Prepear to fear for your ear once more, because Scratchovision is happening again! If you didn’t participate in any of the last three, that sentence may fill you with questions. Allow me to answer some of them…

  Scratcholisten

  What Scratchovision?

Scratchovision is an annual bad song competition, in the spirit of the Eurovision Song Contest. During the competition, people submit songs that are terrible and cheesy in all the right ways. After submissions close, the songs are then voted on by the public to decide the best of the worst.

If you’re not sure about what to submit, you can check out previous entries here to get some ideas. You’ll notice that the winning tracks aren’t the most awful – they’re bad in a good, hard-to-define way, with both a redeeming feature and a less-redeeming feature.

This year, we’re going to have a theme, and that theme is lo-fi. According to Wikipedia, lo-fi is “an aesthetic of recorded music in which the sound quality is lower than the usual contemporary standards and imperfections of the recording and production are audible”. Popular examples include the Beach Boys and Guided by Voices.

You don’t have to follow the theme if you don’t want to, but it might help give you a bit more direction if you’re not sure how to go about making a bad song.

In a Scratchovision first, the winner will actually win something this time. The current plan is that they’ll receive a physical copy of the final album.

Who Scratchovision?

The competition is open to everyone. Because of the nature of Scratchovision, you don’t need any music-making skills to join! No matter how awful your creation is, there will be no judgement on you for submitting it. If you’ve been scared off of other competitions and collaborations, now’s your chance to give it a shot.

Scratchovision is run by whizzer0. Ping me or use the contact form if you’ve got any more questions.

  When Scratchovision?

Song submissions will be open for four weeks (until 2018-06-17), but this is a soft deadline and it may close earlier or later depending on how many people still want to submit. Even if you miss the final deadline, you can still submit an entry and it will be added to the vote.

  Why Scratchovision?

“Scratch” because the competition began on the Scratch forums, and “ovision” after the Eurovision Song Contest. We voted last year on changing the name, but people wanted to keep it, so it’ll stay.

  How Scratchovision?

Submit your entry right here!

If you haven’t finished your entry yet and want to register your interest, join the Discord server. This can also help you if you want to find someone to collaborate with, and you can also submit your entry by messaging whizzer0 in case you don’t have a Google account.

It’s pretty relaxed, but there are a few rules on submissions…

  1. Entries can be made by one person or multiple people, but…
  2. You can only submit one entry per set of members.
    • This means that you can submit multiple entries, but it has to be with different people each time. So you could make one on your own, then one with your sibling, and then one with your hit band, and you could submit all of them, but if you wanted to make a second one on your own, you’d have to pick which one you like more.
  3. Entries do not have to have been created originally for this year’s contest, but can’t have been submitted for a previous Scratchovision.
    • It’d be nice if you did make it for the contest, though, or if you at least haven’t released it before.
  4. Your entry must be your own work.
    • Remixes and covers are permitted but discouraged. Just don’t type “bad song” into Google and send me the first result.
  5. Please don’t submit anything obscene.
    • There are no other restrictions on content. You don’t have to adhere to the theme if you don’t want to, although it’d be nice if you could come up with a convoluted explanation for how it actually does fit the theme.
  6. Please submit a music file.
    • Ideally in a lossless format, too. If you don’t send me a music file, I can and will convert it into one. You probably wouldn’t lose.