Competing in music contests

It would appear that the dramatic proliferation of these challenges around the world is, at least in part, linked to the dissolution of the legacy record industry. The decline of the major label system of filtering prospective recording artists like some massive sieve interrupted the conventional evolutionary and development route for most would-be artists. The explosion in the number of contests is a way to apply a kind of grid to an entropic system that's overwhelmed with vast amounts of music produced at the drop of a digital hat.

Sure, winning any kind of a contest can be an emotional rush, but do contests have any strategic implications? Some organisations and companies that promote contests seem to think so. Sonicbids.com, which has over 130,000 bands, artists and songwriters, for whom the website acts as a hub for promoting their careers, has nearly 100 contests listed on its site at any given time. Panos Panoy, CEO and founder, says that winning or losing is immaterial from a strategic perspective. "Contests are, at their core, résumé builders," he states. "There's so much music out there, and so many people doing music and trying to get noticed. Participation in legitimate contests shows the world that you think your music is worth the effort and the cost to get it out there that way; winning at any level shows that other people — especially judges who are supposed to know something about good music — agree." Think of it as street cred.

The brass ring is elusive, and much is made of the fact that, even of the artists who win contests, few go on to achieve success in 'the big leagues'. One notable exception to that rule is Celine Dion, who won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin. But there are other success stories. Dexter Freebish are an Austin, Texas based band that pooled their coin in 1998 to enter the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Their entry, 'Leaving Town', charmed judges, including Sir Elton John, and propelled the song to number one out of 27,000 entries that year. According to a story on the band in an Austin newspaper, the win generated local and regional radio airplay, which led to national exposure and a signing with Capitol Records concurrent with an appearance at SXSW the following year. They made one LP with Capitol, A Life Of Saturdays, before going back into the independent forests.

"We see artists promoting their finalist and winner status all the time on their websites and club posters," says Andre Calihanna, Marketing Manager for DiscMakers, a CD manufacturer in New Jersey that has branched out over the years, offering a suite of tools for independent artists, including an annual battle of the bands contest since 1995 dubbed the Independent Music World Series. "Winning or even just participating in live concert contests can generate local media coverage for the artist, which is the level [independent artists] want coverage at. It's also a way to stimulate and engage and grow your fan base."

For composer Mark Erelli, co-writer of the winning entry for the 2006 International Songwriting Competition, it is important to make sure that the focus is still on the music itself, not just on competing.

The sheer number of contests means choosing your battles is the most fundamental strategy. One limiting factor is geography — many competitions are regional; some, like the Eurovision Song Contest, are international. Genre is another seemingly obvious one, although the melding of rap and rock, and rock and country, could definitely put certain artists into more than one camp. Clues can be gleaned by going to the competition's website and looking at the list of past winners, then visiting their MySpace pages or websites.

When genre categorisation is less than crystal clear, the solution is to go where your strengths lie, but also to look at who the competition is — a rock band with a DJ (such as Linkin Park) still wouldn't be a great fit with a room full of rappers a la Eight Mile. Your proficiency level is also important. "A high-profile contest might not be the best choice if you're just starting out or if you have little experience with competitions," Panoy advises.

Another consideration is the judging process. These fall into two broad categories: a panel of 'experts' or crowd reaction. What constitutes an expert judge is rather subjective proposition. Promoters and contest veterans alike suggest you look for names you know, or at least credits you recognise or can verify. Record producers show up on judging panels frequently — googling the name plus 'discography' is a quick way to check someone's background and tastes. It also helps to know, when deciding which competitions to enter, what kinds of music a producer, engineer, A&R person or radio personality (just some of the job titles commonly seen for music competition judges) works with regularly. The bottom line on panel judges, though, is that a jury of six or more from a range of different backgrounds and with verifiable credentials is a good sign, and applies to both songwriting and live performance contests.

