Composition Music Contest for Composers

Midi & MP3 Composition Music Contest for Composers

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==> Participating in the Composition Music Contests you agree with all rules below.

Basic Rules

On this site you can post your music using midi, mp3 or Sibelius scores as media for free, get listening, and participate in regular contests to get reviews and feedback.
Respect to other participants is a must, no matter if you are first place or last place.
Help people to have joy and pleasure to participate and share their music in this site.

Copyrights

The copyrights belong to the author.
To ensure you are the author, we recommend that you do at least one of the following:

Post your work in as many public sites as you can, like this site. Of course, enter your real user name, picture and email address to identify yourself.
Mail your work to yourself (with attention to the date stamp) and do not open it after you receive it.
Register your work with the Library of Congress (USA) or some secure equivalent place.

MP3 full works submitted to any contest can be removed upon request, but such submission must be replaced by samples from the same submission with a minimum runtime of 30 seconds.
Midi files submitted to any contest cannot be removed after they participate in a contest.
Midi and/or MP3 files submitted to the Composer's Club (they do not participate on the contests) can be removed.
To protect the contest data integrity and the author copyrights, a users name and submission information cannot be removed from the database and the users cannot cancel their membership if they have submitted on a closed contest.

See also Terms Conditions.

To Post your Music

Submit your works to the Composers section and share your talent so many can listen to your music!

It is free
You can create your own Albums

To Participate in the Contests

To submit your composition to a contest, go to Submit. Your work will be submitted to the current contest and be listed in the montlhly pages after approval based on rules below.

Basically, we have two main contests and a composer's club:
1- A Midi+MP3 monthly contest.
2- A Public Contest.
3- Composer's Club to share your compositions (midi, mp3 or scores) and get feedback.

1- For the Midi+MP3 monthly Contest you can submit a MIDI and/or a MP3 file. In addition, you can attach to it a SIBelius score if you want.
1.1- One can submit only a midi, only a mp3, or both. But the midi file is always recommended so the reviewers can have a better insight of the work.
1.2- The official reviewers will listen to and review the submissions and rate them accordingly a set of specific criteria, choose the Top Quality ones and write down comments about.

2- The Public Contest are not regular contests created for specific purposes.
2.1 Anyone can listen to and review the submissions ranking them, choosing the Top Quality ones and writting down comments about.

The musical score is not obligatory, but recommended (in SIBelius format).

The Midi+MP3 Contest is a monthly contest. After submission deadline (end of each month), the results come out after 15-21 days.
The Public Contest is not regular.
The schedule, deadlines etc. you can find Contest, Status (see left menu) page.

Notice that for the contests to work we need reviewers. In other words: we need your participation.

Important Rules:

ANONYMITY: the submission (midi, mp3 or score file, description, keywords etc) cannot reveal the author before the results.
QUALITY: a minimum level of quality is required to avoid mockery, jokes, plagiarism, non sense etc.
LIMITS: max 20 mins for ALL submitted works, min 1:30 for each work ; max of 2 works on any category, max of 3 works on different categories.
SIZE LIMITS: 350K all midi works; 15M each mp3; 20M all mp3 files each contest.
ORIGINALITY: the composition must be original (see below rules for arrangements) and/or your own work.
NAMES: the composer must use always the same author-name for all his/her compositions.

Rules for acceptance in priority order (a lower rule can be broken if a higher rule demands to and exceptions will be judged by Sysop and official reviewers):
1- NUMBER OF SUBMISSIONS
2- ORIGINALITY
3- ANONIMITY
4- ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION
5- EMPHASIZE QUALITY
6- SIZE LIMITS
7- TIME LIMITS
8- RIGHT CATEGORIES

