For Episode 1.5+, I'm trying a slightly different version to crown a champion. There will be two new features for this episode and they will be described below.

Initial Group Stage

40 total songs were submitted for this episode. The 40 songs were randomly placed into one of four initial groups, with each person having one song in each group. Voters will then listen to all songs in a group and vote for their 6 favorite songs to advance. At the conclusion of the round, all songs will be assigned a rank based on the total number of votes they received. Songs ranked 1-4 in the group will advance to the Winner's Bracket along with the top 4 songs from the other 3 groups. Songs ranked 5-8 will be relegated to the Consolation Bracket. Songs ranked 9 and 10 in the group will be eliminated from the competition. All ties for this phase will be broken by random draw.

Winner's Bracket

All songs advancing from the Initial Group Stage will be placed into the 16-song bracket based on their rankings in their original groups. All match-ups in the Winner's Bracket are like previous editions, where it is one song vs. another, with only one advancing and the other being relegated to the Consolation Bracket. This process continues until only one song remains, and will be named Champion. All ties in the Winner's Bracket will be determined by 1) lower seed wins (1 beats a 2), or if they have the same seed, 2) the song having received the most votes up to this point will advance. If the songs are still tied, a random draw will occur. If there is a tie in the Championship match, the team advancing from the Winner's Bracket will be crowned the champion.

Consolation Bracket -- In the consolation bracket, all ties will be broken by random draw.

Stage 1: All songs relegated from the Initial Group Stage will be placed into one 16-song group. Each person will have 8 votes to select their favorite songs from the group, and the top 8 songs will advance to Stage 2. The bottom 8 songs will be eliminated.
Stage 2: The 8 songs advancing from Stage 1 plus the 8 songs relegated from the Winner's Bracket Round 1 will be placed into one 16-song group. Each person will have 8 votes to select their favorite songs from the group, and the top 6 songs will advance to Stage 3. The bottom 10 songs will be eliminated.
Stage 3: The 6 songs advancing from Stage 2 plus the 4 songs relegated from the Winner's Bracket Round 2 will be placed into one 10-song group. Each person will have 5 votes to select their favorite songs from the group, and the top 4 songs will advance to Stage 4. The bottom 6 songs will be eliminated.
Stage 4: The 4 songs advancing from Stage 3 plus the 2 songs relegated from the Winner's Bracket Round 3 will be placed into one 6-song group. Each person will have 3 votes to select their favorite songs from the group, and the top 2 songs will advance to Stage 5. The bottom 4 songs will be eliminated.
Stage 5: The 2 songs advancing from Stage 4 plus the 1 song relegated from the Winner's Bracket Round 4 will be placed into one 3-song group. Each person will have 1 vote to select their favorite songs from the group, and the top song will advance to the Championship Match-up. The bottom 2 songs will be eliminated.