International Song Contest

RULES

 
OFFICIAL RULES OF THE
INTERNATIONAL SONG CONTEST
last update around ISC-45
Management
  • The management consists of Dennis/Netherlands (mainly responsible for voting, entries) as well as Patrick/Korea (mainly responsible for video, graphics).
  • Contact us through the mail adress iscmanagers@gmail.com to send your songs or to ask for information.
  • You have to contact us in English, in order to get proper help from the management.
Taking Part
  • Before you can take part in our contest, you have to apply through our webform. Your data won't be given to anyone else outside the management.
  • You may only take part with ONE account. Using several (false) e-mail accounts will lead to permanent disqualification for ALL your accounts, without a warning.
  • It is NOT allowed to form a team with several managers for a country, if the ISC-managers find out about it, the whole team wil be disqualified.
  • Members are responsable themselves to apply to all the following rules. Therefor it is possible that you are allowed to take part in the contest, but are disqualified during the voting time. Often other members are pointing us on covers or false nationalities. 

Country

  • You can play with any country you want, but...
  • The country you want to play with should be acknowledged by the FIFA (except for Monaco, which also can take part, and the countries Scotland, England, Wales, Northern-Ireland from the United Kingdom are not available)
  • The management of ISC always has the last word when it comes to the question if you can play with a country or not.
  • You may always change to another country when you run out of songs or artists. Off course you can only change countries when an edition has ended and your new country must be available at that time.
  • Only when you have WON the contest, you need to play with that country for at least 1 edition more.
Artist
  • The singer must be born in the country you are playing with or have its citizenship.
  • If it's a group/duo/band the 50% of the members have to be from the country you're playing with. 
  • Countries with small population can not take singers from their neighbours anymore.
  • You may not select the same artist(s) two times in a row
  • The artist(s) can not represent a country more then three times in one year.
  • An artist can represent several country's at the same edition, but all entries must apply to the rules written above (Sarbel-ruling from ISC-28) Remember though, it can harm your results quit badly if the artists song for your country is worse then the song for another country.
  • You can always decide to change artists until the deadline is over.
Song
  • The song must be from the current decennium (that means you can only choose songs that were released/recorded between 2000-2008). Exceptions can be made for unknown songs released in the 90's. If a song is unknown enough will be decided by the managers, but it mostly depends on the fact if it is a well-known artist and how often a country has used a song from a previous decade.
  • The song can NOT be longer than 7 minutes exactly!
  • Covers of previous ESC or ISC-songs are NOT allowed.
  • Remixes are allowed (but of course they shouldn't be from a previous ISC entry).
  • It can't be an Eurovision entry or its cover
  • You can use one song from each National Final for Eurovision. For example; only one song from Melodifestivalen 2009, Eurolaul and Belgium's Eurosong are available. So pick your NF-song wisely ! 
  • Songs from a National Final are available as soon as we know for sure this will not be the Eurovision entry.
  • You must send your entry as MP3 file.
Participants
  • There is a limit of 54 participants; 4 direct finalistst and 50 semifinalists.
  • ISC currently uses a qualifying system with 2 semi-finals: The top 4 countries of the previous edition are automatically qualified for the final, the remaining countries have to participate in the 2 semi-finals, which are held at the same time. The top 11 of each semi-final advance to the final.
  • A draw decides the running order in the semi-finals and which country is placed in semi-final 1 and semi-final 2. The starting positions of the direct finalists are determined in the semi-finals results video, along with the 22 qualifiers.
Ties
  • If there is a tie we will look at the song that received the highest number of maximum points. After that we look at the most amount of 10 pts., 8 pts., etc. This will decide things like the first place or in the 11th place of the semi-final, the winner/last qualifier
Voting
  • Voting system is the same as in the Eurovision Song Contest (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,12).
  • You must send your votes in time to iscmanagers@gmail.com.
  • All participating countries must vote in the final.
  • Each semi-finalist has to vote in his own semi-final. From the finalists the countries that came 1st and 3rd in the previous edition have to vote in semi-final 1, while the countries that came 2nd and 4rd have to vote in semi-final 2.
  • If you don't vote you will lose the all the points you've received (-100%) and you will be disqualified for the upcoming edition (except an apology for not voting, the management will decide if the reason justifies the lack of voting).
  • If you are competing in the final, and you don't vote in the semi-final, you'll lose the 50% of your score in the final.
  • You shall not unveal your votings before the official voting procedure in the final.

Winners

After you win, you have to organize the upcoming edition:

  • You must select the city and venue where the contest is going to be held.
  • You must select 2 hosts, they must be a male and a female, and they have to be from the country where the contest is being held.
  • You may make a new and original logo, but this can also be done by the management.
  • You may make a new and original scorecard after the results are announced.
  • If possible, you may make a video for the results.

Questions?

  • If there are things or rules that are not clear to you, please feel free to ask us about it through iscmanagers@gmail.com.