Composerbell
Member
Yeah, def never do a competition that wants the copyright, no competition should ever ask for that. Major red flag if you see that! Right to use it to promote the competition (and possible future iterations of said competition) is normal and should be expected, and absolutely nothing beyond that.Yeah was going to say the same actually, haven't read that 'fine print' meself either. For anyone looking to enter the competition though I can't stress enough that you should do this, just to be 100% sure of what you're getting into.
Sadly that was actually a part of one of those contests I entered (the scam one), they gave you like some very basic stems as a starting point for you to write 'around', which I imagine made it easier legally to claim total copyright of the material (which they did once you sent it in), iirc you could make royalties off of it but they retained creative control of the song.
As for the scouting aspect of it, that's a valid point. If you're confident and assertive enough, any door opened is a potential avenue to success. For one thing though, it has to be said you 'probably' won't win - that alone is enough to differentiate it from say, a staff meeting where you present your demos in person to a team. In my experience though it tends to result more than ever these days of studios/producers making low-ball offers to young and/or inexperienced writers who don't yet appreciate the value of their own work. That being said, one does have to start somewhere so I'll grant you this is rather nebulous territory - just don't give your (good) material away for free!
Good luck bro!
I think I’ve seen some remix competitions before, like from MetaPop a few years back. It looked kinda interesting to play around with someone else’s stems in a style I hadn’t messed with before - but yeah, if youreybuilding off of someone’s stems, by definition, you didn’t write 100% of what you’re submitting, automatically.
You probably won’t win ANY given competition. As soon as there’s 3 participants, your odds are already under 50%! Same goes for any pitch, even at an agency you're generally going to be going up against a half dozen other composers (sometimes from within the same agency - after all, the agent gets a cut no matter which of you wins...) but also filmmakers can contact multiple agencies to boot. The only way to sidestep competition is to...be friends with the decider haha.