In this article I’d like to share some experience with remix contests. I’m heavily contributing my time and work for remix contests on three different platforms: Spinning’ Records, Wavo and Splice. So far my experience is very (re)mixed.
Spinnin’ Records
Probably the biggest remix contest platform is Spinnin’ Records. It’s a Dutch record label, located in Hilversum, Netherlands.
Spinnin’ Records mainly tries to promote their own artists. With a Spotify account, it’s easy to participate in the contests: After they have subscribed your account to multiple Spinnin’ Records Spotify Playlists, the stems can be downloaded. Submitting the remix is also quite easy. It needs to be uploaded to your own Soundcloud account and is then linked to the remix contest page of Spinnin’ Records.
Pros
– Spinnin’ Records has a lot of traffic on their website, your music can attract a big audience
– the copyrights of all remixes are automatically whitelisted on Soundcloud
– the stems are downloaded from Spinnin’ Records directly
Cons
– no support at all
– there is no communication of the contest winners. In the Terms of Service they are even allowed not to chose a winner at all (contest rules exctract: “The Organization is not under the obligation to (and shall not) correspond with participants, in any way, about the selection of the winning Tracks. … The Organization may choose not to select a winning Track at all.“). This is a very bad fact because this way it’s not possible to learn from the winners.
– they are pushing so many Spinnin’ Records playlists into your Spotify account that you have to clean it up frequently
– remixes are limited to songs of Spinnin’ Records artists
– there is a huge amount of vote4vote comment spamming, no mechanisms to avoid this spamming
– on the weekend abound April 14-16, during the simultaneous ending of three contests, the Spinnin’ Records servers were down and all remixes disappeared from all user profiles, see screenshot below of my own profile (just a spinning “S”).
Screenshot of my Spinnin’ Records profile on April 15, all my remixes have disappeared.
Wavo
Pros
– remixes are not limited to artists of a certain label, occasionally it’s possible to remix superstars like David Guetta
– occasionally the artists themselves comment on your remix
– contest winners are communicated, but almost never in time
Cons
– no support at all
– the Wavo remix contests websites have only very little traffic, without additional promotion there are only a few listeners on your music (much less than on Spinnin’ Records)
– the copyrights of remixes are not always whitelisted on Soundcloud, it can happen that you upload a remix and it gets removed immediately due to a “copyright violation” -> no support
– the stems are sometimes downloaded from Wavo directly but sometimes also from the record labels directly with annoying procedures and different Terms of Service
– you need a Facebook account because they take it as an evidence that you are a real person. Excellent joke!
– there are deadlines mentioned when the winner will be chosen but they are almost never met
Splice
Distributed Creation Inc. is performing their operations under the name “Splice”. It’s a platform mainly selling music sounds and instrument plugins but also hosting remix contests. Founded by Steve Martocci and Matthieou Aimonetti, two different office addresses are listed in the internet: 36 EAST 20TH STREET, 4TH FLOOR, NEW YORK 10003
Pros
– EXCELLENT support!
– remixes are not limited to artists of a certain label but in general the artists are rather unknown
– the stems are downloaded directly from Splice
– very clear Terms of Service for each remix contest
– contest winners are clearly communicated
Cons
– the Splice remix contest websites have only very little traffic, without additional promotion there are only a few listeners on your music (much less than on Spinnin’ Records)
– the copyrights of remixes are not always whitelisted on Soundcloud, it can happen that you upload a remix and it gets removed immediately due to a “copyright violation” -> they will fix it if you inform them!