I'm so impressed with the songs on the user showcase, I think we should be making them available to more people. I'd guess there are all kinds of song writing contests, so I've created this thread as a place to archive information so our song writers can submit their songs elsewhere too.

There is a song writing contest at MERLEFEST every year, and unfortunately it's over for 2015... but here's a link to information about it, and I really hope y'all submit your songs to some/all of the contests we uncover.

CHRIS AUSTIN SONG WRITING CONTEST (MERLEFEST)

MORE INFORMATION

The cool thing about the Chris Austin contest is that the winners get to perform their songs at Merlefest. Merlefest is by invitation only, so playing there would normally be outside the realm of possibility for people like us.

If you know of other such contests, please make entries below so people can start submitting their best songs. I'd guess that some of these contests have very high visibility, and winning (or even placing) could provide that magic ingredient that separates you from all the other song writers in the world.

Pat,

Starting a thread to share information about songwriting contests is a really good idea.

Perhaps PG Music will pin the thread so it's always assessible. Otherwise the thread may be pushed off the top page over time.

A lot of ideas seem good for a while, then people lose interest. As long as the ideas continues to interest people, they'll find and post new contests, which will bump it back to the top. And once people lose interest, it probably needs to sink to the bottom of the pile.

But I hope that anybody who knows about any contests will post them here. I'd be surprised if there aren't HUNDREDS of such contests. And especially if they have potential to catch the eye of industry shakers & movers, I'd like to see some of the talent here get noticed nationally (if not internationally)

AMERICAN SONG WRITING AWARDS

PARAMOUNT SONG

INT'L SONG WRITING COMPETITION

JOHN LENNON SONG WRITING CONTEST
(currently accepting submissions)

SONG WRITING .NET

ASCAP'S LIST OF SONG WRITING CONTESTS

INDIE INTERNATIONAL SWC

SONG OF THE YEAR SWC

MUSIC CITY SWC

MUSIC PIPELINE
accepting entries until March 1 2015! hurry!

GREAT AMERICAN SONG CONTEST

UK ONLY

ANOTHER UK ONLY CONTEST

A COLLECTION OF CONTEST LINKS


OK, this ought to give y'all some new options. I noticed that a few of these are currently accepting songs, while others are done for the year... I listed the ones that were very clear about still accepting, but there may be more if you take time to read thru the info (which I didn't)

returning to the thought that the only people making money in music are those who supply products and services to musicians, we might be wise to jump straight to the part where we set up our own song writing contest, charge a fee to submit, then every so often send the winner a little check and keep the rest.

Or not. Your morals may vary.

Well, that pretty much sums up my thoughts about the majority of the contests. :-)

For us I think we'd best let well enough alone. The only one we ever entered was back in the glory days of Just Plain Folks (JPF) when they would have thousands of entries and had award ceremonies out on the west coast. We were fortunate enough to place second in the Roots category but didn't make the 3K mile journey to receive the award. Sadly, the contest disappeared and nowadays the JPF board is marginally active. We likely won almost by default since we submitted bluegrass songs.

99.99% of the songs Janice and I performed with our bluegrass bands were covers. The rest of the band had zero interest in writing and, given the traditional nature of bluegrass at the time, were interested only in interpreting the war horses. It was one of the reasons we left in 2005. After we discovered BiaB in 2011 and returned to music, I was forced to write or we'd have nothing but public domain songs to post. Although one of my favorite artists is Trad Arr. We do a lot of his stuff.

Fortunately the PG forum community has offered plenty of support regarding our writing efforts and offered validation to the extent that, at least, I no longer feel like I'm embarrassing myself. From support/encouragement via the Showcase Awards, our frequent collaborators and the aforementioned forum community, I've struggled on with this song writing thing. But constitutionally I'm not wired to accept failure after failure in wide open contests. I know there are folks that are, oh say, a quadrillion times better writer than I am who don't win contests or make a dime out there in the music world.

I'm glad that we have ZERO commercial aspirations and are happy with the ataboys and atagals we get here.

Pardon the ole phart discourse -- it's waaaay to wet and cold to go outside and play.

Bud

PS Mercifully, not everybody takes my cantankerous ole phart attitude. It would be super cool to see somebody from here win one!

oh thanks for that! Now I have to clean the monitor after snorting coffee onto it!


yeah, for anyone who wants an intelligent playground, friends they can trust, a sense of accomplishment and true appreciation, there's little reason to look beyond this forum.

But I think there are a few people here who would like to see how far they can push the envelope, and the world of music does extend farther than here. I could name names, but those with aspirations already knows who they are. I'm just planting seeds for anyone who may want to follow-up and see what happens.





yep.. cold here today too.. we have snow in NC!



it would indeed! Again, I could name names....

another thing that may be interesting to folks here is other sites where original songs can be posted.

JUST PLAIN FOLKS

SONG RAMP

REDDIT

PURE VOLUME

Same for me. I entered a Kentucky Fried Chicken sponsored national songwriting contest many years ago. My homemade demo finished 2nd to a Nashville produced demo performed by one of the cast of the Carolina Opry of Myrtle Beach. I thought that was a bit unfair because the contest was pitched as an amateur songwriter contest. The lady who won and her demo was anything but amateur. The winner of the local contest went on to a regional and if winning there to the national finals.

