Hi- I have a question regarding the reserved list. It says that the final artists for the reserved songs have not been selected yet, which makes it sound like we still have a chance at those songs, but how will you know I'm interested in those songs if I'm unable to indicate my interest by selecting them?

vol5anthology:

Well, basically we’re just asking that not everyone go for those songs! We’ve been seeing a bit of a problem since the first few entries onward, where people tend to all pick one song, and no one picks other songs. 

Basically, once we’ve gotten a certain amount of entries stating their interest in a song (around 10 or so), we figure one of them is bound to get the position. Since only one artist will be drawing for each track, we want to make sure we don’t have to turn too many people away just because they all wanted the same song. 

Basically, we’re trying to increase your chances to get a song you know you’ll like, since otherwise the leftover songs would have to be split between those who didn’t vote for them. I hope that makes sense!

EDIT: there still seems to be some confusion about this so please let me be clear- if you choose to select a song that says not to select it, you will almost definitely not get that song. As much as we’d like to let everyone get the exact song they want, too many people all want the same song. 

The “do not select” option is basically there to say “the number of people who have selected this song as their first choice is already very high so we’re capping it here to make sure not too many people are disappointed when they all get rejected for the same song.” 

Technically the official artists have not been selected for these songs yet, but the final artists for those songs will only be chosen from the pool of artists who selected it before it became “reserved.”