Originally Posted by: schmangeThat's just what I was gonna suggest. I've been to a few of those things and the bands that usually win either have a ton of friends in the audience and you're rated by applause. Or, they pick the singer who jumps around the stage the most, acting like an idiot, and screaming his head off.

I stopped entering those things about 10 years ago after our "SkyDoom" debacle.
We were finalists in the Battle of the Bands at the Hard Rock Cafe in the Skydome.
Everything was run using MIDI back then with the drummer keeping time with a click track.
First the computer wouldn't boot up. Then the bass amp wouldn't work. It was so hot, I was literally dripping with sweat. We had to cut out all our best songs because they were all 'synth' tunes done on the computer.

The first band goes up and the audience goes absolutely nuts. We're thinking, hey...this is gonna be great anyways.
They finish and as they come off the stage and we're getting up to go on, literally 3/4 of the audience gets up from their seats and walks away. About 75 friends of the band. There's a few people left sitting in the audience who stayed to hear us and they're all making rude comments after every song and no applause.
After we finished, the entire audience comes back and sits down again.

Needless to say, we lost because the contest was judged based on audience applause.
All I got for two weeks of rehearsals and lugging our equipment to Toronto and back was an 'I Jammed at the Dome' button.