Finishing 2nd locally got me two things, my name in the list of locals who finished 1,2,3 in the local newspaper and a soapbox to tell my tale here on the forum.

Nothing else, no KFC chicken gift certificate or free KFC lunch, nada...
I was left heartbroken and hungry.

Dang Charlie, that's dismal. But there's a new song there if you can ignore the chicken-hunger long enough to write it.


PS, I think you should have at least gotten the 2 piece meal

Thanks for the info.
-Carolyne

I avoid contests like the plague.

Many are scams designed to make someone a bunch of money.

I looked through the list Pat Marr posted and one name immediately jumped out..... Paramount. This company is a song shark publisher which preys on inexperienced writers who don't know how the system really works. Don't believe me? Send them your worst song and set back and see what kind of response they send.

What better way to get new birds to pluck than to host a "song contest"?

Now there are a few that are legit and above board.... but you really, really, have to have a long hard look at the folks behind the scenes to see if they are scammers hoping for thousands of folks to pay $35 per song entry fees and will then sell the list of suckers to other scammers (sharks) who will then tell you that your song is really good and has tons of potential to be a hit... if only it was recorded better.... etc, etc, etc..... send money and we'll fix that problem....send more money so we can market this to radio stations..... send money........

Can you tell I don't like song contests?


Having said all that.... I have in fact taken first place in several song contests..... BUT.... there was no entry fee on these that I did enter. They were sponsored by local radio stations as the preliminary levels in a commercially sponsored Songwriting Contest... I won a radio in one of them. My songs at that time, didn't make it at the state level.

So true Herb. Even with the radio you won, you won't be able to hear my next (not) country hit "Heartbroken and Hungry" 'cause it won't fit the mold of radio ready 'country'....

Too bad all us dreamers have such uh -- let's just say stuff to wade through to turn a dream into reality.


Charlie

Charlie,

if I send you a gift certificate for a 3 piece meal (extra crispy... with mashed potatoes and cole slaw...) will you send me an MP3 of your new song HEARTBROKEN AND HUNGRY?

we may be onto something here... a new way to jump-start the song-writing paradigm..and keep starving artists from starving, all at the same time!

Can you say "NOBEL PIECE PRIZE?" (PIECE o' chicken, that is...)

Re; Herb's post

good point Herb! Its always a good idea to qualify the value (or lack thereof) of ideas before pursuing them.

My intent wasn't to make recommendations as much as to brainstorm possibilities. The brainstorming process works in phases, the first phase being the generation of as many ideas as possible, making no effort to qualify any of them.

After you get a bunch of ideas on the table, its easier to sift through and discard the obviously bad ones, and weigh the merits of whatever remains.

I never won several song contests, but I have had KFC. Love it.

You would have thought that a free meal would have been included..... but Nooooooooooooo.

One would do better spending effort and time with TAXI if the goal is to make money with songwriting. A friend of mine who is an incredibly talented songwriter is one of the folks that have been featured by TAXI and TAXI actually works for him, getting him song placements on a few TV shows and commercials.

Here's a video blog with Steve being interviewed by TAXI staff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jtWGxE6qeM

Here's his TAXI profile page: http://www.taximusic.com/hosting/home.php?artist=sguiles

Take a listen to the various styles that Steven writes in. Just for contrast, try listening to 'Genetics' vs. 'Vicious Kisses' vs. 'Pull Down The Sun'. His day job is a Jr. High School Teacher.


Now, with Steven, you might not hear instrumental wizardry, but what you will get are some earworms for catchiness. His website lists out placements (The Mindy Show, A Galaxy Note commercial, an ABC show hosted by Christianne Amanpour, etc.)

I know Steven two ways: First, I did an online album review of his old band Pushstart Wagon (not so glowing), then I met him again in the February Album Writing Month challenge, where he is one of the real cheerleaders of that challenge and most popular 'FAWMers' because of his enthusiasm and general good-cheer. Steven and I collaborated on a silly kids song about Cheese Pizza, just for the fun of it and I learned something from him; catchy trumps sophistication almost always. Being prolific, writing countless songs, is part of success. Steve writes a lot of o.k. songs - admittedly by him. His output in a year probably is bigger than my lifetime total. With lots of o.k. songs, he also writes some you just can't get out of your head. He's written and recorded 30 original songs this month alone. Granted 10 of the 30 are 10 second songs (this is not as easy as it sounds - some of them are great for jingle type applications) but Steven has very little 'self-filter' when it comes to cranking out songs. A couple of the 30 for this month alone are GREAT frameworks for pop songs. Here's his stuff for this FAWM so far: http://fawm.org/fawmers/stevenwesleyguiles/

The interesting thing about FAWM is that it does help you to turn off the self-filter and try things that you wouldn't have tried as a songwriter, simply because of the challenge to write 14 songs in February. It helps to turn off the inner critic (I guess that's the more proper term I couldn't think of earlier).

Contests, no thanks. Songwriting challenges, absolutely.

I am with Herb completely on this.

I think that $30 on an contest entry is a complete rip off and at the end of it you (usually) have nothing. I refuse to pay for entry to a song writing contest. I prefer to spend $30 on getting my songs out to the man in the street rather than only a panel of judges who will probably turn up their collective noses.

$30 can go a long way when spent on marketing your music rather than on a silly song contest.

That said, I will enter free contests IF I don't have to upload my songs (or videos) to a different site.