The following is a list of rules and structural details regarding the NGAUC 2016, my annual audio contest here on NG.

RULES

1. Participants can enter the competition as a team of two. If the members of your “team” would otherwise be placed in different groups as solo artists, the team will be placed in the group corresponding to the highest fan total among its members (e.x., if one member has 20 fans and the other has 60, and the All Stars each have 50 fans or more, the team will compete in the All Stars group). Teams of more than 2 are not permitted. Also, if you are entering as a team of 1, YOU CANNOT HAVE A COLLABORATION AS YOUR TRYOUT PIECE or as any other piece for the competition. The only exception is when you have someone sing or play an instrument for you, but you must still compose the music and lyrics yourself AND mix/master the piece. Both members of a team don’t necessarily have to contribute to all of the pieces submitted as part of the contest. Also, you may only submit one song per round, regardless of whether you are on a team or not.

2. The pieces you make for the competition should be full-length songs of the musical variety (of any genre). We won’t accept audio that has the sole purpose of being comedic, not to mention sound effects, voice acting, or parodies. You may use pre-packaged loops and samples in your piece, but be aware that after a certain point abusing presets compromises your track’s originality. For tryouts, it's okay to submit covers, arrangements, remixes, remakes, mash-ups, and pieces with samples downloaded from the internet. In the Knock-out and Final rounds, no participant may submit covers, arrangements, mash-ups, remakes, or remixes. No participant may create samples for the purpose of using them in a Knock-out or Final round piece before that corresponding round begins.

3. You must be able to submit your song to Newgrounds in order to enter the competition. This mandates compliance with all general NG Audio Portal regulations, as well as that you need a Newgrounds account. No submissions from Soundcloud, Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Audiojungle, etc. will be accepted!  

4. You can post commentary in the threads dedicated to the competition, but please keep it friendly! If you have any complaints about judges’ scores or the contest in general, PM THEM instead of embarrassing yourself by whining about how great you thought your piece was. Just because this is a special contest doesn’t mean regular BBS and Audio Portal rules don’t apply. The mods will be watching this contest with their fangs already bared, and rumor has it that if you get bitten you become one of them (and no one wants that!). Therefore, please use common sense and THINK BEFORE YOU POST, because no one wants to have to avoid even more vampiric mods. Also, you’re encouraged to support and review the pieces of your competitors.

5. The judges are not obligated to review any of the pieces you submit to the competition, but you may request reviews from your judges or simply PM them with questions. I’ll make it clear who is judging a given group during a given round, as each individual judge doesn’t score everyone, especially early on when there are dozens of participants per group. The judges should give participants a score out of 10 and be able to thoroughly explain how they arrived at that score by considering a variety of parameters. These parameters may vary by judge, however, and judges are highly encouraged to make their scoring methods public. Scores are averaged among the judges to determine who advances to future rounds.

6. PARTICIPANTS MAY NOT start working on their Knock-out or Final Round tracks until the corresponding forum thread is posted. A general rule-of-thumb is that anything you do to prepare for your piece ahead of time needs to be something you could do if you were blind, deaf, dumb, and wearing a straightjacket. In addition, no one is allowed to update their track (i.e., replace or delete the audio file in Newgrounds' Project System) during the judging phases until results are released for the following round.

SCHEDULING TIDBITS:

1. The tryout submission phase closes at 23:59 (11:59 p.m.) Eastern Daylight Time on July 8th, 2016. Before then, you must link to the piece you want the judges to consider in this thread. The piece can be something you wrote years ago, or you can make it from scratch specifically for the competition. You can also change the piece you’d like us to judge by CLEARLY stating in the thread you’d like to change it as well as providing a link to your new piece. Starting July 5th at noon (EDT), we will no longer allow participants to change or update their tryout pieces in any way. This is so that the judges can have more time to score submissions in a year when we have many more competitors than expected.

2. Immediately after the tryout submission phase, the participants will be grouped evenly based on their fan totals. This ensures that the true “Underdogs” of the competition advance as far as possible without directly competing with more experienced and knowledgeable musicians. In the past, there have been 3 groups (the Underdogs, Professional Amateurs, and All Stars), but there may or may not be more this year, depending on how many participants there are.

3. After tryouts comes the Knock-out Round, which starts on July 16th! Another thread will be posted in the BBS tagging all of the competitors who have advanced, who will have until July 30th at 23:59 (11:59 pm) EDT to submit their made-from-scratch, original new tracks.

4. The judges will accept certain competitors into a Final Round by August 4th. Last year, the final round consisted of 4 people from each group. The walls of the groups are then torn down and it’s a free-for-all bloodbath (through music!) to see who gets a spot in the legendary top 3. The deadline for final round submissions is August 18th at 23:59 EDT., and the winners will be announced on August 22th. For the Final Round, all judges score every single participant.

Prizes will include forum signatures for the top 3 finishers boasting of their success in the competition, as well as spots on the front page of the Audio Portal the week after the competition.

Thank you in advance for following the rules. Good luck and (most importantly) have fun! :D