The Untz Challenge VIII: Turn Your Dreams into a Reality

TheUntz.com gives electronic music producers the chance to perform at major U.S. music festivals this summer

You can almost smell the freshly mown grass and patchouli. Festival season is right around the corner, and that means TheUntz.com is bringing back The Untz Challenge. Once again, we are giving two rising stars a life-changing opportunity.

Our prize package includes sets at the biggest and best summer music festivals taking place across the United States—and this year, we've picked the cream of the crop. The two winners of The Untz Challenge VIII will be playing at SIX major music festivals across five months.

Our two winning acts will hit Summer Camp Music Festival (May 26-28 — Chillicothe, IL), The Untz Festival (June 2-4 — Mariposa, CA), SONIC BLOOM (June 15-18 — Spanish Peaks County, CO), Electric Forest (June 22-25 or June 29-July 2 — Rothbury, MI), ARISE Festival (August 4-6 — Loveland, CO), and Imagine Music Festival (September 22-24 — Atlanta, GA).

Beginning February 20th continuing until March 10th, The Untz will accept submissions for the competition via SoundCloud. During the back half of March, fans will vote on their favorite tracks via TheUntz.com.

A total of 2 slots will be given away to the winners of this contest. The grand prize, which includes a performance slot at each of the participating festivals, will be won through the fan voting process. The second place winner is chosen by the staff of TheUntz.com, and will have the opportunity to perform at the same dates along the run.

Important Dates for The Untz Challenge VII
February 20 – Track submission begins
March 10 – Track submission ends 11:59pm PST
March 22 – Voting begins
April 3 – Voting ends 11:59pm PST
April 6 – First and second place winners announced

The Submission process is now OPEN:

We're doing things differently than we've done them in the past, so please read these extremely simple instructions carefully (then double check the rules and regs below to make sure you're complying with all our very specific criteria). We're making things as easy as possible for submission, so please, please don't screw it up and hurt your chances!

1. Upload your track to your Soundcloud account. Make the track public and enable downloads.

2. Fill out this online form. Please fill it out accurately and thoroughly. This will ensure you're in our system properly and your track doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

3. Sit back and relax. You're all done. That was easy, wasn't it? On March 22nd we will release the finalists, which coincides with the first day of voting. If you're one of our finalists, it'll be time to get out the vote, so rest up for the long campaign ahead, and good luck.

Now then, here are the rules and regulations of the competition:

• ORIGINAL tracks can be submitted beginning February 20^th, and we will continue to accept submissions until March 10^th at 11:59 pm PST. (DO NOT SUBMIT TRACKS BEFORE 2/20/16)
• Submitted tracks must be UNRELEASED prior to the contest start date, which covers singles, EPs, LPs, and compilations on major and independent labels, free/paid releases via Bandcamp, and free downloads/streams on SoundCloud.
• Tracks must REMAIN UNRELEASED (except on SoundCloud) until the contest is over (April 3).
  Artists retain the rights of ownership of their work.
• Please submit only ONE track per DJ/producer. If you submit more than one, only your first entry will be considered—and it will annoy us to no end, which is not a good thing.
• This is strictly a contest for PRODUCERS. No live bands, please. There are other contests for that. This is not one of them.
• DO NOT submit MIXES, REMIXES, or STOLEN WORK. (Yes, we understand DJs create mixes, but we want ORIGINAL, SINGLE tracks for this particular competition.)
• Each track may contain samples licensed, royalty free samples, but no unauthorized proprietary samples. All submitted tracks MUST NOT infringe US copyright law. Any track removed by SoundCloud for potential copyright infringment will also be disqualified from this contest.
• The Untz staff will compile a list of the best submissions.
• Only votes originating from verified email providers (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Live, AOL, university emails, etc.) will be counted. Blatant use of unverified emails/spam accounts will result in disqualification.
• Voting by the public will take place from March 22 - April 3
  • NO bot voting
  • NO voting incentives (i.e. "each voter gets a free iPad")
  • NO voting raffles (i.e. "we'll take one lucky voter to each festival with us")