FIRST TRACKS CONTEST: The aftermath where are they now?

I must admit I first heard about gather thru the First tracks songwriting contest back in January. WOW welcome the new music business! A friend of mine at CBS records in La. said that so much has changed in the music industry with CD baby, I pods, Down load sites, and My Space that I should enter a songwriting contest, as most record company scouts are looking right on line now. Geez you mean the fun of being noticed playing live is over? So I took the advice and entered a contest to see what it was all about.

The contest was about creativity, and I welcomed that and Gather was and is a pretty cool social site. I put up a MY Space site according to her advice, but I leaned towards Gather as a place to hang in cyberland.

There were 500 plus entries I believe and after the first day of voting I started to notice something. Votes that were being amazingly tallied to the tune of close to 100 an hour. Being on Gather a few months prior to the contest start, I knew this was hard to believe. Then I realized the votes were tallied, by what ever e-mail addresses that were put in there! One person could vote 5 times with 5 different e-mail addresses. At the end of the day I had been crushed vote wise as certain contestants figured this out. I imagined rooms of coffee drinking typists entering e-mail names from a list of businesses purchased for spam advertising.....My Concept of a creative contest was shattered, this was a marketing campaign to attract people to Gather....which is OK, BUT don't go out and present it as a song writing contest when it's so thinly disguised. Integrity this contest lacked from day one as vote tallies had 467 votes for the #1 spot followed by 128 in second and 89 in 3rd. This is from memory and is an example, but the disparity in votes is about right. The top 25 had songs in it that were also against the written rules....where was the monitoring? My votes started increasing when I did a couple gigs and had friends go around with lap tops and record the e-mail addresses that were votes. I did this for 2 nights, making an announcement about it at sold out shows......Hey Now i was in the top 10!

I ended up in the top 100 as insane votes continued 4,800 votes on gather for one song is just not believable, and to do it with 2 separate songs is even more hard to believe. The competition was out of control. When the top 25 was announced a contestant who thought he should be the winner and was giving "winning interviews" in Gather groups, did not even follow the rules, which was no announcing or posting you are a winner until it is announced by Gather. E-mails went to people ahead of time urging votes, a second song was added which meant you were in the final round. When the breaking of rules was addressed to Gather, the comments returned were that we spoke to him and he won't do it again. Personally In a contest with written rules, if you break them you are thrown out....not in this case. Too many e-mail addresses at stake? The same contestant even threatened others, and set up a fake account to comment about other entries. When people wrote about that in outrage, the articles were reviewed and taken down!

No this contest was upsetting the very creative community target across the Internet. Gather handed out all the contestant e-mail address by mistake, and now the outrage became mass spam to our personal e-mails! One e-mail even said we will tell Gather if anyone uses our e-mail address to vote. Hmm thanks for the idea? I knew it would work and in a contest that lost all integrity, I did not need to try it. I already used old e-mails of mine to see if they would take, they did.

Anger, frustration, and being in the top 25 waiting for "The Top 5" to be picked by "entertainment industry professionals" was even more nail biting, but at least the backstabbing, and nasty e-mails, and even threats of legal intimidation were now calm.

Decca is by no means in My Opinion an important record company, with the exception of classical. Long ago they stopped being anything in POP music and are trying to re-enter during a change like the industry has not seen ever. I wish them more luck than they ever wished me, and other old names like CBS records have returned too, so who knows.

When the final 5 were announced I felt like it all ended up being American Idol, not one person or group was picked that appeared to be past mid 30's in age. There sure is a whole lot of talent above that cut off, and unlike American Idol who won't let you on....there was never any age limit announced. Guess us older artists should just fade away huh.

I walked away from gather for a while totally pissed off, frustrated, and felt cheated and beat up, by this sham of a contest. For a while I did not even want to look at this site. But I calmed down and remembered I had made some friends out here, and I did enjoy writing, and photography so I stayed. I will never use this as a music outlet again, nor will I have too. My music was discovered with no help from Gather as my producers never even heard of this site, nor any of my management. I have been signed by a label, and placed under exclusive management all will be announced shortly. I look forward to auditioning new band members, rehearsing and cutting the CD. I have a 3 CD contract that will have 10 to 12 songs per. Independent stuff is being played on radio in Canada and Ireland, which will soon halt as will any sightings of my independent work.

So I wondered over coffee, what happened to the top 25 in the First Tracks Contest? It's been over since 4-29 almost 3 months. Top 5 was announced 4-14, so hmmm such fierce competition, where are they now? Out of the top 25, and we can assume the folks that did not make that may have taken similar paths, the tally is like this:

7 have no profile anymore

4 last signed on in April

7 last signed on in May

4 last signed on in June which is a total of 22 and 3 are still active including myself. So what was accomplished? Last I saw the final winner did not even have his 4 songs cut that we all went thru so much for. I wish him well and hope all goes great. More people came and went in disgust from gather after figuring out this mess. A bad artistic light at least with the music community. I even heard a few long time musician friends say " weren't you in that Scam Contest First Tracks" I told them it was what it was not having to defend anything. It should have been a good experience for all but was far from that. And Gather? well, they certainly did not become a my space over this, in fact they pissed a lot of my space people away, who with the ability to get thousands and thousands of votes per song, get the picture? 

Well,  am on my way musically, hasn't all sunk in yet.......and I still am here too, for how long who knows.