Song Fight!

Song Fight! is a weekly online songwriting and recording competition in which amateur artists are openly invited to participate. Traditionally, a title and deadline are posted each week for which participants write, record, and submit a song in MP3 format. All entries are compiled at the end of the week and links to the files are displayed on the front page for public voting, which lasts until the end of the next week. All visitors to the site are able to listen to the MP3s and are permitted one vote each. At the end of this voting period, results are posted and the next cycle (or "fight") begins, meaning at any given time one fight is in the works (in that a deadline and title are available) while the previous fight is in its voting stage. While the original Song Fight! system involved only one fight per week, as many as four are now sometimes conducted. Winning earns you no more or less than "bragging rights, satisfaction, [and] the jealous glances of strangers sitting next to you on the subway." Nonetheless, the site has inspired well over a thousand artists to enter since the competition's inception.

All songs submitted to Song Fight! are free for download, and are catalogued and hosted indefinitely.

The original "Fightmaster," Collin "Narbotic" Cunningham, had a site on the Dumbrella network where, similar to explodingdog, he accepted submissions of song titles and would record a song based on that title.

Song Fight! began when Cunningham declared its first fight title, "Golfpunk Drives a Cadillac" on June 19, 2000. Song Fight! was not open to the public for the first several fights, and was at this time populated mainly by Cunningham's friends and internet acquaintances. The first public fight was the seventh, "Zero to Phantom" (January 4, 2001). This was also the fight that first featured now "internet-famous" artist KOMPRESSOR, often considered Song Fight!'s first musical personality to become widely notable outside the community. While host Cunningham/Narbotic was a regularly featured artist during this time, none of his entries received the most votes in a fight.

During these years, the Song Fight! community made its home on the Dumbrella message boards, also home to the forums of prominent webcomics Achewood, Wigu, Diesel Sweeties and Explodingdog, among others. In July 2001 the first official performance of Song Fight! artists was collected for the first "Song Fight Live!" at Hot Lunch in San Francisco, California. A highlight of the evening included an impromptu songwriting contest, in which contestants created songs on the fly to the title of the venue's name.

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