2014/12/31
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Our Homegrown New Year’s Contest 2015 is over and the prize goes to Cincinnati-based The Upset Victory with their smart, powerful rock piece, Fake This. Congratulations, guys. The incredible Korg MS-20 Mini Keyboard and complete PreSonus Studio are yours!
Thank you everyone for uploading your music! Thank you KORG and PreSonus for providing the fabulous prizes! Congratulations to everyone in the top ten! Your music is fantastic. This proves once again that you have the power, the talent, and the technology to create a Hit Song.
Happy New Year from Tony and Jim.
2014/01/04
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Our ““Home Grown Hits for the Holidays” Song Contest” is over, and the grand prize winner is the UK-based Sugardoll, with their song Top of the World. Their writing and performing skills earns them the top prize, a fully loaded Gibson Brands home studio plus a feature profile on Recording magazine’s website and e-newsletter!
Free subscription to Recording magazine go to Sugardoll, along with the following spectacular artists: Joe Lamb, who had 2 songs in the Contest top ten (“Giving Up” and “When We Were Young”); AR3A (“theN0thing”); Zach Saunders (“Wonderful”); J.T. & the Blue Mountain Stone (“All I Want (for Christmas)”); Ben Davis (“Mind Games”); Thanai, with two songs in the Contest top ten (“Our Lies” and “Cigarettes”); and Coral Bones (“Youthemism”).
Thanks to Gibson Brands and Recording magazine for donating the prizes. And thanks to all the talented artists that uploaded 87 songs and made our contest such a success!
2013/06/21
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Our “Make a HomeGrown Summer Hit Song Contest 2” is over, and the winner is the Ohio-based This Must Be Thursday, with their lyrical meditation on a melancholy day, “Another Song“. Their songcraft (and your votes) earned them the Focusrite Scarlett Studio, the KRK Rokit 5 Studio Monitors, and the pair of KRK KNS 8400 Headphones. Nice job, guys! (We will contact you soon to send you your gear.)
Thanks to Focusrite and KRK Systems for donating the prizes. And thanks to all the talented artists that uploaded 50 songs and made our contest such a success!
Stay tuned for our next contest…
2013/05/17
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Summer is just around the corner (for us in the North), and it’s time for our “Make a HomeGrown Summer Hit” Song Contest. This year we have partnered with Focusrite and KRK Systems to give the winner a complete home studio!
The top song on the contest charts on June 21st, 2013 at 7:30PM Pacific will win this prize package. (You can enter up to 2 songs in the contest.)
So upload your song, make sure the contest code “SUMMER-2” is entered in the upload form. (NOTE: you’ll need an account to upload. It only takes a minute to set one up.)
May the best song win!
This contest is over, and the winner is This Must Be Thursday, with “Another Song”!
2013/04/20
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Jim and Tony hand over the Schecter Hellraiser to Rachelle at the ASCAP "I Create Music" Expo 2013.
Our Kick-ASCAP-2 song contest is finally over, and here are the 4 winners:
Thank you to all of the incredible artists who made this contest so successful. We had fun at the ASCAP Expo, meeting you all and seeing you perform on our live stream. We recorded hours of kick-ass performances and will loop them up on the site shortly.
Thanks to our sponsors, Schecter Guitars, Sennheiser, and KeyCode Media for providing this high end gear and making our trip to the Expo possible.
Stay tuned…our next contest is in the works…
2012/11/02
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Congratulations to Billy Schafer, the winner of the contest with his amazing song F-Bomb. We would like to thank everyone who uploaded a song for this contest. We would also like to thank WAVES (www.waves.com) for sponsoring the contest. Billy, we will be getting in contact with you to send out your prizes. Everyone please stay tuned for the next one. Get your best songs ready! We will be announcing the next contest very soon. The prizes are going to be fantastic!
2012/06/20
Filed under Announcements, Contests
We are pleased to announce the winner of our ESP-BLUE Homegrown Summer Hit song contest: Paul Nicholl, with “Gringo Mambo“! The haunting, stylish, extremely well-produced song shot to the top of the charts within 2 weeks of being uploaded, and has been there for 2 weeks so far. Congratulations, Paul. The ESP Viper 50 guitar and Blue Yeti microphone are yours!
Stay tuned for our next contest…
2012/05/03
Filed under Announcements, Newsletter
We’ve just made it easier to listen to music and rate songs! When you’re playing a song on the site, and want to rate it (or any song on the page), the song won’t get interrupted anymore by the page reload. Click on the star rating you want. The HomeGrownHits Charts will readjust the numerical ranking of all songs in real time, without needing to reload the page, while your song continues to play. Try it!
(If you want to see the songs in order of their position in the Charts, though, you will need to reload.)
We’re gearing up for our next contest. This one is going to be big! Keep your eyes on the site early next week for the announcement…
2012/04/21
Filed under Announcements, Contests
After extremely intense competition by some truly remarkable artists, the bouncy, hopping tour-de-force “Talking in Your Sleep” by the LA-based The Singularity has earned them the ESP EC-1000 guitar, plus the Avid Pro Tools/M-Box rig! Huge congratulations to them.
We’re writing this from the ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo, minutes away from announcing the winner in front of a packed grand ballroom at the Hollywood Renaissance, so we gotta go.
Stay tuned for our next contest…
2012/03/02
Filed under Announcements, Contests
Huge congratulations to Half Hour City, whose homegrown hit “The Season” topped the charts out of 69 total songs uploaded for our first contest, “Free Gear for Leap Year”. At 7PM Pacific on February 29, the contest ended and Half Hour City’s nicely crafted tune has earned them the prize, a M-Audio MXL Monitor and Mic Package.
We had some amazing songs uploaded. It constantly blows us away what people are recording in their home studios.
