The same people that brought Bill Gates to UW-Madison last semester are now asking for something in return—demo CDs.
mtvU, the 24-hour college music channel, is hosting its third annual Best Band on Campus\ competition. This year's winner receives a $20,000 video and record deal with Drive-Thru Records, which currently produces bands such as Something Corporate, Finch and New Found Glory.
All Envy Aside, a UW-Milwaukee band, won last year. The video for their single, ""Burning Again,"" is currently on mtvU's broadband channel, Über.
""We spent $15,000, we got two days of shooting, we got a story line, we got different locations, and we got a 15-person crew and they just did an awesome job,"" AEA guitarist and songwriter Jaek Pachniak said.
Registration ends Mon., March 13, and according to Jason Rzepka, head of programming at mtvU, the 2006 competition will be the most competitive yet.
""Interest for the ‘Best Band on Campus' has been enormous; that's why we're doing it again. And, already, hundreds of bands have registered and submitted their work,"" Rzepka said.
Rzepka claims that music of every genre will be given equal consideration. He acknowledges that although quality recordings are expensive, authenticity will outweigh production values and is confident that college students are savvy enough to pick out talent when they hear it.
""Give them your best song. And no, not your favorite song, your song that's the most radio friendly,"" Pachniak said.
The first round of judging, which recording artists Akon and G. Love helped with last year, will narrow the national contestant pool to 50. After two more rounds, the resulting winner is decided by online voting.
Fellow AEA guitarist Dan Faherty advises that once passing the preliminary cut, promotion is essential to winning, ""We pretty much had all of southern Wisconsin covered as far as getting newspapers involved, and press involved and local radio stations ... it was just continuous interviews for probably three weeks.""
Universal Records, which partnered with the competition last year, will decide based on the number of video plays on Über whether AEA records a complete debut CD. Regardless of the outcome, both Faherty and Pachniak value the experience and exposure that mtvU afforded them. You can see ""Burning Again"" at www.allenvyaside.com.
Rzepka encourages anyone with even the slightest interest to register on www.mtvu.com.
""Enter now,"" Rzepka said, ""Because you may not think so, but you have a great chance to win this thing, and it's a level playing field.""\