Rules of the escChat Song Contest

These rules relate to the escChat Song Contest. They are in addition to - and not instead of - the rules of escChat.com that were agreed to at the time of registration. Please note that spinoff editions (such as Eurovision Editions and Christmas Editions) impose different constraints regarding the eligibility of songs.

Eligibility

Members of escChat.com may participate in the escChat Song Contest, a fun event between friends to share music and vote for their favourites. Entry into the contest is not a right, but rather a privilege. It is not a clinical song contest, but rather a contest for friends. As such, it is expected of members who choose to enter the contest to actively participate in the escChat.com chat room and become a regular member. Only regular participants in the chat room are permitted to enter. Eligibility is determined by the degree of active participation of each member in the chat room on a month-by-month basis. Members who do not adequately engage in the chat room are prohibited from entering the contest. Members who are banned may not enter.

Participants represent fictional nations. New participants are therefore required to invent a nation and design a flag. They may not represent real countries. Players may only create one nation.

Anybody from any country in the world may enter if they meet the aforementioned eligibility criteria.

Acceptable songs

Songs cannot be Eurovision Song Contest or Junior Eurovision Song Contest songs, nor may they be songs that have taken part in any Eurovision national finals. This includes any variants, covers or different versions of any such song. However, songs can be by artists that have taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest, as long as the song itself was not part of such a show.

Songs must be available on YouTube in the United Kingdom and the video must not be longer than 5 minutes in duration. Players must not tamper with a song to bring it under the limit, although removal of any introduction or credits is permitted, as long as it does not affect the music. There are no restrictions on artist nationality.

Songs may be disqualified if the participants who submitted them fail to finalise their votes before the deadline, or if a song is deemed by the administration team to bring escChat.com or the escChat Song Contest into disrepute or potentially cause an imbalance of the happy, positive and friendly atmosphere that the contest and chat room aim to promote and nurture. Such decisions are solely undertaken at the discretion of the administration team of escChat.com.

If two people submit the same song or two people enter songs by the same artist, the person who submitted it first wins the rights to that song/artist for this edition. Songs that have been entered into a previous edition of the escChat Song Contest may not be entered into a future edition of the contest, nor may the same song sung by a different artist, nor any remix thereof. Additionally, a song will be rejected if the artist has previously won an edition of the escChat Song Contest, unless the participant submitting the song is the same one who previously sent the winning song by the aforementioned artist or the participant has sent a non-winning song by that artist prior to their victory. This clause also extends to songs performed by the same artist under a different name. However, if an artist wins more than once for a participant, then only that participant may send that artist again in future, irrespective of whether any other participant ever sent that artist prior to their second victory. Moreover, any song that has received promotional airtime in the chat room is deemed to be ineligible for a period of two weeks from the date of broadcast.

A song, once submitted, may not be changed for a different song unless the submitted song is deemed to be unacceptable by the host and/or administration team of escChat.com.

Announcement of songs

Chosen songs shall be revealed upon the closing of the song submission window. Songs should not be announced to other members before the songs have been formally revealed and doing so will result in disqualification.

Voting

Upon the closure of the song submission window, the songs will be revealed and can be viewed on the contest page. The order that songs are to be presented in is determined by a running order draw held prior to the songs being revealed. When the contest has concluded, the order will be rearranged to present the songs in their final score positions.

Once the voting period has opened, participants must rank the songs in order of preference, with the top ten being awarded points in traditional Eurovision order, with 12 points to their favourite song, 10 to their second favourite, then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point. Participants are also urged to rank more than just their top ten in the event that any of their top ten songs are disqualified; in such a scenario the points allocated to any disqualified song will be given to the next song in their ranking. For example, if Participant B is disqualified and Participant A gives 8 points to Participant B's song, then the song originally getting 7 points from Participant A will get 8 points, with the song originally getting 6 points being awarded 7 points and so on, and the song ranked in 11th place will receive 1 point. This procedure will be exhaustively repeated for all disqualified entries.

Only people who have submitted songs can vote. Voting is compulsory for all participants. Participants must listen to all songs via this website before they are allowed to vote. Failure to vote will result in disqualification and expulsion from the contest.

Deadlines

Participants are reminded not to wait until the final day of the deadline to submit their song entry or finalised votes. The deadline is provided for exceptional circumstances only and all participants are urged to submit their entry or their votes in plenty of time before the expiry of the deadline.

Should a participant submit their song or finalised votes on the final day of the deadline, they will be subjected to an automatic penalty in the form of a truncated song submission/voting window (as appropriate) of three days only in the next edition.

Next edition

The best placed nation played by a participant who attended the live broadcast of the results show has the optional honour of being declared as the ceremonial host nation for the subsequent contest. If this participant is unavailable or declines this, the next best placed participant who attended the live broadcast of the results show will be declared as the host nation. If this person is also unavailable or declines, then the role will be passed to the third best placed candidate who attended the live broadcast of the results show, and so on down the results table in order of their final position until a candidate is found who is willing to take the role. Participants who did not attend the live broadcast of the results show may not host the next edition, unless exceptional circumstances apply, which will be decided at the sole discretion of the administration team of escChat.com.

Ceremonial hosts are expected to provide a city name, slogan, colour scheme, logo, opening and interval act videos for the upcoming contest. The opening act should be a live performance video of their most recent winning song, if available.