MUSIC INDUSTRY BLOG

I’m delighted to announce that Godin Guitars is now a proud sponsor of The Singer/Songwriter Awards, our most prominent and prestigious music contest.  The good people at Godin have generously reserved six guitars from their distinguished 5th Avenue line to be awarded to a select group of contest winners.  Please show your support for Godin by visiting their website and trying the 5th Avenue and 5th Avenue Kingpin models at a dealer near you.

Battle-of-the-bands site, OurStage, signed a deal with concert giant, Live Nation, last month to offer its members the opportunity to fill high-profile opening slots.  Through the OurStage Marketplace, participating artists can create a free electronic press kit for venue promoter’s consideration.  The model is strikingly similar to Sonicbids, the leader in the artist-to-promoter submission business.  OurStage has raised a staggering $20m since its launch in 2007 and, although the site’s traffic volume has dropped since its high profile inauguration, it appears that it is gaining renewed traction, boasting a healthy advertising model and strong reputation among the independent community.

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Launching this month, Freak is a new drama made for MySpace from the creators of American Idol, Fermantle Media.  Freak will air each week in 15 minute doses on MySpace, with sponsoring brands, Red Bull and Tampax, tied into the plot… It’s a semi-reality treatment reminiscent of MTV’s The Hills with a social networking twist where fans of the show follow the characters’ individual MySpace profiles and take part in the content, context and direction of the show.  Best of all, you can submit your band’s MySpace profile for consideration for the program’s soundtrack, here.

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Breaking the Band 3 from We Are Listening bolstered the unquestionable radio potential of one of Canada’s finest independent acts: Hello Operator.  Already a disruptive force in and out of the US music market, the rock à la mode group won Breaking the Band and reaped the ‘career-breaking’ rewards.  After a three month engagement with Tinderbox Music courtesy of We Are Listening, Hello Operator became the only self-released act breaking into CMJ’s Top 100, pilfering airplay from heavy hitters such as Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon and Keane.  That, coupled with six network television placements, secured Hello Operator’s pole position on the indie circuit.  Songs from the group’s most recent EP, “The Breaks”, can be heard on MTV’s “The City”, “The Real World”, and “Parental Control”, E!TV’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”, Oxygen’s “Bad Girls Club”, and Lifetime Television’s “Models of the Runway”.

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Just discovered a quirky new site for music and music video discovery called YouMusic.  Under the strapline, Make Music?  Find Fans!  Love Music? Find Talent!, the site crowd sources its content from artists and allows music consumers to rate what they hear and see.  There’s a music chart, gig schedule, contest and other community and artist opportunity bells and whistles.  I wonder how much the YouMusic.com domain is worth?

Discmakers, the CD replication giant that recently acquired CD Baby, announced the launch of a new promotion yesterday for independent artists.  The company’s CD and packaging artwork division, The Design Studio, is providing customers that place design orders by the 10th April 2009 with a chance to appear front and center on their print brochure.  During the eight week campaign, a panel of professional graphic designers will select 10 CD album artowkr designs from that week’s “pool of design approvals”.  On the 20th April 2009, one Grand Prize Winner will be selected for placement on the brochure’s front cover, along with five other selections to appear inside the fall edition.  Details…

In an effort to establish We Are Listening’s music contest price structure in relation to other music contest providers in the market, I did a little research to determine the range in entry fees these various companies are charging.  It would be interesting to analyze the cost-to-return ratio also (i.e. what a music contest offers as a prize and whether it’s proportional to the entry fee) but I think I’ll leave that for another post.  Here’s what I found:

$45 – Durango Song Contest
$35 – International Songwriting competition
$35 – USA Songwriting Competition
$30 – Billboard World Song Contest
$30 – John Lennon Songwriting Contest
$30 – Great American Song Contest
$30 – UK Songwriting Contest
$30 – We Are Listening
$28 – Unisong International Songwriting Contest
$25 – Life In The Years Song Contest
$20 – Annual Independent Music Awards
$20 – Cooche Music Annual Amateur Songwriting Contest
$10 – Music City Song Contest
$10 – West Coast Songwriters International Song Contest

I’m sure that I have excluded a music contest or two from the list, however, I don’t think I missed the leaders, of which We Are Listening is a proud member.  Incidentally, although I included We Are Listening’s music contest entry fee to the list as $30, it is important to stress that it represents the average music contest fee.  For instance, the Lyric Writer Awards is $20 whereas Breaking the Band is $40.

We Are Listening currently accepts entries for three international song contests: The Singer/Songwriter Awards, Lyric Writer Awards, and World of Music Awards. 

The Singer/Songwriter Awards is a song contest for songwriters writing original material with English-language lyrics in any genre.  The songs may be the product of more than one songwriter and winners have a choice of six song contest prizes, including a trip to London to record the winning song.  Participants are not required to be the performing artist on the recorded submission. 

The Lyric Writer Awards is an English-language, lyrics-only song contest in any genre.  The lyrics may be the product of more than one lyricist and winners enjoy professional publishing opportunities in the US market. 

The World of Music Awards is a world music genre song contest.  The songs are not required to contain words and, those that do, may be recorded and submitted in any language.  All entries may be the product of a songwriting team and, like The Singer/Songwriter Awards song contest, participants are not required to be the performing artist on the recorded submission.  Winners receive a fully-financed trip to world music festival, WOMEX, accompanied by one of We Are Listening’s music industry veterans.

We Are Listening also provides songwriters and performing artists with an assessment service as well as a special performance-oriented contest called Breaking the Band.  All of this and more on We Are Listening’s music contest page.