I agree, in a nutshell. I think locking nominations should come at a price. That way the music that doesn't lock can get in with fewer noms--a benefit for songs having no security. That way people would hesitate on whether it's actually worth it to lock a song.
If we have, say, 90 nominators (hopefully this is an overestimate) who each have 25 noms, then assuming every available nom gets used and with absolute max efficiency (meaning every nom is used on the 256 qualifiying songs), that's an average of 8.79 noms per qualifying song. Of course, we're not going to be perfectly efficient, and 85.2% is the highest nom usage % we've had. If we assume 90% of noms are used with perfect efficiency considering that (which means 90% efficiency for ALL available), that drops us to about 7.91 noms per qualifying song.
The highest efficiency we've had is 72.7% in VGMC14 (granted, the efficiency % can't explain the rush to get everything locked in VGMC16--and if it weren't for the locks, we would have seen an efficiency much higher than 61.3%). I guess if you took the 8.79 noms and reduced the efficiency to 72.7%, it would suggest....6.39 noms for a song to qualify? (assuming my calculations are correct)
Keeping in mind my suggestion that locking should come at a price, 8 noms to lock sounds good to me! Of course, that may mean it will only take 5 or 6 noms to qualify without locking, but that's how I would like it!
I mean, I wish we could have the ideal setting of being able to lock music fairly easily--it's nice to get something in easily AND secured. This worked in VGMC 14 and 15. But with the large amount of music getting nominated and with nomination efficiency improving every year (plus with people rushing to lock things more and more), it is unfortunately not possible anymore, unless we want a mad rush of noms to lock music like last contest (OR if we had more than 256 songs in the tournament...)
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What can the harvest hope for if not for the care of the Reaper Man?