we said last week, it was never our intention for this whole thing to be a one-way street.

Being that this is the first time we've tried doing it this way, and this being the Internet, we expected there to be a few bugs...and we were right. First, we realize that last Monday's original instructions might have been a little clearer as to whether the write-in would be a separate category of its own or apply to each individual category. Apologies for any ambiguity, but it's just not feasible to add write-in spots for all thirtysomething categories. Not this year, anyway.

So here's what we did. Nominations for an individual member of a group were counted for that group. Comments listing multiple members of a group (with or without the name of group itself) were also counted as one vote for that group. There were quite a few duplicate vote-comments, but we only counted one vote per commenter name per artist. Naively or not, we trusted that each comment/vote for an artist under a different name actually came from different people. This being the Internet...well, sometimes you just have to trust people.

If that makes us naïve, we can live with it. But even after all that, we're 100 percent comfortable with this year's slate of write-in nominees. Our regrets to those who missed the cut by just a few comments.

So...all that leaves now is the actual voting. (NEW INFO) Guess what? It's ready. The write-in category has been added onto the HPMA ballot and the phone lines (as it were) are now open. Don't worry; if you've already cast your ballot this year, you can go back and add your write-in choice too.

Along with all the others, the winner will be announced at this year's HPMA ceremony August 7 at Warehouse Live, now featuring the Tontons, the Suffers, Electric Attitude and thelastplaceyoulook. Tickets are on sale now.

And now, your brand-new write-in HPMA nominees. Congratulations to them all.

• Bang Bangz
• Gio Chamba
• Def Perception
• DJ Mik One
• Grand Old Grizzly
• The Guillotines
• New York City Queens
• Oceans of Slumber
• Onehunnidt
• Only Beast
• Silver Blueberry
• Supremacy

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