The New York Band Draft is a musician’s social event that combines elements of Fantasy Football with your typical Battle of the Bands to encourage the creation of new friendships and new music. Musicians are drafted to teams of people they don't regularly play music with and are given one month to write two original songs and learn one cover. One month after draft night, the newly formed bands compete in a winner takes all battle of the bands.
Here’s how it’s done:
1) Participants are asked to submit information about their musical background and skills which are then reduced and presented in a statistics slide, similar to those of NFL stats. Slides include what instruments you play, for how long you’ve been playing, current and past bands you’ve been in, and who your influences are.
2) Captains, chosen by The Commission, study these musicians’ stat slides, available on our blog, and assemble their dream teams according to one very important rule-->No team shall contain players who regularly play together.
3) Captains then draft teams of 5 or 6 players at a very emotional and exciting “Draft Night.” Since not even the captains know who they will actually be lucky enough to draft, everyone meets their newly formed bands on this night. Trust me, it’s an awesome night of mental explosions and cheesy outbursts of enthusiasm.
4) Teams are then given 30 days to write two original songs and chose one cover song to perform at a competition. We will have two conferences that will run simultaneously. Winners will be chosen based on a not so complicated process which takes into account the audience’s opinion and three judges opinions as to which band is the best.
5) First and second place of each conference will then compete against each other in an additional event to be held one week later. That event is a fantastic night of competitive and creative rock and roll awesomeness which we call the NYBD Super Bowl.
6) The winners of this event takes home a cash prize (last year it was $750.00 but his year we plan to raise about twice that amount) as well as other prizes including a recording session at a fully equipped recording studio, a photo shoot from a professional photographer, and a bunch of swag from our sponsors. Awards will be given for best band name, best single, best cover and best band overall.
