The Hypebot Hit Song Contest Winners Are…
Before I get to naming the winners of the first-ever Hypebot Hit Song Contest, I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to participate in the competition. Even those who clearly didn't read the rules or follow them. The rest of you though had some great entries and insightful takes on the song.
Bruce and I, in collaboration with the sponsors of the contest, have chosen the winners. Based on my personal experience with trying to narrow down the contest finalists, I have to say that it was a tough call. Being that I expressed from the start that we were hoping to cultivate the most stereotypical hit song possible, I tried to use that mantra to guide my voting decisions.
Yet, there were a number of entries that went completely outside of that mold. Therefore, I tried to take them into consideration too for their innovativeness.
Overall, as I'm sure Bruce could relate, choosing between the top four songs and granting one the grand prize took some time. However, after several listens and sessions of pondering, I'm confident that the right winners have been picked. So, without further delay, here is a look at the winners of the contest:
The Grand Prize Winner:
The Three Runner-Ups:
Break the love by Grizla
Stephen Frost – My Hands Gonna Touch This by stephenfrost
Had Enough Tonight by Triangle Exception
The runner-ups are in no particular order. To claim your prizes, please get in touch at this address: kyle.bylinATgmail.com. As well, I will be reaching out to the winners who don't touch base. Late entries into the contest did get last minute consideration, but ending up not affecting the final results.
A Final Thank You To Our Amazing Sponsors:
- Berkleemusic: leading music and record industry education.
- ReverbNation: an online indie music marketing hub.
- Jay Frank: author of FutureHit DNA.
- SoundCloud: an online audio platform.
- Sonicbids: digital press kit provider.
- Music Power Network: an online community and industry network.
- Berklee Press: the publishing company behind Berklee.
- Bandzoogle: an online website management platform.
- Tunecore: a digital music distributor.
That was fun, thanks!
Let’s do it again sometime – but let use write the lyris, please!
! that should read “let us write the lyrics” !
I understand what your getting at. Give us some time to recover from this contest and we’ll see about what we can come up with next time around. Likely, we will let you write the words… But at the same time I foresee that as being a barrier to entry to some because it requires work. Yet, added creativity and something you might be able to market to your fans better. All in finding the balance.
Liked no entry fee.
Didn’t mind fixed lyric and style.
Didn’t like only finding out on Sep 5 (not your fault). Only just got song in.
Hypebot, is the point of this contest really to get the word out to indie artists that they should create the most generic sounding tracks possible, that they should rather follow trends than carve out their own niche (the latter being a concept Hypebot used to support previously)? Maybe Mr Jay Frank should be asked this question, too. You’re probably right that you can’t draw a dividing line between Majors and Generic on one side and Indies and Their Own Niche on the other side. But striving for a generic track with statistical methods only, completely removes the effect that humor has in getting people who laugh about a certain track to like it because it’s so generic it’s hilarious and funny at the same time.
Following a word frequency table would be no problem. Trying to fit a good rhythm and melody to lyrics with inconsistent syllables and rhymes was a lot harder, I think!
Enjoyed the heck out of this, and glad that the votes did not significantly influence the outcome (though if it matters, it appears as though the vote counts correspond to roughly 28% of the contributor’s Facebook fan count).
–S
I am confused by the point of this competition. Because the lyrics were so random you could just fit them to parts of already popular melodies and basically do a “Cover”. If it was just for a laugh then I understand, but it seems like creating parody music is pretty pointless ( unless you are in the flight of the concords).