Crowd reaction decisions are what artists with a substantial and reliable fan base pray for and what newcomers should probably avoid. "That type of contest is good for party bands that know how to get a crowd up," says Tony Van Veen, President of DiscMakers. "Understand that the point of contests like that has as much to do with getting people into a club to buy beer as anything else, which is fine if that's what you're going for as an artist." The local hero has an edge in these sorts of challenges, which tend to be sponsored by lifestyle companies like alcohol and fashion, rather than gear and technology makers.

It takes a lot of work and research to figure out which contests are worth the time, effort and cost, but if you've got the goods, it can be well worth it. Sarah Lewis is the singer and songwriter for Jag Star, a rock band in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her songs have won her first place with the USA Songwriting Contest and the Next Big Hit competition, and the band were placed second in their region for the Global Battle Of The Bands — a worldwide competition. The first-place wins netted Lewis and Jag Star $25,000 in cash, an iTunes podcast and a press release on Billboard.com's media wire. All of that is being used to support the band's career. The money contributed to new recording and touring gear, and the publicity helped swell the band's email list, bringing in new fans to gigs. Another win in the Songwriter Universe contest resulted in a publishing deal for Lewis at Hori Pro Music, a Japanese-backed music publisher in Nashville.

"When I first started entering contests, I was pretty much throwing money at everything," Lewis recalls. "I've become a lot more discriminating about it now." She researches previous winners, current judges and the costs involved in participating. About the only negative she can think of is the fact that being involved in so many contests begets more contest invitations. "It's overwhelming; I could spend a day a week just deleting emails!" she sighs. "But when you win, it's worth it. People say we're lucky, but I have to tell you we work our butts off with these contests!"

In fact, like anything else, contests can be addictive for some. Mark Erelli, a composer from the Seattle area who won the 2006 International Songwriting Competition, cautions, "There are so many ways to get your music out there — contests, social networking sites and beyond — that [constantly focusing on these] can significantly detract from the actual time spent writing and making the music you are trying to promote. The last thing you want is to build a groundswell of notoriety to the point where everyone is now listening to you, but you have nothing to say."

Nonetheless, the contests are helpful to many strategies. Jonathan Kingham won top prizes in the National Telluride Troubadour Songwriting Competition and the Unisong International Songwriting Contest, as well as being placed two years in a row in the top five of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. The earnings from those wins financed both his house and the recording studio he built in it, as well as getting him better placement for live performances, including a stint opening for Shawn Colvin on tour. "It didn't start out as a strategy, but it's become one," says Kingham. "I find it uncomfortable to toot my own horn, but having the wins in the press kit gives me a talking point — a fact that I can talk around instead of having to talk directly about myself. You can talk about the contests instead, though you're really talking about how you won those contests."

Rachael Sage, a New York singer-songwriter who has won the John Lennon and Starbucks competitions, agrees that just being in a contest helps build the fan base, invites useful feedback and puts you into potentially beneficial situations that otherwise may never have occurred. But she recalls an incident on a tour in Germany that strikes a resonant chord for any band touring a foreign country. "We were an opening act for Eric Burden and the Animals, trying to get a rapport going with the audience, and my German is miserable," she says. "But I was able to get across the John Lennon contest, and it was like we had an instant common reference point. The audience understood."

Elizabeth Elkins, lead singer and songwriter for Atlanta-based The Swear, says they've learned to avoid popularity contests like Bodog and Emergenza, and instead concentrate on song contests that also have live performance components, such as the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, where they took a grand prize in 2002. "Winning the award led to label and publisher interest, and playing the awards show at NAMM that year immediately translated into endorsements for Gibson, Gretsch, GHS, Marshall and other companies," she recalls.

Not everyone is sanguine about contests as strategic career tools. Derek Sivers, President of online distribution company CD Baby, is among them. "CD Baby doesn't get involved with any contests anymore, since it's unwise for us to endorse anything that will create tens of thousands of 'losers' and only one 'winner'," he says. "It hurts me to see so many thousands of artists paying submission fees in hopes of being that one winner. I don't really know of any artists who have benefited from winning a contest, and I haven't heard how that concretely opens any new doors. Everyone is still judged on whether they can draw crowds of paying customers — online or off — or not."