This is a MUSIC contest where midi, mp3 and Sibelius scores are used as media for three categories: A) classical, B) popular and C) cinematic.
You can participate on different contests or sections:
- Regular monthly Composition Contest (the major one)
- Not regular Public Contests
- Composer's Club to get feedback
- Theme-contest
MP3 files and Sib-score files can be linked (or attached) to midi files. You can either enter a link to your mp3 or you can upload it to our mp3 space.
When submitting, you can't reveal who you are before results, so take care and don't let your real name inside the midi file or in the submission form, because the submission can be disqualified. The authors name of all compositions will be revealed when the results are ready and posted. The copyrights belong to the authors. See the FAQs page to get more information about copyrights.
DON'T IDENTIFY YOURSELF IN THE SUBMISSION IN ANY CASE. Keep anonimity.
Nicknames, fake emails, mockery names etc. will not be accepted. To participate in this site, use YOUR REAL NAME, EMAIL and PICTURE for identification (member-name and author-name). This is important also to protect your copyright.
You can write a SHORT biography of yourself including a face main photo and four extra photos, so all people can know better who the participants are. While this rule is optional for participants and mandatory for reviewers, all people should follow it. Go to the User Admin page.
For the annual championship race, only the higher score will be counted.
Don't zip the midi file. If you want to send two midi files, submit twice.
Enter always the SAME name for the author. If you do different, you will be two or more contestants in the contests and in the championship.
Everyone can participate and submit his/her midi/mp3 works of any type, category or genre. Only original music will be accepted. Arrangements may be accepted IF the author writes clearly it is an arrangement of composition X in the description of his/her submission, it is not copyrighted material, it is considered public domain and the subcategory "arrangement" is selected in the submission form. Otherwise, it can be rejected or just get zero scores and no review.
To avoid personal issues and bias, the participant names are hidden. Only after the final results are ready the real author name will be revealed in the Results page of the current contest. Therefore, the submitter cannot identify himself inside the midi file or in the submission form in ANY case.
Reviewers cannot review their own works in the Composition Contest.
In the Public Contests there are not official reviewers and anyone can rank the submissions as also evaluate his/her own work, although any abuse detected by the Sysop will block the user to review in the Public Contest.
All participants and reviewers are free to write their opinions in the BBS. There will not be a "witch hunting" in this site. However, garbage, mockery, spam and non sense will not be tolerated.
Only top quality midi works will receive the Pixel Arts Top Quality Award (TQA)
Will get a TQA all entries with 50% of votes.
Will get a Super TQA all entries with at least 66% of votes.
This site is free. No ads and no limitations. But we need donations to pay the servers. See donations.
Also, we have CRedits and Participation Points! Take a look at the MP3 Space please :-)

For the Reviewers

If you want to be an official reviewer for the Composition Contest, just send an email to Composition Contest.

This is a MUSIC-COMPOSITION contest where midi, mp3 and Sibelius scores are used as media.
It is crucial to figure out the difference among a good composition played by a poor performer and a poor composition played by an excellent performer.
The category is important. The reviewer must review for the genre the work was submitted. If it is wrong, the submission must be penalized.
The reviews comments must be positive, to motivate people to compose and participate.
To listen the midi works the reviewers must remember they are using midi files and, therefore, what you hear probably will not be the same the author intent using different equipment. Such differences are the reason of many bad reviews. Because of such midi flaws, performance must not be considered. If there is a MP3, use it. When listening a midi work, ask youself what would be the higher potential listening experience this music can achieve if played by good human performers.
Listen to each submission more than once.
Compare scores and compositions to avoid common mistakes: to eulogize a submission and score it lower than others is not good.
We use six criteria for reviewing: Themes/Melodies, Orchestration, Harmonies, Development, Taste/Impression and Creativity/Originality.
The reviewers use the REVISOR program, which can be downloaded at the Reviewer Room.
An average composition (to the reviewer) should be scored close 7.0. See the scores table.
TQA = Top Quality Award. Will win the TQA all compositions which get at least 50% of all votes and the Super TQA all compositions with 66% of votes.
Attention: the TQA is a vote OR a score >= 9.0. TQA votes with scores < 8.80 will be rejected.
The reviewer scores will use the scale from 10.0 to 0.0. The scores use fractional numbers.
Each reviewer will be assigned to categories (A-classical,B-popular,C-cinematic) with priorities.
The reviewers will try to score as many midi works as possible in the recommended profiles, but are not obligated to write down comments about all works they score, but just what they want. Good reviews are more important than a lot of useless words.
If a reviewer submits a composition, he/she can comment his/her own music, but can't rate it.
Reviewers will use the REVISOR program and the deadline is up to 15 days after the submission period was terminated (last day of the month). See Reviewer Room.
You can read additional documentation about How To Review Midi Compositions?.

Participation Points (PPs), CRedits and MP3 Space

The same way as you cannot remove a midi file submitted to a MID+MP3 Contest in the past (after results), you cannot remove a mp3 file after the results are ready and the contest closes (*).

Today, there are three "mp3 spaces":
1- mp3 attached to a previously submitted midi file for the Midi+MP3 Contest
2- mp3 with automatic fake midi for the Midi+MP3 Contest (when you submit only a mp3 file)
3- mp3 for the old MP3-only Contest, deprecated

For the three cases, CRedits and PPs are "billed" monthly based on the mp3 space used, this way:
1- first bill credits, if user has them
2- when credits deplete, bill PPs (Participation Points).
Notice that the PPs can go negative. Thus, there is no real limitation on the mp3 space. The user just can have negative PPs.

To aquire credits:
1- donations
2- winning contests, medals etc

To aquire PPs:
1- participate in some way

(*) The only way to remove previously submitted mp3 submissions is providing a true sample (30 to 60 seconds) of the same submission to swap.