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Pay Us and We Might Give You a Prize

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I'm slightly aware of this rather common practice:
 
1.  sponsoring a composition competition 
2.  requiring fee from the composer
3.  cash from the composers is given to the competition winner as the "prize" – or it helps fund their organization
 
I'm not a composer, so I don't see this sort of thing much, but our composers do.  
 
Here is some discussion about the issue I discovered on the Octarium blog:
So imagine my shock when I got taken to the mat in a conversation with a colleague about not charging an entry fee for composition submissions. In this colleague’s opinion I was lessening the vocal art by not putting a price on the luxury being allowed to enter. Another colleague shared with me her pleasant surprise at the discovery that a composition competition could become a hefty source of cash flow; a cash cow.
 
. . .  I have been sternly lectured to change my structure and charge a fee for entry but this quid pro quo seems backwards to me. You give us money and we’ll sing your music? Maybe? Well, actually, it’s kind of a long shot that we’ll ever sing your piece. But give us your money anyway. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t choirs support composers with commissions and competitions that don’t require a financial investment from a group of artists whose struggle is as epic as our struggle? We are all struggling artists, true. I guess I understand charging a small fee to pay someone to administer the competition fairly.
 
However, Octarium chooses to build the competition costs into our regular budget and fundraise through our regular channels to cover those costs. We all know that raising funds for arts nonprofits is a mine field in this current economy and, certainly, twenty-five bucks a pop for the 250 or so entries we’ve received in the two years we’ve sponsored the competition would be extremely helpful to our budgetary bottom line. But that’s not why we do this. It’s a composition competition, not a cash cow to help us pay our bills.
Eric Whitacre discussed it on his blog a couple of years ago and offers this advice to young composers:
 
Finally, and this is a big point: I never enter a competition that requires me to submit my application with a fee. Fran Richards, the extraordinary Vice President & Director of Concert Music at ASCAP, passionately advances this philosophy, and I couldn’t agree with her more. Don’t ever pay to be a part of one of these competitions; they are lucky to be getting an application from you.
What do you think?

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Comments

  1. Interesting discussion.  I remember a time when choirs auditioning for ACDA Conventions did not have an “entry fee”.  Now there is a fee. So while I’ve been fortunate to have my choirs selected from time to time ( and of course we pay all the expenses to attend the convention) there have been times when my choir was not selected and recieved the “Thank you but no thank you letter!”  Oh well!

  2. I couldn’t agree more.  When I was a (very) young composer, I fell into this trap.  It seems almost predatory– consider every aspiring composer whose only hope is to have his or her piece performed by, well, anyone.   With a small body of fellow musicians to facilitiate quality renderings of new music, that composer would be much more willing to pay a small fee for a quality performance opporunity (and some attention). 
     
    Furthermore, part of the reason these competitions continue to abound must be because they work.  Charge $50 for a chance to win a composition contest, get 100 entrants, make $5,000.  Offer $3,000 for the winner.  Repeat next year. 
     

  3. Most composer organizations advise against applying to competitions that charge a fee. We composers have a hard enough time earning a living and getting new works performed–please don’t ask us to subsidize your organization as well!

  4. The fee would be easier to justify if all entrants were offered a demo recording in return. For composers without guaranteed access to a performing ensemble, a demo is valuable for promotional purposes and for learning how well ideas transfer from the page to the stage.

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