Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2020 to go ahead
We’re very pleased to share the news that Glastonbury Festival’s 2020 Emerging Talent Competition, which is supported by PRS Foundation and PRS for Music, will go ahead, and a winner will be chosen.
The competition gives new UK and Ireland-based acts of any musical genre the chance to compete for a slot on one of the main stages at the Festival – this year’s winners will be given a slot at Glastonbury 2021.
The winners of the free-to-enter competition will also be awarded a £5,000 Talent Development prize from PRS Foundation to help take their songwriting and performing to the next level. Two runners-up will also each be awarded a £2,500 PRS Foundation Talent Development prize.
The 90 acts on the longlist (see below) were picked by Glastonbury Festivals judging panel, made up of 30 of the UK’s best online music writers & bloggers, from the thousands of entries we received in January 2020.
Each of the bloggers has chosen their favourite three acts. They’re linked to below, and check out the SoundCloud playlist of all the acts above (apart from the acts who chose to enter a “private” track).
These acts will now be whittled down to a shortlist of just 8 acts, by judges including Emily Eavis and Glastonbury’s Head of Music Programming, Nick Dewey. The shortlist will be announced in the week commencing 18 May 2020.
There will be no live finals (for obvious reasons), but the winners will be chosen from the shortlist by the 15 music business professionals who would have judged the live finals. They will use the song and live performance video each act entered with to make their decision.
The 2019 Emerging Talent Competition winner was the soulful singer-songwriter Marie White, who has since signed with Decca Records and Universal Music Publishing Group.
Our CEO Joe Frankland said,
“The Emerging Talent Competition is an incredible opportunity and has been a fantastic springboard for so many successful music creators, including Declan McKenna, Marie White, Flohio and Izzy Bizu. This unique combination of the opportunity to perform at the iconic Glastonbury Festival and receive vital career support has had a real and sustainable impact on those artists’ development. I’m very much looking forward to seeing who the winner and runners-up are this year.”
Amy Field, Senior Events Manager at PRS for Music said
“We are so pleased the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition is still going ahead. It’s something positive to focus on during this uncertain time and with the unfortunate cancellation of Glastonbury festival this year. We know that many music creators are currently facing challenges, and so we are proud to be able to continue this project with PRS Foundation and Glastonbury to keep the momentum going and provide some much needed support to artists taking part.”
