The USA Songwriting Competition announced yesterday the launch of their 15th annual song contest.
In the email announcement and on their blog, they celebrated a decade of success stories by their song contest winners.
Among the Top 10 USA Songwriting Winners Of The Decade, the likes of Kate Voegele, Ari Gold and Darrel Scott were mentioned. I’ve never heard of them either but check this out:
Kate Voegele (2005 song contest winner) appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien performing her song “99 Times”, a Billboard Adult Top 40 Hit, peaking at #24. Her album, “A Fine Mess”, was released on Interscope/MySpace records and made the Top 10 on The Billboard 200 Albums Chart.
Ari Gold (2007 song contest winner) hit #10 on the Billboard Charts and #1 on Sirius OutQ with his winning entry.
Darrell Scott (2005 song contest winner) pitched his song and got it cut by Faith Hill in 2006. Wow!
Do you think these artists would have achieved such success had they not entered The USA Songwriting Competition?
Graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in Public Relations and Entertainment Communications, Eavan began her music career as an A&R intern at Atlantic Records. In 2007, she joined the Artist Management Department at Vancouver-based Nettwerk Music Group. Out of Nettwerk’s LA office, Eavan works directly with the artists Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, Maria Taylor, Griffin House, and Lucy Schwartz on a day to day basis. In 2009, she began working with manager Kevin Kocher for the artists Chromeo, Datarock, and Fan Death, as well. In her free time she throws parties and books shows with other music industry friends under the moniker “Less Jack More Jill” and is quite fond of gummy bears and puppies. We’re delighted to welcome Eavan to our panel of song contest judges.
For his prize, Vincent Robert Trocchia, winner of Round 3 of The 2009 Lyric Writer Awards, joined forces with We Are Listening’s songwriting duo, Pat and Pete Luboff to polish his lyric, set it to music, and produce an outstanding demo.
Hearing Things
We Are Listening have teamed up with StudioPros.com for the Lyric Writer Awards, a lyric writing contest with a 360-degree approach to turning the winners’ lyrics into publishable, radio-ready soundtracks. Learn more…
StudioPros.com brings the studio recording experience, production value, and LA’s finest session musicians and audio professionals to your home at a price you can afford. From quick songwriter demos to radio-ready masters, the entire tracking, mixing, and mastering schedule is managed by you, online and in real-time, from the comfort of your desktop. The StudioPros.com team comprises of session players who have performed with Seal, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, Jesse McCartney, among others, and Grammy nominated mixing engineers credited by Wyclef Jean, Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, OneRepublic, Beyonce, and more.
After winning The Singer/Songwriter Awards in the last quarter of 2008, Jesse Terry opted to work with We Are Listening’s accredited music supervisor and founder of Tinderbox Music, Jon Delange, as his prize package. With only ten copies of Jesse’s latest release, “The Runner”, Jon secured no less than nine network-sized television placement licenses on Jesse’s behalf, including MTV (Road Rules, The Real World, Road Rules Challenge, The Hills, The City, Human Giant, My Super Sweet Sixteen, Teen Cribs, Parental Control); E Network (Keeping Up With the Kardashians); and Oxygen Network (Bad Girls Club). The relative ease in which Jon placed “The Runner” is a reflection of Jesse’s adaptive songwriting style and compatibility with today’s leading pop-culture entertainment.
“Just got news that nine TV shows (including The Hills and The City) are interested in using music from my record. I am holding the licenses in my hand!! This is all possible because of We Are Listening and your investment in my career. I’m so grateful. I feel like things are really starting to line-up…” — Jesse
Nashville-based finger-picking singer/songwriter, Chris Volpe, wins Round 4 of the 2008 Lyric Writer Awards. This is not Volpe’s first success story with We Are Listening. In 2006, he won The Singer/Songwriter Awards song contest and spent a weekend with us in London recording his selected song, “Shoes”, at Sphere Studios in South London with Producer, Steve Williams. “Shipwrecked”, Volpe’s debut studio album, will be in hand within a week and slated for distribution shortly after.
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.
Nashville-based finger-picking singer/songwriter, Chris Volpe, wins Round 4 of the 2008 
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