The truth is it's difficult to accurately measure the correlation between the outcome of contests and tangible benefits to a career. But looked at as one more tool in a diverse palette of tactics, contests can present a career to audiences it might not otherwise have encountered, create opportunities for collaboration, add a new layer of credibility and differentiation to an artist's brand, and, if you're lucky, fatten the purse substantially. It beats buying a lottery ticket anyway. 0

Do your research

Beware the 'contest' that offers to 'evaluate' your song or performance using a team of 'experts' or 'industry veterans' for a cash payment, and whose payoff is inclusion in a dodgy online newsletter or such. There can be decent money in promoting contests. It's not unusual to have as many as 30,000 to 35,000 entries in international song competitions, with entry fees upwards of $30. That's over a million dollar gross. With payouts of between $50,000 and $75,000 in cash prizes, and much of the rest of the prize pot contributed by manufacturers seeking marketing exposure and the low advertising overhead offered by the Internet, that leaves a substantial profit margin for contest operators.

Panos Panoy at Sonicbids.com recommends being "extra vigilant" when it comes to vetting contest postings. "Find out who the promoters are, what the rules and regulations are, and how long the contest has been running," he explains. "There's nothing wrong with sending them a few questions directly by email. If they don't take the time to reply, then it's time to walk away."

References to sponsors can be a good clue, but even those require scrutiny. Panoy recalls an incident in which a competition organiser that was using Sonicbids to process entry applications referenced a major guitar company, whose logo appeared on the contest's website. It turns out the guitar maker had simply offered a few sets of strings and had not authorised use of its logo.

"Song contests in particular are subject to this sort of thing, because they tend to take place behind the scenes, so to speak, with judging and much else done out of sight and in secrecy. Whereas, battles of the bands tend to be right there out in the open for all to see the competition and the outcome," says Panoy. "That's not to say that song contests are illegitimate; 99% of them are perfectly legitimate. But any contest requires the entrant to do his or her due diligence, as they would any other job."

Count your winnings

While the long-term strategic perspective of contests should be the guiding principle, the prizes are often nothing to sneeze at. They range from the mundane to the amazing. Winners of the Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation's Battle of the Bands in Nashville will get 16 hours of recording studio time, a one-year subscription to Sonicbids.com and Onlinegigs.com, a $100 gift certificate from Sam Ash Music, and a free copy of the competition's video for promotional use, while winners of the International Songwriting Competition walk away with $25,000 in cash and a slew of other swag, including gear from ElectroVoice, Shure and Cakewalk, five lock-out days at a studio, a 1000-CD duplication package, various subscriptions and, oddly, 10 hours of legal services.

Most, however, offer modest winnings, usually ranging from $500 to $5000, augmented by various bits of gear and memberships in sundry online music sites. In speaking with contest promoters, no one has encountered a contestant who manages to make a living year to year off prize money. But, says Sonicbids founder Panos Panoy, "Given how this sector is going, it wouldn't surprise me if it happens one of these days."

A truly global battle of the bands

Software maker NOTION Music's second annual Realize Music Challenge seeks composers from around the world to submit an orchestral piece completed in NOTION software. One grand prize winner and a guest will be flown to London to record the winning composition with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The winner will receive hotel accommodations and $2500 in cash. www.notionmusic.com/contest

Emergenza — a truly global battle of the bands with competitions in Dublin, Paris, Rotterdam, London, Washington, Nashville and Dallas. There is relatively little payoff compared to the $70 registration fee: the international winner earns six weeks' free production work at Roastinghouse Studios in Malmoe, and sponsors such as Ovation and Sennheiser provide other winnings. But the scale is epic, and grand finalists are given paid transportation to and lodging in the grand final host city in Germany. www.emergenza.net/eng/default.asp

Bodog is global and affluent, where 10 bands from around the world (four from the USA, one Canadian, two UK, one Scandinavian, one German and one 'wildcard' band) play the final show. Bodog Battle shows will be broadcast on network television and wrap up with one band being awarded the Bodog Music recording contract, worth $1 million. www.bodoglife.net

Competing in music contests

Performing Techniques