Glastonbury have once again announced their Emerging Talent Competition for this year's Glastonbury Music Festival. The competition gives new UK and Ireland-based artists of any musical genre the opportunity to compete for a slot on one of the main stages at this year's festival and I'm excited that BlackPlastic.co.uk once again gets to play a part in the process.
The competition is free to enter and the winners will also receive a £5,000 Talent Development prize from the PRS for Music Foundation. Two runners up will also be awarded a £2,500 development prize from the foundation.
Acts have just one week to enter, from 9am Monday 18 January until 5pm Monday 25 January, via the Glastonbury Festivals website. Entries simply need to include a link to one original song on SohndCloud, plus a link to a video of themselves recording live (even if it is just a bedroom performance).
Entrants to the competition in past years include 2016 BBC Sound of 2016 nominee and 2016 BRITs Critic's Choice R&B singer Izzy Bizu and rapper Isaiah Dreads. Last year's winner Declan McKenna has since signed a management deal with Q Prime, who also manage Metallica, Muse and Foals.
As usual a panel of 40 of the UK's top music writers will judge the initial entries to compile a longlist of 120 acts - I'm happy to once again be involved as one of the writers in that process and massively excited to hear the music of those that enter! From there the longlist will be shortlisted to eight artists by a panel of judges including Michael and Emily Eavis. The final shortlist will compete in the live finals at the Pilton Working Men's Club in April in order to select the final winners. In both 2014 and 2015 all eight finalists were offered slots at that year's festival!