the 4th BSG Singing Competition Is Now Open

whew baby it is time to belt it out!

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It is that time of year again! It is time for the next BSG Singing Competition, and we have decided to make this one bigger and better. Not only is there a duet category now, there are also 5 prizes in the good and bad category this time. Read on for all the details, and prepare yourself for some of the best and worst singing ever.

Quick details

• Two main categories: $100 max grand prize for the good category and $100 max for bad category.
• For each main category there are Second Place prizes of $75, third place prizes of $35, 4th place prizes of $25, and 5th place prizes of $15; with two additional $15 prizes, and an additional $10 prize.
• An additional bonus duet category for this competition with a $20 prize. (this is the test run for this category)
• All solo category entries are submitted through this google form.
• All duet category entries are submitted through this google form.
• Who can enter: anyone (not just blind singers)
• Genre: any genre at all.
• Judged by: Smoke & Hannibal on July 15th, 2023 on stream.
• accepting song submissions starting with the release of this blog post on June 7th, 2023.
• Entries open until: Wednesday July 12 2023 at 11:59pm eastern.
• Type of music: New cover songs only.
• Everything else covered in the rules later on in this blog post.

How We Judge The Competition

We always try to keep things unique and interesting here at BSG, and this singing competition is a reflection of this philosophy. It goes without saying that people enjoy good singing, we all listen to it every day on Spotify, YouTube, or on the Radio if you are a boomer. On the flip side most people love bad singing…even if they don’t realize it at first, they eventually come to understand the joy it can bring. This is The interesting thing about the BSG singing competitions, how we can enjoy both the very best and the very worst singers equally.
This competition is not only for those who sing like a literal angel. It is also for those who sound like warmed up poop. If you are an angel or a poop you can win $100, $75, $35, $25, or $15 because this competition is made for both of you. The best of the best and the best of the worst are welcome because we appreciate them the same, and we are here to give them money for it.
This competition is not about who can belt out the loudest, or sing the strongest. The world is full of loud generic singers, and no one wants any more of them. Music is all about the feelings it forces you to confront, and this truth is what we are looking for each and every competition. That being said…we also want to pee our pants laughing when someone in the bad category takes horrible singing to a whole new level. We want a lot of both, and we cannot wait to hear everyone’s beautiful and horrible covers.
We don’t take ourselves too serious, and because of this we won’t ever be holding up virtual numbers to score people on a numeric system. No matter the system, judging always comes down to the same thing. It is a matter of who is the best or worst, and at the end of the day this is what we are looking for; assigning numbers to a person’s performance doesn’t change this simple fact. This isn’t the Voice, this is BSG and we enjoy having some fun, some drinks, and appreciating music together.
So warm up them cords and hit us in our feels. We aren’t here to judge you on your technical perfections, but on if you can sing and impress us. Everyone knows what a good singer sounds like and what a bad singer sounds like. There is no need to cloud it in mysticism, lets keep it simple. This was the judging criteria for the first three competitions, and it worked to perfection.
The other thing we won’t be changing about our judging system is hearing everything for the very first time on stream. This is important to keeping the judging true and fair, that and it is so much more fun when we are live. Everything we say is our first time reaction the same as everyone else listening to the stream. We have two dedicated listeners who will be checking to make sure everything plays properly, and neither myself or Hannibal hear a single second of any song until we are live.
We are so very excited to kick off this fourth BSG Singing Competition. Lets all have a shit load of fun and make this one another one to remember! Maybe not 63 people like last time, but if it does happen again, we are ready this time, so bring it on!
Note: clarification that bad does not mean bad recording quality, intentionally singing bad, or doing a weird cover. It is for people who cannot sing but who are singing with confidence they should not have. it is for those of us who are simply bad at singing, but who are singing as if we are actually great and people know we are great…but are not at all.

