Caitlin & Sidney Powell, a/k/a Facing West
Hear ye, hear ye: The Colorado Music Business Organization announces their fourth annual Songwriting Contest! Winning songs will be submitted to *real music business companies*. Do you have a song you have written and ten ($10) dollars laying around not doing anything? Read on because this contest is for YOU!! [Per previous years, there will be NO CA$H prizes for the high-scoring songs – just the opportunity for your song to be heard!]
Contest staff will put the winning songs on a compilation CD and hand deliver to publishers, record companies, music supervisors, and others – that have agreed beforehand to accept them – along with a cover letter telling a little about COMBO, along with lyric sheets for each of the songs. Winners will also receive one copy of the compilation CD for their use.
No “musician” judges – just people who love music. The panel will be made up of a variety of people who still buy music. A committee of judges, none of whom write songs but are music lovers, will have the final decision. These people are music professionals in some area of the Music Industry but who do not write songs. This helps to eliminate possible plagiarism. Names of the judging panel are confidential and will not be shared so that the judges can not contact each other to get opinions.
The songs will be presented for judging “anonymously” – the judges will not know the name(s) of the songwriters or even the name of the song. Song submissions will be presented to the judges as a number (i.e. Song #113). Email confirmation of accepted entries will have our song registration number FYI. Please make sure that Meta Data is not included on your entry.
No “bad” words! Failure to follow this RULE will disqualify your song. If you wrote your song with a “must have” naughty word, please mute the word on the mp3 track and write “bleep” on the lyric sheet (we will only accept songs for the contest that are “Radio Friendly”).
Examples of judging criteria will consist of (but not be limited to) – Do the lyrics ‘hit you in the heart’? Does the melody bring out some emotion such as: passion, solitude, love, excitement, danger? Do the lyrics express a ‘new thought’ or have a really catchy phrase?
Please submit Songs with Lyric Sheets as attachments to songcontest@coloradomusic.org in MP3 format so that contest staff may forward to each judge to listen to from the privacy of their own homes.
The Top Scoring 18-20 songs will get a slot on the compilation CD to be given out as mentioned above. We will not have categories but we do reserve the right to only use two songs from any one writer or group of writers on the CD.
Once you have submitted your song(s) and lyric sheet(s), please mail your $10 payment for each song to COMBO, P.O. Box 18186, Denver, CO 80218. Currently paid COMBO members will be able to enter one song at no charge; paid band members may submit two songs at no charge. (We’re looking at you Adrienne O, Facing West, The Hollow, and more!)
Contest ends on August 14th at midnight! This will give us time to get the songs mastered and the CD made to pass out at the Durango Songwriters Expo which starts October 6th in Broomfield.