Big thanks go to all the artists who uploaded songs and listeners who rated them, helping to make our first contest a success. If you haven’t listened to these tunes – check them out now. The contest may be over, but the songs will always be a part of HomeGrown Hits!
Artists, get your songs ready – the next contest is going to be bigger and better.
(We’ve got something very cool up our sleeves.) Stay tuned!
2012/01/18
Filed under Announcements
We’ve been quiet for the past few months, but we’re back to celebrate the opening of the NAMM show with a new feature on the HomeGrownHits.com website: contests!
Our first contest is “Free Gear for Leap Year”, in which we are giving away a brand new $170 M-Audio MXL Monitor and Mic package! How do you win? Simply upload a new song between now and February 29 and use the Contest Code “LEAPGEAR”. Whoever’s song is at the top of the contest charts at the end of the contest wins the gear. Check out this page for more details.
How do contests work?
It’s simple. To enter a contest, you need to enter a Contest Code when you upload your song. For our “Free Gear for Leap Year” contest, we’ve made it easy and posted the Code (LEAPGEAR), because we want everyone to be able to enter. If you enter a contest, your song is not treated any differently on the charts than songs that are not part of the contest. Everybody can listen to your song, and all registered HomeGrownHits.com members can rate it, and it will go up and down the main and genre charts accordingly.
At the same time, the contest will have its own “sub-chart“, which shows the ranking of only the songs that are taking part in the contest, which will be viewable from the main charts by clicking the 
small icon on the left of the song entry. For the “Leap Year” contest, we are using the HomeGrown Hits “H” house icon.
Can I Sponsor My Own Contest?
You may have noticed we don’t post ads on the site, and we don’t plan to. However, we are looking for ways to sustain our ability to maintain and expand this free social music site, and those include sponsored contests! For artists, sometimes healthy competition for a prize is just the right nudge to improve your song. And listeners can only benefit from this competition.
We think contests will add to the fun of the site for musicians and listeners. We are sponsoring our first contest ourselves, but we want to open the door to anyone with a cool idea for a song competition. If you are a maker or seller of music-related gear or other items, or an event organizer wanting to promote your gig, contact us to learn about opportunities to purchase your very own “sub-chart” on the HomeGrownHits.com charts as part of your own contest.
UPDATE: The contest is over and the winner is Half Hour City!
2011/08/21
Filed under Announcements
Playlists are now available on HomeGrown Hits! They are basically your own private jukebox, independent of the Charts. (As in the Charts, songs play automatically one after the other in sequence.) Here’s how it works:
- Make sure you’re logged in.
- On any HomeGrownHits song listing, locate a song you want to add to your playlist.
- Click “Add to Playlist”.
- There are a few ways you can visit your playlist.
- When you add a song to your playlist you will be given the option to view the playlist. Click “View Playlist”.
- Or, when logged in select the “My Playlist” tab from the Chart main banner.
- Or, enter the url http://www.homegrownhits.com/my-playlist/ into your browser.
- You can change the order of songs in your playlist by clicking in the song picture and dragging the song to the position you wish.
- Delete a song from your playlist by clicking “Delete from Playlist”.
Have fun!
2011/08/16
Filed under Announcements, Newsletter
The band Facing Arrows held the number one spot for 31 days with their hit song “Home”. Everyone listened to it, loved it, and voted it straight to the top. Now guess what… On Thursday, August 25th, Facing Arrows will be playing the famous El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles! You voted them to the top, now go see them live.
2011/07/20
Filed under Announcements, Editorial, Newsletter
Since our last post thirty-five songs have been added to the HomeGrown Hits website. The site is growning at a phenomenal rate, and the caliber of music that is now available to listen to is frankly, way better than we were expecting at such an early stage (check out the current #1 song, “Home” by Facing Arrows, to get an idea of what we mean).
But now we need you to breathe life into the charts and keep them fresh. If you want the charts to be a place to discover new, high quality, music, you need to rate the songs you listen to. As you vote, you will see the charts change – it’s pretty amazing. (You will need to log in to vote.) Your vote counts. In fact, the more songs you rate, the more your vote counts! To read more about rating and how the charts work, see the About page.
You’ll notice most of the links now work. In particular, we’ve added the ability to list the most recently added songs, so you can check out music that was uploaded since your last visit. For a “shuffle-play” type of listing, you can also sort the charts randomly. If you like a song by a particular artist and want to see all the songs by the artist, click on the artist’s name.
COMING SOON: playlists!
2011/04/30
Filed under Announcements, Editorial
This site is under construction, and will go live for beta testing in early May 2011. Would you like to help us shake out the bugs in the system? Are you a musician who records at home, or a music lover who would like to check out cutting edge tunes?
UPDATE 27 May 2011
This site is still under construction! Would you like to help us shake out the bugs in the system? Are you a musician who records at home, or a music lover who would like to check out cutting edge tunes? Try registering for an account. If you’re a musician, upload a homegrown song. For music lovers, listen to the songs that have been uploaded. When the site is fully functional, you will be able to rate songs and watch the charts take shape! We’re not there yet, but it’s just around the corner. Sign up here and we’ll keep you up to date on changes to the site.
UPDATE 1 June 2011
We still have some work to do and some links to connect, but the meat of the site, The Charts, is now functional!
Are you a musician who records at home, or a music lover who would like to check out cutting edge tunes? Try registering for an account. If you’re a musician, upload a homegrown song. For music lovers, listen to the songs that have been uploaded. NEW: rate songs and watch the charts take shape! It’s easy — just click on the stars (you will need to be logged in).
Sign up here and we’ll keep you up to date on changes to the site.
2010/12/07
Filed under Announcements
Please excuse our mess. We are building a new site. We hope to be online by early May 2011!