The Two Categories, the bonus category, & How The Prizes Scale

As mentioned above there is a good and bad category,and for each category the first place prize is $100. In both the good and bad category there needs to be a minimum of 5 entries for the category to happen. That’s 5 in good and also 5 in bad.
In the bonus Duet category there needs to be a minimum of 3 entries. The prize will not scale in the duet category this time. It is a flat prize, but this is just the first test run.
For every person who enters in the good and bad category the pot for that category goes up by $10,and it caps out at $100 for first place. So if there are 5 entries in the good category, first place gets $50, if there are ten or more entries first place gets $100. We had well over 10 for the first second and third competition, so this shouldn’t be a hard goal to reach.
In addition to the scaling of the first place prize, there will be second, third, fourth, and fifth place cash prizes given out as well, but only if we get enough entries for it to make sense. If there are 7 entries in a category there will be a first and second place, if there are 10 or more then we’ll add third place. If there are 12 entries we’ll add a fourth place, and if there are 15 entries we’ll add a 5th place prize.
Unlike previous competitions now the second place prize is going to scale as well. When it is unlocked at 7 entries it will only be worth $45, but it will go up by $10 for each additional person who enters in the category up to $75.
This means the more people you can get to enter the better, since for each person the prize pool goes up. Honestly get everyone to join, the more the better. In the past even those who didn’t win were some of the favorites by myself and Hannibal and everyone listening, and because of that we had to add in a new category in the 3rd singing competition which will also be in this one.
In the third singing competition we introduced Smoke’s wildcard and Hannibal’s wildcard Prizes. This is a simple concept, and wide open for anyone to win. It can go to anyone who impresses us but didn’t win, hits on a lot of BSG memes but doesn’t win, or anything else we personally decide on.
There has been One thing people have been asking for, and we are giving it a test run for this competition. There will be a duet category separated from the normal good and bad categories. This duet category will not count against your other entries. For example you can enter in the good category and also duet with someone, or you could enter in the bad category and also duet with someone. You cannot enter in both the good and bad category however. The prize for the duet category is not large this time, and there is no good and bad duet, just duets as a whole. We are simply testing it out, and because of that the two winners will win a $20 prize to split however they wish. If it all goes well then we will expand on this category for the next competition.
Note: If you are submitting a duet you will need to mix it yourself. Quacker’s Mixing service will not work for the duet category. There are way too many variables and creative decisions to make with a duet, and that is for each person to make on their own.
in addition to the duet category we are also adding a most creative prize. It will go to that one person who is…well the most creative. The best example of this in the 3rd singing competition was Gruntok’s cover of Let It Go. It was very creative, but not quite enough to place in the top for the category. Now there will be yet another catch all prize for rewarding those who go the extra mile, and that will be the most creative prize.
The max prize pool total is insane this time around. Last competition it was $380, but this time we went bigger. Both the good and bad category can cap out at $250, which puts the total pool at $500, and that is not including the wild cards, the most creative prize, and the duet payout. All together we are at $560, and that is truly crazy. Thank you to everyone on patreon and those who cheer on streams to kill our livers, you guys make stuff like this possible.

Special Surprises & Pick Our Cover Song

From the start we decided it wouldn’t be fair if we asked people to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves, and because of that me and Hannibal are on our way to an album of horrible duets. We have not only duetted two Shakira covers, but we auctioned ourselves off and it resulted in the best cover of WAP ever seen on planet earth. We even have a band name…Whiskey Nipples & Pocket Cheese…and honestly that is one hell of a name. For our next cover we are once again allowing people to choose what we sing, and our choices are glorious. We each contributed five songs to the list, and people get to choose what song we have to cover. You can read all about how this works in this blog post about our cover song.
In addition to me and Hannibal singing our hearts out, once again we have convinced the great and powerful Sarah Joyce Ocampo to sing a song with us, let me tell you…it is going to be something great. Last time we covered We Don’t Talk About Bruno, and it was damn well amazingly horrible and beautiful. We may not be able to top that amazing performance, but we are going to work something up, and it will be magical.
This is more than just a singing competition, it is a twice yearly event where we all get together and appreciate all forms of music and musical talents. Me and Hannibal can’t sing, but we have fun making music and sharing it with everyone so they can laugh, because without laughter what is the point of anything. We’ll make you feel something, even if it is all the wrong things, so come and join us while we make you feel things.

Potential Stream Scheduling Note

With the third singing competition we had 63 entries, and we streamed for over seven hours. That was a whole lot of fun, but it was also an aggressive amount of microphone time without any meaningful breaks. For that reason if we get a lot of entries again we may be breaking up the stream into two parts. If that is the case there will be two streams which take place on July 15th and July 16th. The manner of the split will be determined when we are closer to the date, this programming note is just being added here so people are aware ahead of time.

