Peggy,
I don't nessasarily say "go for it." If it were me now, knowing what I know, I would avoid it like the plague. I was just relating my experiences, to let you know, I have personal experiences in pretty much all these situations. To me, ANY contest are basically for amateurs, and I never really considered myself an amateur. I devoted my life to learning and practicing the craft and have always derived a pretty substantial portion of my livelyhod from that craft. I would say that any contest is fleeting in it's scope and fairly limited in it's benefits.
On me being "Ripped off" , I don't really consider that either. I learned a LOT. Basically to never do contests again. But it is part of what you go through. Almost every hit writer I know has had some dealing with one or another. I know of a dozen hit artists right now that never even made it past the first judging of American Idol. Frankie Ballard was turned down within about 20 seconds. And he is a number one recording artist.
If you go into anything with your eyes open, you can use it to your advantage. If it forced you to try and write a competitive song, get it well recorded, forced you to be on top of your game, get out there, be around other writers, what have you lost? Even if you don't win anything, it forced you to get outside of yourself.
And there are other benefits to contests. the NSAI contest has about 5000 entrants each year. At $35 each that runs into quite a bit of money. That pays for people such as myself and many others to go to Washington DC, to lobby Congress on behalf of songwriter's rights and creative content laws. So everyone benefits from that.
The contest I met Tina on (I was a prize) benefitted the local battered woman's shelter. Raised around $40,000 for the shelter.
I have seen them benefit Cancer, Lukemia, other diseases and research. So like everything I can't whole handedly condem them. They do have benefits.
But is it going to make anyone a hit writer or artist? None of them have yet. As I said, when it comes to contests, they are just not picked that way. Although in some contests I have seen, they have some known artists record the song. After hearing a lot of the entrants, it is probably the last song the artist ever records.
The people who participate in them are usually not very good. I judged a half dozen of them over the years. You get fifty or a hundred packages at a time,and have to start listening. The first ten or so, you listen to most of the song. Then you get to where you listen to a verse and a chorus. Then you get smart, read the lyrics, and the first couple of lines. Most make you turn off at the intro. And sometimes you will see the same names over and over. There are some people that do nothing but enter contests. Their songs are always universally horrible, eight and nine minute plodding pieces of non sense. If you get the latest issue of AMERICAN SONGWRITER, you will see their 1st through 5th place winners in their contest. And the winner always takes two pages to get the lyrics on. How many six verse, three different choruses, two bridges, a spoken word part, all done in about an 8 minute time frame songs on the radio? At least AMERICAN PIE, had one chrous you could sing along with.
So when you are listening to HUNDREDS of these things, and you find something that times in UNDER five minutes, you get pretty excited. I have NEVER, NOT ONCE, in 37 years of being involved in all of this, can REMEMBER one that I have heard past when I heard it. That really backed up on me one time.
I was in Orange County California for a three week period one time. I wrote with about 35 people in that time and one was this guy who was just playing me his songs. He was trying to figure out which one to submit to this contest. They all pretty much sucked, but one was not vomitatious. I explained that none of them were that great but that was his best one. I figured I would never hear from him.
About six months later, I am involved in this same contest (didn't remember him), and it was not a song I got as a judge. Some other got that honor. Well, he was one of ten people that were flown to Nashville to attend a recording session and have their song played at the Bluebird. The guy who did it that year was Gary Talley, and Gary, who was the guitar player and founder of the BOX TOPS, had a tough time with it. He stumbled around on it and really kind of wanked it. The song was not that good, but it was one of the top ten. I felt sorry for Gary and the guy. Oh well.
A year later I WAS ONE OF THE PRIZES and I was the one voted to play a song at the Bluebird. I got the song in advance to learn it and was shocked to hear how poorly written it was. I had trouble learning it because it kind of drifted all over the place, no difinable chorus, and nothing really memorable about the verses. When it came time for the show, THAT SAME GUY HAD WRITTEN THE SONG! Now it was MY TURN to wank it at the Bluebird. I had practiced that thing over and over and thought I had it but I SUCKED at the Bird. The only "saving grace" was that they let me play one of mine as well so I kind of redeemed myself. but I felt sorry that the same guy had been embarrised two years in a row. But in reality he should have saved his money entering contests, and took some songwriting lessons.
So that is about it. Contests are something we all do in one way or another. The Music business itself is a contest. Or more of a casino slot machine. You put your money in and hope you get lucky. If I had just a little bit of what people spent on contests, and have them spend it with me, they would actually get something out of this, because they would actually be writing with artists, have their songs properly written, recorded, and performed.
That is the best contest winning you can get.
MAB