The winners of the 2013 Unsigned Only Music Competition have been announced. The US-based competition awards over $50,000 in cash and prizes, including a $10,000 cash prize to the overall Grand Prize winner. Produced by the same team that puts together the prestigious International Songwriting Competition (ISC), Unsigned Only honors artists who are unsigned to a major record label and acts as a benchmark for excellence in the arena of contemporary music.
Winning First Place in the Folk/Singer-Songwriter category with her song “By Sea” is the Malaysia-born artist HeyMun. Now living in Sydney, Australia, HeyMun began songwriting after treating herself to a $99 Yamaha guitar. Several songs later (and a sprained pinky finger from over stressing the High E string), she recorded an EP with producer Steeve Body. On the last day of mixing the EP, she was tempted to head downstairs for a burrito (or three) but instead sat herself down at the studio piano, and a new track was born. When her producer called the mixing a wrap, she sang out “We got one more!” Today that track “By Sea” is the winning song and is played on Malaysian Airlines, Garuda Indonesia Airlines Inflight radio, and Australia’s Triple J’s Unearthed digital radio. HeyMun says she’s glad she skipped that burrito.
Founders Candace Avery and Jim Morgan said, “With more than 9,000 entries from all over the world, Unsigned Only was very competitive, and the judges were really impressed with the immense talent displayed, especially the up-and-coming artist Heymun. She was a unanimous winner with the judges, and we are very excited to see where she goes with her music.”
The judging panel consists of iconic recording artists Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders); Iggy Pop; Neon Trees; Cyndi Lauper; Dustin Lynch; Carly Simon; Brandi Carlile; John Oates (Hall & Oates); Hunter Hayes; 3 Doors Down; Of Monsters And Men; David Crowder; Darryl McDaniels (Run D.M.C.); G. Love; Craig Morgan; Jason Gray; Ryan Bingham; Aaron Shust; and The Mountain Goats. Judges also include a group of influential music journalists and editors from Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, The Washington Post, and Spin.
Unsigned Only is a fresh and novel approach to other music competitions, offering the Grand Prize winner the opportunity to be mentored by the top echelon of record company professionals. Mentors include presidents and top-level executives from Universal Republic, Capitol, Vagrant, RCA, Bad Boy Entertainment, Disney Music Group, Atlantic, Sony, Big Machine, Word, and G-Unit.
In addition to HeyMun, 21 other winners were selected, representing 10 different genres of music. Check out the winning song on our Hype Sessions Soundcloud