The Philips Bandwidth Virtual Battle of the Bands

The Philippine music scene with Renzie Baluyut.

Okay, so you and your homeboys have been jamming at home each week, trying to get your sound just right. You play the occasional school gig, maybe even land a set or two at some nightspot somewhere.

If your band of fledgling rockstars has been hanging out for a while, but ready to take the next step, you and your dogs might want to check out the Philips Bandwidth Battle of the Bands.

Here's something we tore right off the official press release:

Leading consumer electronics maker Philips is this year looking to help these undiscovered talents with the Bandwidth Virtual Battle of the Bands. The contest is meant to help unsigned bands take full advantage of new digital multimedia technology in sharing their music with the rest of the music community.

Bandwidth participants will each be required to upload recent performance videos to the competition’s Youtube channel. Each band will be asked to perform two original songs, with one video uploaded for each song. Videos will be cross-posted to the Bandwidth website where visitors will be allowed to vote for their favorite performances.

These performances will then be screened by Bandwidth’s three mentors and judges, all of whom should be very familiar to fans of Filipino rock: Francis Reyes (a DJ on NU 107.5 and guitarist for The Dawn), Cookie Chua (singer for Color it Red), and Raimund Marasigan (singer for Sandwich, keyboardist for Pedicab, drummer for Cambio and The Eraserheads). The final crop of bands will then receive special one-one-one mentoring with the three judges prior to the final phase of the competition.

The competition will culminate in a final performance night where the winning band will be announced. The grand prize winner will take home a prize of P50,000 worth of cash and prizes.

Wanna know more? Head on over to the official contest site, and check out the contest's very own YouTube channel here. Also, check out the Philips' very own line of mp3 players, the Philips GoGear series, on my main blog, The Status is NOT Quo.

Cheers, everyone.