Feature article: Competitions for bands and singers 2010

Are competitions any good? People have very varied opinions about whether music competitions are of any use to the bands and singers taking part in them.

It seemed at one time that Leicester was awash with competitions. Some very local and others national. Some very well organised and others not so.

Each year there is the Original bands Showcase (OBS) in which local bands can compete for the number one slot. The winning band gets to play at the Summer Sundae festival. Winners are judged by a panel of experts.

Several Leicester bands take part in the national Surface Unsigned competition. By entering the Midlands Region events, they get to play at venues in Birmingham. Winning bands from the Regional Finals get to play at the O2 Academy in London.

Smaller promoters are seen to run continuous Winner Takes All events in which the winning band of the night is supposed to take the available share of the ticket sales. Presumably the other bands leave with nothing. It's not a music competition, it's a battle of the fan bases. Voting slips are handed out to members of the audience who can vote for first and second choices of the bands that they have heard.

Some bands members told us: " I think they're good. It endorses a sense of competition thus making bands want to top each other, which forces bands to play to the top of their capability" and "i think that they are a good idea if they are judged by a panel rather than votes. it would be better for bands to hear some advice."

Too often competitions are based only on popularity. It's just about how many people a band can muster to buy tickets for the gig. There's is no element of assessment by experts involved. It's simply a way of making sure that the venue (and the promoter's pocket) is filled that night. Any "crap band" can win if they have enough friends and family to come to the gig, we were told.

Another band took a more skeptical view: "Are competitions in music right at all? it's all subjective, so perhaps bands shouldn't be judged against each other like that. Dunno, what do you think? But yeah, do you mean the types of competitions, dependent on how many people they bring rather than how well they play? That's bullshit really. It can also be de motivating for bands if they don't succeed in these competitions i guess", they commented.

As one musician put it: " Yea, it should be about the performance on the night. Because my band - This Fallen Empire - have played in these competitions and sometimes felt like we've played a good gig but not won because another band brought more people."

Weighed against these views is my observation that I have seen many bands that are musically good, sometimes excellent, but have played to an almost empty room because they have not, for whatever reason, brought a following in to see them.

It is a mark of a band's success that they not only play good music but also have a group of people who want to turn up to see them. I have also seen bands play at a competition that have won through on second votes. They have not brought the most people to the gig but have won votes from the fans of other bands. These voters have not seen them before but have liked them so much that they have given them their second vote and the band has won through on that basis. Hopefully, some of those people would turn up to see that band again.

A band manager told us: "Surely they should be judged on their talent, not tickets. However, a little challenge can provoke a good atmosphere. But then again what do I know lol. Maybe it should be handed over to the bands to decide, after all if they don't agree, they wont play!

If bands enter for a competition they should be given a written statement of the basis on which the winner(s) is (are) to be decided. They can then decide whether they wish to take part. Clearly, some bands book in to play just to get a gig and are not bothered whether they win. Some of these events are actually well attended because the bands have marshalled their supporters and the other bands get to play to a well filled room (even if they have not contributed much to the attendance.)

Where it can go pear-shaped is when a band must commit to several gigs in a row in order to get into the finals. First found heats, sometimes second round play-offs and then semi-finals before they get to the finals. This can be very costly to both the bands and to their fans.

A parent of a band member offered this point of view: "Could I offer a fan's point of view, (and as a band member's parent). I had not been to local band gigs for many years until my son started playing with his band and I have been staggered by the the talent on show at these events in Leicester. The most important thing for me is that everyone finds a way to ensure we harvest this talent, help the band. Help more band members to see where they can improve and do not de-motivate them because - who knows what some of these young people can achieve. Nobody can complain if a panel of suitably qualified judges or just a variation of interested, unbiased people can offer a view on a band's performance and cast votes. This would also not be open to any issues about how many people vote or errors in counting votes and also very importantly would avoid the 'last band on misses out because people have voted and caught the last bus home' scenario.

A band member liked this comment: "Organisers of these competitions or promotions and so on, should be guiding these young bands and telling them exactly what is what! It surely should be what their job is about. You're right, they do hold that responsibility. I hope the bands do know that. I hope they are just willing to play and there aren't a lot of disappointed acts!"

"It would be good to see a panel of experienced, respectable figures to judge bands on the positives and offer hints for improvement as opposed to a dismissive panel offering only critique without any helpful pointers!", he explained.

Judging seems to be favoured but the judges do not always get it right. At one competition, in which I was involved, the judges were biased towards indie bands. That was not intended to be the case, it just so happened that they were the only people available to attend on that night. Needless to say, the competition was won was a band that played indie music and another band (one which played a different style of music but which brought down far more supporters) were displeased at the result and blamed bias on the part of the judges.

The concept of a Battle of the Bands started out as a piece of harmless fun. It was an idea that probably started in the United States where competitions were held between local bands but took off in England during the mid 90s.

Traditionally, band contests were always judged by panels of experts. The concept became degraded when venues and promoters started to mount such events simply to boost their door takings and could not provide anyone to act as judges.

There is probably no winning formula for such contests. They can be great fun to take part in, they can fill venues and they can open bands up to new people that have not seen them before.

Judging is an option that I would favour (against mere ticket selling), having been a competition judge myself on several occasions. The drawback to this is when judges make their decisions in secret and are obliged to keep quiet about why they made the decisions they did and leave the bands with no useable feedback about their performance.

Personally, I rather liked the X-factor and Orange Act Unsigned approach in which the judges told the acts and bands directly, after their performance, just what they thought of their act. It's immediate and it's face to face. At least the artists went away with something to think about in the future.

The comments in this article were made in a discussion that took place on Facebook early in 2010. We have not assigned names to the comments because at the time we were conducting a debate and not asking people for publishable comment.

Find out more about Battles of the Bands.

Other pages you might like

See our feature article on Leicester at Surface Unsigned

Read our feature article on The Original Bands Showcase

Our article on WOO, the showcase for young bands