Sonic Bids Contest Winner Announced!

This month has been exciting for the Skyelab marketing department with the culmination of our highly anticipated Sonicbids Marketing Campaign Competition.

Since 2000, Sonicbids has become the industry standard in sending and receiving Electronic Press Kits (EPK) between artists and concert promoters, talent buyers, festivals, agencies, record labels, management companies, film/TV music supervisors, media firms and more. With over 30,000 bands and 3,000 partners, Sonicbids has grown to become the premiere destination for artists and opportunity to find each other.

Choosing a winner for the contest was no easy task for us. The process began with a strong partnership and strategy between Skyelab and Sonicbids earlier this summer. After careful planning, we decided to offer the winner of the contest a free 5-week marketing campaign (an $875+ value), with the hopes of finding a great artist to be able to market. Internationally open to all genres and styles of music, the Skyelab Music Group Marketing Campaign Competition launched our promoter drop box at the end of May. Both Skyelab and Sonicbids expected about 50 submissions during the course of the contest from June to August. We were shocked to see the overwhelming response, in which we had nearly 50 submissions in the first week alone!

As the weeks went by, we continued to get new submissions in our EPK inbox. Artists of all genres from all corners of the planet submitted their material to us. From country singers in Texas to New York hip-hop, British electro-dance to Australian indie rock (and everything in between), it became clear to us that regardless of style, location or career development, ALL artists need marketing!

Realizing the high global demand for our third-party music marketing service, Sonicbids featured Skyelab and our competition on their front page alongside other prominent contests including major summer festival performance slots such as Warped Tour and Bonnaroo. This in turn increased submissions even further. By the end of the contest, we received close to 200 artists’ EPKs in our promoter drop box.

After the submission deadline, we closed the drop box and began to extensively review and research each and every artist, one song at a time. Qualification for this final round was based on one simple yet defining question: how can we effectively market the artist? If we were able to come up with a concrete answer to this question, the artist moved on to our final round. An interesting thing to note; our finalists were just as eclectic in style, region and popularity relative to the submissions as a whole.

We visited and revisited the final round artists’ EPKs relentlessly by listening to material, reading bios and press, noting visual themes, watching videos, pulling up past and present tour schedules, analyzing online presence, observing fan feedback and more. The more we researched, the more we liked each artist and the harder it became to pick a winner. Four weeks, countless debates and a hundred coffee cups later, we were able to announce our winner:

Skyelab Music Group and Sonicbids would like to congratulate Leaves as the winners of the Skyelab Music Group Marketing Campaign Competition!

Leaves is a four-piece indie rock band from Iceland, with a unique sound that rivals Coldplay and Sigur Ros. Armored with an awesome new album and a devoted following, Skyelab and Leaves will utilize all of our resources, knowledge and skills to build a marketing plan that will give them the opportunity to keep progressing with their careers forward by meeting their short and long term goals.

For the other artists that made it as far as they did but ultimately did not win, I thank them on behalf of Skyelab Music Group for their submission, patience and belief in our services. I would also like to thank Sonicbids for all of their help in making this possible. Though it was a LOT of work on our part, we certainly had a blast with this whole contest. I wish every artist the best of luck with their careers, and I encourage each and every one of them to keep up the good work and keep great music alive!