Rules - Home Composed Song Contest 2013

Rules of the 2013 contest

The participants should be fans of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The person submitting the entry (the Participant) should be a composer, a lyricist or a performer of the song.
All participating composers, lyricists and performers must be amateurs. For HCSC purposes, this means that the submitted songs must not have been commercially released other than by self-publication and the participants must not be music industry professionals.
If the composer, lyricist or performer are of different nationalities, the entry will compete for the country of the nationality of the Participant.
The Participant must be from a country eligible to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Participant will form a jury of one or more people who will listen to all submitted entries and submit votes by the voting deadline.
In the event that the Participant does not submit votes by the voting deadline, their entry will be disqualified.
It is an explicit condition of entry that the Participant has the legal right to enter the song into the competition and owns all rights necessary or has the permission of the owner of the rights and by submitting an entry or entries the Participant confirms that this is the case.
The participant agrees that their entry may be freely made available for listening and download from ufopoli.com and homecomposed.net from the date of submission to at least 31 December 2013.

Each participant may enter up to two songs.
The organizer reserves the right, if necessitated by a large number of entries, to conduct either a public or private preselection to choose entries to the final of the competition at the sole discretion of the organizer. Should additional phases be implented, the schedule will be adjusted accordingly.
It’s recommended that the maximum length of each song be 5 minutes.
Songs may be submitted with vocals in any language. Instrumentals are also permitted.
The organizer of the 2013 Home Composed Song Contest may, at his sole discretion, reject an entry if in his opinion it is deemed unsuitable for the competition.

Song as a sound file (e.g. MP3).
Name and nationality of the Participant.
Title of the song.
Lyrics of the song in the original language (if applicable), plus a translation into English if available.
Name(s) of composer(s), lyricist(s) and performer(s) of the submitted song.
Biography of the participating team (in English), including at least one photo.
Deadline for entering is 13 October 2013.

The voting period will start on 15 October 2013 and will end at 12 pm Eastern European time on 4 November 2013.
Each competing team must rank all songs in preference. These will be converted by the moderator into a top ten, Eurovision-style, 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points after allowing for a re-distribution of votes to discount any disqualified entry.
The Eurovision team at Radio International will be invited to take part as a guest jury, and their votes will carry the same weight as each individual participating team.
The winner of HCSC 2013 will be offered the chance to host the 2014 edition of the contest online.
The final of the 2013 contest will take place on 9 November.