Ok folks, it's a little slow out there with good rock releases, so I'm taking a crack at a editorial piece. This week, you've heard Dave rant a little on bogus online votes for band competitions and he asked people to sound off on this, so here goes.*
If you have EVER 'stuffed a ballot box' online to try and get votes for whatever online competition that your group is in, you should call it quits. If that's the only avenue of progress you have left to expose yourself, you should put down your mic, guitar, drumsticks, whatever. In the eleven years that I have been in bands, I've seen it a couple of times, starting when I was in a high school battle of the bands, not that I'm griping about losing the thing; in retrospect, I was in a band that kinda sucked and we played mostly covers. But I can also say, in my eleven years of playing, in any competition I was in, I've never given or endorsed people to create bogus votes.
The true spirit behind any battle of the bands or band competition is to expose yourself to people who wouldn't already be at your shows. The absolute worst case scenario for being in a battle of the bands is that you let other bands hear your music, who maybe will end up liking it and asking you to swap some shows with them. Maybe there's a few extra people in the crowd who haven't seen you before and now want your a copy of your demo, maybe the booking manager is there and wants you to come back. If the contest is online, there's always going to be a few impartial web surfers that will give your tune an honest listen and then he forwards it to a couple of friends that might like it. That's what these competitions are all about.
Everyone is so fixated on a get rich quick, straight to top, game plan and it never works. If you're in a band or even seen one of these competitions, ask yourself "What happened to the winners of that thing?" Are they signed yet? Are they selling CD's better now? The only way to go with a battle of the bands, like Dave said, is to have a complete impartial panel of judges looking at all aspects of your band, not just everyone from the drummer's work showing up or the singer's girlfriend brought all her friends out. But at the very least, you're showcasing your music to new and potential fans.
I've never in my life won a battle of the bands and I don't care. Some of these competitions are worth getting hyped and some aren't. A couple of years ago, Rock 103 did their first "Great Unsigned" competition for a spot at Memphis in May. We lost in the first round, but our music was listened to by thousands of people and we gained a few more fans on Myspace.com for it. Now, let's say hypothetically we used computer software to vote over and over for us and won. What's to happen next? We either would have lost in the second round to some clearly good acts or won and gone on to pay for next to nobody at the Memphis in May music festival because no one actually voted for us. It was all for the best, and it was fun, which was what it was supposed to be.
So, if you ever used software or an other means of cheating online competition and you win, don't brag about it at all. If the big prize is recording time, no one's gonna buy the demo because no one actually listened to your music. If the prize is a gift certificate or new equipment, get a job and actually pay for it. This is the music industry, there is always someone better and willing to work harder to get to where you want to be, so don't cheat them out of that chance just because you're wanting to fast lane out of here.
* 8/13 episode of "The Vexar Entertainment Hour" Podcast
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