Surface Unsigned

The Surface Unsigned Festival is a nationwide search, across the United Kingdom, where previously unsigned bands compete, and the overall most popular band receives a recording contract.
Concerts are organized at venues across the UK, where four bands will perform.
The winners at each gig (usually four bands), apart from the final gig, are decided by a combination of votes from the audience present, text votes, musicians votes (the bands vote for each other) and votes from professionals in the music industry. There is a grading applied to these votes.
The overall winner, and some runners-up, receive valuable music industry related prizes.
Ticket prices
The tickets for the first round of the contest in Birmingham in 2009 are priced at £6.00. For subsequent rounds, the prices are progressively greater.
Sale of tickets
There is no minimum amount of tickets that bands have to sell. A band's progression in the competition is not based on ticket sales, but on a combination of text vote, audience vote, musicians' vote (which means the bands vote for each other) and industry votes. Bands can sell tickets directly to their fans and it is possible to pay at the door or to add yourself to the guest list. But, the more fans that a band brings to the gig, the more votes they might receive and thus there may be a greater chance of progressing in the competition. The presenter on stage also encourages people in the audience to vote more than once so bands with few ticket sales can still achieve high audience votes. However a band will a low audience vote can also progress to the next round on text votes, musicians' votes and industry votes.
Musicans' votes and industry votes have a greater weight than text votes and audience votes.
Deposit to take part in the contest
Every band that gets booked onto the festival pays a depsoit of £25.00. This is returned to a band if the band sells at least 25 tickets for their first round gig.
Payment to bands
Bands are paid after a specified number of tickets have been sold, usually twenty-five.
Text vote costs
Each text vote costs £1.00 (plus network charge). Text voters must be over sixteen years of age..
10p from each text vote is given to Oxjam.
Criticism and response to criticism
On May 26, 2008 the Birmingham Post reported a dispute between Surface Unsigned and Created In Birmingham, a blog surrounding creative arts. The blog was run by Pete Ashton, a Birmingham based blogger and author for CiB. Defamatory comments and trade libel on the blog were met with a cease and desist notice from a lawyer representing Surface Unsigned. Part of the defamatory material has since been removed by CiB, however some still remains on the blog.
Subsequently CiB Pete Ashton called other bloggers to link to the post on his personal website, creating a storm of defamatory publicity in the blogging community as google ranks were manipulated in breach of Google's Guidelines and Terms of Service.
The Birmingham Post failed to report which journalist wrote the report on May 26 and incorrect quotes were used.

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