Week 4, and final, artist submissions to Michael Mood's seed song are in! Click link below to see Week 4 and vote. Note that voting will go until midnight on Sunday and that the leader board will go dark at 8 pm for the last 4 hours of voting.
Seed artists need to upload entries by Sunday April 4th at midnight! Complete the Song! Contest - DATE EXTENDED TO MARCH 21 at 6 pm! Seed Artist will now recieve $500.
Music Makes a Difference (MMAD) is hosting a Songwriting Contest starting April 8, 2021. As part of the contest, MMAD will hire “Seed Artists” to record an original, partial song (melody, first verse, chorus) on video. The partial song videos can be of any musical genre (e.g., Americana, Folk, Hip Hop, Rock-n-Roll, etc.) MMAD will provide the partial songs to the contestants and require one song to be “completed” by the contestants each of the four weeks of the contest.
Complete the Song! Contest Rules and Guidelines
Completing the Song Examples The concept of this songwriter contest was inspired by a TikTok video wherein a musician posted a video with a melody and first verse and asked for collaborators to video themselves singing to the melody with second and third verses that they wrote to mesh with the first verse. Here are two links to collaborators who accepted the songwriting challenge:
MMAD’s goal is to create a singer/songwriter competition around this collaboration concept.
Contest Basics
The contest will run for four (4) weeks. Contestants will be told which partial song needs to be completed for each week of the competition. Contestants will record a video to be paired with the Seed Artist’s video with verses to complete the song (up to three minutes in total song length). Contestants can be solo artists or band members. The Seed Artist’s only involvement is to provide the partial song video.
The completed song videos will then be aired, on a weekly basis, for fans to vote for their favorite. Fans vote by making donations where $1 equals 1 vote for that song. Fans can donate/vote as much and as often as they want. All weekly donations will be shared amongst the artists
Prize Money! The above process will be repeated weekly for the length of the competition with weekly winners being announced. At the end of the competition, the Top Songwriter Award will be awarded based on the total number of points accumulated over all four weeks. The top four songwriters will receive the following prizes:
- 1st Place – $2,500
- 2nd Place – $1,500
- 3rd Place – $1,000
- 4th Place – $500
Best Song Award In addition to the above awards, a Best New Song will be determined by allowing fans to vote from a pool of songs consisting of the top two songs from each week’s competition. The artist with the most votes will be awarded the Best New Song and receive a $500 cash prize.
Want to be a Seed Artist? MMAD is looking to hire seed artists to provide partial song videos for the four weeks of our competition. Seed Artists can submit multiple partial songs covering any genre. Potential Seed Artists have until March 26, 2021 to submit their partial song video(s). MMAD will select a total of four (4) partial song videos to be used during the contest and will pay Seed Artists $500 for the use of each video selected for use in our Songwriter Competition.
From a copywrite standpoint, Seed artists will receive 50% of the songwriting credits for any of the completed songs that result from the songwriting competition. However, the prize money from MMAD’s Songwriting Contest as well as the donation/votes arising from the competition will not be shared with the Seed Artist.
To submit a partial song video or videos for consideration as a Seed Artist, please use the following link: Seed Artist Sign-Up no later than April 4, 2021 midnight.
Want to compete in the contest? The contest is open to musician(s) in the greater Dane County, Wisconsin area (by our definition, Dane County and any county that borders Dane County (Columbia, Dodge, Jefferson, Rock, Green, Iowa and Sauk). Any songwriter, duo or band may register to compete in the competition. Contestant Sign-Up.
Registration is due no later than March 21, 2021 at 6 pm.
Contestant Selection The musician(s) selected to compete will be based on fan nominations (from the list of artists who registered for the competition). Nomination voting is free for the contestant selection. A fan can vote for up to five artists to be in the contest but can only cast one vote per artist. The 10 artists/bands receiving the most votes will be in the Finish the Song Contest. Nomination votes can be cast at Complete the Song Contestant Nomination from March 22 – March 24, 2021.
For more information or answers to your questions, please contact: billzorr@musicmakesadifference.info
Important Dates:
March 12: Public announcement of Music Makes a Difference – Finish the Song! Contest
March 21: Deadline for contestants to register to participate in contest
March 22-24: Fan voting to select the ten songwriting contestants
March 25: Top 10 contestant songwriters announced
April 4: Deadline for Seed Artists to submit partial song videos
April 5: Contestants receive the four selected partial song videos and the schedule for submitting completed songs
April 12: Songwriters submit first completed song video
April 15: MMAD hosts Week 1 Songwriting Show
April 15-18: Fan voting for favorite Week 1 song video
Contest continues for three additional weeks with completed song videos due on Mondays and hosted shows on Thursdays.
May 9: Final day for fan voting for Week 4 song video
May 10-12: Fan favorite song voting (selected from each week’s top two voted songs)
May 13: Finish the Song Award Show and Favorite Song Award