Band competitions

[SteveXFR]

What's the general opinion of battle of the bands type competitions? 

Ive not entered any been to a few for my daughters band and mates and it seems that a big part of winning is not about who is best but who turns up with the most mates to vote for them. 90% of the people in the room know who they're voting for before a single note has been played. Every one of these competitions Ive been to has awful sound.

On the positive side, it puts bands in front of promoters and can result in bookings for decent bands who can perform. Its also good for filling a venue and giving them a few nights of good business. Most of these competitions do have judges as well as audience voting so maybe that evens things out a bit. 

I don't think music should be competitive. 

[Owen]

They are all sorts of reasons to not have them.

 

But they serve a purpose in that it means that people get up on stage and actually do it. The sound will be pants because in general it is inexperienced musicians strutting their stuff with their bedroom curated TOOOOOONE. And often, by now, this is the only way for young bands to hit stages. 

 

So on balance, I think they are a good thing. 

[BigRedX]

Over the years, I've done 3 gig ones and one on-line one. IME if there are "judges" they are mostly window dressing, and the winner will always be the band that turns up with the biggest number of vocal fans. So as long as your daughter's band are reasonably competent what they really need to do to win is muster their every single one of their friends and family to come along and make a lot of noise ideally whilst wearing T-shirts for their band.

 

Having said that only one of the four I did was absolutely pointless, and that was the one I did with the band that went on to be the most successful of all the bands I've played in, although back when we entered it was still early days, and we hadn't quite found our performance style or image. It was also the only one where the sound was uniformly pretty awful throughout the evening. The other two gig-based competitions were at decent venues with excellent PA systems.

 

For the other three, one got me a gig on the main stage at Rock City, and the other two resulted in my band being on fairly high-profile compilation albums.

 

The on-line competition was interesting, because it was to a much larger extent based on non-partisan voting, and as a contestant you also had to rate the other bands in order to boost the chances of your band being heard and therefore attracting votes. When the competition finished my band came 8th overall (out of over 1000 entries from all over the world) and came top in the Dance Music sub-category. As a result we were included on the best-of compilation CD which picked us up a lot of new fans and had several management companies interested in the band. 

 

[SteveXFR]

15 minutes ago, Owen said:

They are all sorts of reasons to not have them.

 

But they serve a purpose in that it means that people get up on stage and actually do it. The sound will be pants because in general it is inexperienced musicians strutting their stuff with their bedroom curated TOOOOOONE. And often, by now, this is the only way for young bands to hit stages. 

 

So on balance, I think they are a good thing. 

 

The ones I've been to had bands who I know normally sound good and none of the competing bands were inexperienced. They were all pretty good acts 

[Lozz196]

The only ones I’ve done were in Knock Off, at the Butlins Punk Weekenders. 4 bands play on the introducing stage each day (3 days), the audience vote for their fave of the day. Fridays winners then play the main stage next year on Friday etc. But to get through to that point required (requires?) applications as only 12 for a whole weekend. And although they’re introducing stages they are still big, with good backline and good audiences as the main stages only open at night. 

@SteveXFR, might be worth checking the Minehead one out?

[MacDaddy]

Battle of the fans?

 

Many years ago, my then band won a BotB, and because of this the following year we were invited to play a festival at the home town's twin town in Europe, all expenses paid. 

 

Plus lots of publicity in the local rags for winning. So all good 😊 

[Owen]

2 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

 

The ones I've been to had bands who I know normally sound good 

You have obviously been to better quality ones than I have!