Connect >> News >> EWC 2025 Producer Contest | Winners
Title explains post.
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slept on it and i'm honestly not even that frustrated anymore so i deleted my initial comment. i don't feel comfortable entertaining needlessly pessimistic narratives about audiotool's future based on 1 contest outcome. i still understand why people were upset but tbh a lot of the outrage was overblown asf and in some cases completely unacceptable. makes us look really bad. i think the larger problem is that the community is so hungry for change that we've become unreasonably agitated and pretty annoying. i cringe thinking about the amount of people who've come to audiotool thru esports seeing the outrage and getting turned off. i try to put my friends onto audiotool but then i realize all the things i've told them about the community over the years and it's no wonder i've had more success putting them onto FL instead LOL. but that requires its own board post. all of this is just to say: i regret thinking this was such a big deal
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I remember when Audiotool used to do all sorts of missteps but people were more forgiving and still happy to come along on the journey. I remember personally receiving an apology T-Shirt after NO ONE ended up winning a contest which had something like a trip to Ibiza as a prize. There's always gonna be hits an misses and it's just a matter of attitude from the community.
I don't want to dismiss the valid sourness of everyone's mood after no updates to the software for such a long time, but it is true that a lot of people are just on edge more now than they used to be.
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@kanaris , that is such an exaggerated negative view.
AI clause: It just says: dont breach copyright with AI and try to disclose when you've used it. How is this deserving of outrage? It's not even a binding TOS, just a guide to not flood AT with slop.
Leadership: People in leadership right now, have been there from day 1. I am beyond thankful to them being able to keep this site alive and free for 16 years and I wish more people were too.
Andre fiasco, honestly tired of reading about it here. I've told my recount of what happened (as I was already employed at the time) and pointed out all inconsistencies and lies in his story, and no one even gave a crap. Except Andre himself, who made alt accounts impresonating a 'concerned user' to argue with me.
Democratisation of music is dead: What does that even mean? I swear some people just take these new buzz words and just say audiotool somehow used to but doesn't have them anymore (while also complaining about no changes in like 8 years)
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The important part of this whole thing is that the community got to say what we think and discuss about it. Voice community opinions that hopefully will be taken into consideration in some way or another. It was fairly big and kanaris has a point.
People quitting is not the way to go. Defeatism to me is not voicing these opinions and just going along hoping it'll go the right way. Or in the other instance quitting AT with a middle finger. I'm really glad this discussion board exists and plenty of people made their good points. But again, I see this as the discussion about the whole series of developments and not this single "EWC incident." That would be silly. Don't really know how others see it.
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I have my criticisms with the contest but it’s nothing people haven’t already voiced their frustrations over (Carrion Haven pretty much covers all of it) so I won’t beat the dead horse.
What I will do, however; is offer a tough to swallow pill that maybe a lot of people here aren’t willing to hear yet.
A lot or even most of you who are frustrated might not realize that of the tracks that actually scored points here, only three tracks in the entire contest actually understood the assignment given and those also happened to be the top 3. This is no coincidence; this contest wasn’t made for you to employ your full artistic expression, there is a very obvious vibe and fairly strict requirements being sought after that almost nobody, not even the most seasoned artists here even attempted to follow. Whether that be from inexperience or simply comfort in your own space no one here even really made an attempt at taking the prize.
Really it just shows that none of you were good enough.
I understand that’s obviously not what anyone wants to hear and believe me, I’m certainly not a fan of random artists who don’t give a shit about the site swooping in to take what is so easily taken by uploading something you think you’re incapable of making, but that's the bottom line after all.
This should serve as a wake up call to artists who actually want Audiotool to succeed, or you can keep complaining that it’s Audiotool's fault and continue to perpetuate the idea that this app is destined to get buried in the sand, having no place on a global stage like EWC.
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you're right that I'm afraid of "falling down" I think everyone is. It's all new and we don't know how to handle it. And I AM conflating it because it has interconnected relevance and I haven't had this opportunity to voice my opinions. Other question is whether I should have said all of this separately as it was going on.
@evilpanda107 Yeah... sorry about that. I'm not trying to spread some conspiracy. I know its inflated on my side, which again, I apologize for. I'm just a bit confused about these decisions and don't really understand the plans. I get that audiotool needs to get money from somewhere. The problem with AI is that it will be even harder to discern what is and what isn't AI in the future. Saying "we tolerate AI" is a fairly strange way to easing the problem for the team and handing it to the community to handle (from what I gathered you said), but I understand that there might not really be another way. It's only problematic because they make it sound a bit encouraging. Either way... not looking forward to sift through pointless slop. I am yet to see the acceptance of this development as Sandburgen does, but I get it. Regardless, I will value my own work, whether visual or audio as having more substance than AI. Just hope the rest of the world will too, at least for now.
