Three lucky acts will go from singing in their bedrooms, to performing live on stage at Urbanscapes – and you could be one of them!

The R.AGE Open Mic competition is now in full swing! Over 80 YouTube singers, musicians and performers have sent in their video submissions, and our judges can’t wait to help pick out the three that will perform live at Urbanscapes. FYI, that’s the same arts festival where Sigur Ros and Yuna will be performing.

So far, we’ve received submissions from acoustic singer-songwriters, bands, beatboxers, instrumentalists, ukelele players and even a couple of a capella singers… But mostly acoustic singer-songwriters. We’re still waiting for our first rap submission *fingers crossed*.

If you want to join the competition, check out our little banner at the bottom of this page, or log on to facebook.com/thestarRAGE. For more info on Urbanscapes, log on to urbanscapes.com.my.

The judges
Meet Darren Ashley, the electronica whizz everyone’s been talking about, and R&B songstress Nadhira Nishaa – the latest additions to our panel of expert judges.

The duo joins Hujan frontman Noh Salleh, singer Juwita Suwito and radio DJ/R&B artiste Liang on the panel.

“I think Open Mic is a great platform to help budding artistes. It’s a great idea. I hope it really works out well for some of the participants, because The Star can give them a big boost,” said Ashley, who himself started out joining music competitions and uploading material on to YouTube.

Liang said the judges are looking for participants who have more than just skill, but that something extra. “As talents go, we already have singers or bands who can do it. But I’m looking for someone who can transcend talent and show that little bit more ownership of a song and making it their own style while enjoying their craft, cos who doesn’t like to watch someone having fun with a song?”

The finals
Starting Monday, our judges will be picking out ten finalists, who will then be required to attend a live video recording, which will be done by creative team The Spacemen (the-spacement.com).

The recording will be done on Oct 28 at The Music Kampany’s studio (kampany.com) in SS1, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, with highly-sought after music director, violinist and pianist Genervie Kam mentoring the finalists.

The videos shot and produced by The Spacemen will then be uploaded to YouTube, where you get to vote for who you want to see performing at Urbanscapes.

R.AGE would like to thank online music streaming service WOWLOUD (wowloud.com), The Spacemen, The Music Kampany and all our judges for making Open Mic 2012 possible.

Deadline extended!
After receiving an avalanche of entries over the past two weekends, we realised that setting our deadline on Oct 19, a Friday, didn’t really make much sense. Everyone does this stuff over the weekends, right?
So guess what? We’re extending the deadline! We’ll now accept Open Mic submissions all the way till Monday, Oct 22, 4pm. Now dust off that webcam and get to work!