Win a Chance to be Mentored by Darius Rucker

The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) is running a song contest presented by CMT. The contest runs from Aug. 1 through Oct. 31 and gives undiscovered songwriters a chance to become professional hitmakers. The grand prize winner will receive an exclusive mentoring session with Grammy-winning recording artist Darius Rucker.

 

"Through the years the NSAI Song Contest has been a vehicle to let our organization discover some amazing new talent,” said NSAI Executive Director Bart Herbison. “Many of the winners have gone on to sign professional songwriting or artist deals. While many of the new talents were not the winners, they were discovered throughout the judging process. We get excited every year when the NSAI Song Contest Presented by CMT comes around for this reason!"

 

This will be NSAI’s eleventh year running the contest. Past winners understand how important it is to be “discovered” and have found success from signing an artist development deal with DreamWorks Records to securing a music-publishing staffwriter deal.

 

Nashville professional writers, publishers and industry professionals will narrow down the finalists over three rounds of judging and select the grand prize winner, 10 runners-up and 10 honorable mentions before the Top 10 (excluding the grand prize winner) are posted on nsai.cmt.com. Fans are able to vote for their favorite song from January 15 through February 28, 2011.

 

In addition to the mentoring session with Rucker, prizes include a single-song professional demo, tickets to the 2011 CMT Music Awards, a private tour of CMT studios, a performance at The Bluebird Café, meetings with major music publishers and a one-year membership to NSAI, among others. For a full list of prizes and how to enter, visit nsai.cmt.com.

 

All genres of music are encouraged. There is an entry fee of $35 for current NSAI members and $45 for non-members per song submitted.