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@yito The playing field is never even. That's the point. You can't even the playing field without pandering to the lowest common denominator - everyone must use a specific chromebook (cheapest available) and can only monitor this using the inbuilt speakers. Otherwise someone has an "unfair advantage" over someone else. Yes, it's "dystopian" but that's my point. Where do you draw the line? Different people will always have different opinions on that. Simplest way to avoid the dystopian concept is to just open it up to "use whatever you have available".
Because I don't have the space for a drumkit or currently have access to one, does that mean nobody else should be allowed to record their own kit and use those samples/loops in their competition work? If not..why limit the use of other DAW's as well? It's a fun double standard I see a lot "You didn't make that synth sound on AT, you suck." vs "That guitar you recorded sounds sick, kudos!". Both took time to learn and create, both cost money, both took effort. One is valued by the community, one is typically hated by the community.
Also, I definitely didn't say, or imply, that the only way to get anywhere is with stem uploads..quite the opposite. Again, 6/8 tracks were AT studio made. I didn't check how many of those utilised stems/recordings etc. alongside the tools in AT, but the point still stands: AT studio can hold it's own alongside people of a similar capability in the wider music scene.
As for "this isn't about this one time" that's exactly what I've been getting at for a while: people are conflating their anger/frustration with some of the choices the site has made, with this one competition's results.
The more I read from this community, the more I think that the community has become so comfortable inside it's own bubble that it just won't step outside of that for fear of falling down.
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Record inlay from the seventies. I am going to leave this now. Each of you in this chat has interesting views. It was a pleasure discussing with you
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Thanks to audiotool that we can continue to make music for free and thanks to the moderators who spend their spare time to keep the site safe and clean!
It think it was clearly communicated that audiotool wants to align itself with other platforms and daws in terms of stems and sample usage, which makes perfect sense.
Attacking the winner and calling him an idiot on his wall and telling him to delete his track is completely unfair and doesn't help anyone.
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I'll repeat myself:
The fact that a contest was hosted allowing importing entire stems from other daws on a website that already had it's own built-in daw defeats the point of hosting a contest on Audiotool. Both winners having their submissions being entirely non-Audiotool, with one only making their account to make a submission is a spit in the face. It's like a school hosting an art contest and someone from an entirely different district comes in and wins.
Also voting should have been left up to the community, rather than judges that had no affiliation with Audiotool.
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Something people are missing is that there was a brief for this comp. The track had to hit a certain "vibe" as well as being of good quality. Just because lavalamp and client didn't get the top spots doesn't mean their quality isn't top tier, but maybe the vibe just wasn't a fit. I'm not the judge, so I don't know what that decision was based on exactly.
People came at it with different ideas of what this type of music should sound like - quality of production isn't the only factor determining who wins.
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Actually good points, i forgot about the EWC contest last year. Thanks for the example.
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This time. Last time it worked well for us and jetdarc won the main price.
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@Chonoes I deleted your thread so things can stay in one place.
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should point out to keep this civil instead of being straight up immature to try and "prove a point" whoever comments here
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I have an industrial hiphop/noise music entry I didn't get to submit with criticism towards something like this lol. Didn't take my time to do it though.
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Auditool users not being immature? impossible,,,,,,,
It really surprises me since last year the exact same thing happened but no one had this level of response? Ignoring who won anyways.
It's evident this is the route audiotool has been wanting to take but no one seemed to have cared except for what I can vaguely remember
like 6 people including the same ones who brought up the prizes this time around to respect the producers time and be capable of getting a paid prize alongside.
And then there's the supposed new TOS that'll swing around regarding AI
Like one good thing one bad but isn't really bad as we already should've seen it coming?
Publicity for audiotool? Yeah ofc
Would they have wanted an audiotool producer to win and have a snapshot to show for it instead of samples? YES that would've been big money for them.
Yet here we are.
It made zero sense for a bunch of amatures to even have this kind of opportunity when less than 5% of this DAW's producers make music and profit off it using distributors via bandcamp soundcloud or spotify and everything else under the rainbow.
This sites userbase it either to young to do anything worthwhile musically with the rewards
Or they have moved to different DAWs.
Like lets face it EVERY single person who could've taken proper advantage of the prizes either left the site or uses another daw.
They could've uploaded stems but didn't
The winners are at no fault.
Even IF they did intentionally compete just to take advantage of the ruleset EVERYONE else could've.
I would've LOVED to see someone just slam down a fucking tonematrix just to prove how stupid the rules are about stems and win but no one did it lmao
Witch hunting someone because they won a music comp with a genuine impressive prize isn't going to solve things for the future
Audiotool users will either need to accept the direction things went or just leave lol
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This contest wasn't people's taste, but like 6 (or more, I've lost count) other contests that AT organised or provided prizes for in the last 2 years were celebrated and well received. It aint doomsday