just found out about a new service. It’s called Our Stage. It’s kind of a Sonicbids (as you get a FREE EPK, and the ability to get gigs) meets Garageband (as you get reviewed by industry types) meets MySpace (as you can have friends). Meets American Idol (as you can enter and win monthly prizes of $5,000. There are also “Channel” prizes where you can win $100.  Here is some text I copied from the website.

How Does Our Stage Work?

As an artist, your first step is to upload your music or video and decide which channel competition to enter. Then, fans judge the work side by side with the work of others. Our unique judging capability (called Peer Relative Ranking, but don’t worry about that) makes sure that each piece is judged fairly by the real audience- with no rigging, no cheating, and no celebrity judges. At the end of each month, the top 20 and the top 10 in each channel go head-to-head in a special judging channel to determine the winner of that channel, and then a site-wide judging contest to determine our Grand Prize winner. For more information about that, see the Judging section below! As a fan, all you have to do is listen to some great music and give feedback about just how great you think it is. Find your favorite artists and follow them as they grow!

How Does the Ranking Work?

The ranking or judging is done via two patent pending algorithms that serve up top ranking, middle ranking and relatively new uploaded material in a channel in “somewhat” random fashion for someone to judge.

When we say somewhat, we mean that we take care of serving up the material in a fair and unbiased fashion. We are watching very carefully to make sure that each item in the channel gets equal exposure–we guarantee that. Whether that happens in a particular judging session, though, is another matter.

Depending on how much our users like something (rank it favorably), and how long they want to keep on ranking, the ranking engine will try to get the user to discriminate how much more an item is liked over other ranked items, and thus, the reason why users may see what appears to them as the same item coming up during several battles.

Our site users who judge cannot request what material they will be served to judge. During judging they have to view or play the material served, and at a minimum, they have to screen an item for 15 seconds each before they can rank one item over another.

Then, all of the rankings from all of the users are taken together and the ranking engine bubbles up the best items to the top!

Prizes?

TWO (2) GRAND PRIZES, one for Music and one for Video, for each Contest Period, a check payable to the Music winner in the amount of $5,000, and a check payable to the Video winner in the amount of $1,000.

ONE (1) FIRST PRIZE FOR EACH CHANNEL on the site (one for each Channel winner who is not selected as a Grand Prize winner for each Contest Period): a $100 Online Gift Card. Gift card is subject to the terms and conditions stated thereon. Approximate retail value (”ARV”) of each First Prize is $100.

Mojo Ratings?

What is a Mojo rating?

Every artist gets a Mojo rating based primarily on where the fans rank them in our Channels. Other factors that figure into the Mojo rating are: number of Fans, number of Friends and number of media uploads as well as EPK completeness. On Marketplace, venues can use the Mojo rating to help them identify artists with a proven ability to draw a crowd.

How do I get a Mojo rating?

To get a Mojo rating, register on OurStage and activate your account using the link we email you. From there, all you have to do is create a free EPK from your profile page and activate it. To get a positive Mojo rating, just click “View My EPK” from your profile and click the “Activate My EPK” link.

How Much Is It?

OurStage is still a free site for all the services you have right now It’s free to join, free to enter competitions, and free to be ranked. The only part of OurStage that will be costing any money is Marketplace, our new site feature for finding gigs around the USA. OurStage Marketplace will be free until Labor Day 2008, and then it will still only cost a small monthly fee, about the cost of buying lunch. So don’t worry! You aren’t losing any features. The only change is that you can now opt to pay a small monthly fee to access and apply to gigs on the OurStage Marketplace.

I Think It’s Worth Checking Out

While I hate things like “It costs as much a lunch” comments this site seems to have alot of potential. The great thing about new sites with competition is it doesnt’ take much to be a big fish in a small pond, and when they are handing out prizes I say its worth a shot.  If you’re using the service I would love some feedback, and if you’re not you can sign up at ourstage.com