The Rules & How To Enter

If you submit your song then you are giving me permission to make it downloadable from BSG, or streamable via a link you provide after the stream.
Submissions for the 4th singing competition open on June 7th at 11:30am eastern. Submissions close at 11:59pm eastern on July 12 2023. Your song must be submitted between these times.
Grand prize in both the good and the bad category: Between $50 and $100.
For both the good and bad category: The 2nd place prize scales from $45 to $75 depending on total entries. It starts at $45 and goes up by $10 with a max of $75.
For both the good and bad category: with 7 submissions the second place prize of $45 is unlocked. With ten or more submissions a third place prize of $35 is unlocked. With twelve or more submissions a fourth place prize of $25 is unlocked. With fifteen or more submissions a fifth place prize of $15 is unlocked.
We will need both a minimum of five good submissions and 5 bad submissions for the stream to be scheduled, if we don’t get 5 and 5 there will be no stream or competition. Last stream we had 63, that was scary and great at the same time.
The person submitting classifies their song as a good cover, or a bad cover. This way we know how to listen to and judge the song.
Submissions are open as of the publishing of this blog post. We will stop accepting Submissions at 11:59pm eastern on July 12, 2023.
The two winners from the previous competition cannot enter, Sorry Lirin and Doratskie. Winners from other competitions are welcome and encouraged to enter again however.
Anyone can enter, blind, sighted, and anyone in between.
Only cover songs: This is so we can relate to the song, and so we have a base to go off of. No originals.
The song has to be a recording just for this competition, not a previously released cover song.
Don’t put aggressive effects on your voice. Less is always better. We want singing, not covering up the singing. subtle effects are fine, but just don’t get carried away please.
No use of autotunes, Melodyne, or similar software to pitch correct your voice is allowed in any way at all. Using such tools may result in you getting disqualified.
If you cover a song actually cover the song with words, do not just make mouth noises or you will be disqualified and we will skip your song on stream.
Try to perform close enough to your microphone so we can hear you, this is especially true if you are playing music or an instrument on the recording. We need to hear your voice to judge your song.
A hard limit of 6 minutes maximum length on each song: This is so we don’t have a 15 minute song to take up all the length of the stream.
This is about enjoying people’s covers and having fun, so we won’t be making fun of the submissions flagged as good.
Amine or Sarah will listen to the song to make sure it is playable, so we can truly listen to each song for the first time on stream.
You “may” get bonus points for the goddess Shakira, we love Shakira. Don’t judge us. Really this just means we want at least one someone to sing Shakira each competition. Will it be you? (disclaimer: there are actually no points)
If you require your song to be mixed, we have someone to do this. Quacker will be mixing again, but your deadline will be 1 week earlier. So for mixing you must submit by July 5, 2023 at 11:59pm eastern time.
If you need mixing then submit your song through the solo cover google form before the deadline of July 5 2023 and I will then pass it along to Quacker (@hibarra_music) who has agreed to mix for people again, then he’ll pass the finished track along to me.
After submissions are closed I’ll randomize the order of songs using random.org, and publish the order in a blog post the week of the live stream.
Submissions are done completely through a Google Form this time. Submit your solo cover on this google form.
If you have a duet to submit You can submit it here on this duet form.
Even though we are using google forms please try to name the file like this: Category-YourPublicName-OriginalSongTitle-OriginalArtist.mp3. for example bad-CaptainHannibal-HipsDontLie-Shakira.mp3, or Good-SarahJoyceOcampo-Empire-Shakira.mp3, or Bad-FleshyImpactDrills-Thriller-MichaelJackson.mp3.
The person singing the song has to be the one submitting it, you can’t have a third party submit your song for you.
You can only Submit your song by one of the above forms

In conclusion

The goal is to make this not only about the competition, but also about the fun of sharing our music with one another. It isn’t very often when people can all enjoy good and bad singing equally together, but we do it for these competitions. It isn’t even always about winning, sometimes it is just fun to enter and have a good time with like minded folks.
All that matters is you record yourself singing into a microphone and submit it to the competition. Lets make this yet another BSG Singing competition to remember. Last time I called for 50 entries and we got 63, so sorry if I’m not going to call for even more this time, but we do want you all to enter. I’d be happy with 50, I’d be happy with 63 again, I’d be happy with more, so lets go and make this a banger!