1. Dates, awards and prizes
Entries open 1 October 2026 at 00:00 UTC and close 1 December 2026 at 23:59 UTC. Audience ratings for this edition close 15 January 2027 at 23:59 UTC. Winners will be announced by 31 March 2027 and notified by email.
There are ten awards with a $1,000 USD gross cash prize each, making a $10,000 USD prize pool: Best Pop Single, Best Electronic Single, Best Cinematic Single, Best Experimental Single, Best Pop LP, Best Electronic LP, Best Cinematic LP, Best Experimental LP, NEXT SOUND — Best Single and NEXT SOUND — Best LP. A work may win both a genre award and the corresponding overall award. An artist may win more than once.
A category with no eligible work will not be awarded. Its $1,000 will be divided equally among the winners of categories that are awarded; any rounding difference goes to the first awarded category in the order above. The full $10,000 will therefore be paid if at least one eligible work is entered. If there is no eligible work in the edition, the Awards will be cancelled and all paid 2026 passes refunded.
2. Who and what may enter
You must be 18 or over, be legally able to participate and receive a prize where you live, and use only one NEXT SOUND account. The organiser, jurors, people who administer judging and their immediate family members may not enter. A group may enter through one authorised account holder. That person must have the contributors' permission, receives any prize and handles any split within the group.
The music must have used at least one AI tool in its creation or production. Generative AI is not required. Tell us which tools were used and what they did. AI-assisted composition, arrangement, sound design, vocals, recording, editing, mixing or mastering can qualify. Merely using AI for administrative tasks, artwork or metadata does not make the music eligible. No tool brand or amount of AI use gives a scoring advantage.
You must own or control, or have permission to use and grant the licence in section 8 for, the recording and all relevant music, lyrics, performances, samples, voices, images and artwork. Covers, remixes and third-party material are allowed only with the needed permissions. If a label, publisher, collecting society or other agreement controls relevant rights, you must check that it permits NEXT SOUND's streaming and Awards promotion. We may ask for reasonable proof. Previously released music may enter if those rights and these Rules allow it.
Entry, payment or prize delivery may be restricted in places where they are unlawful or unavailable. The site must disclose any such restriction before payment.
3. Singles, LPs and categories
A Single is one standalone MP3 recording. Your first eligible standalone Single is free. An LP is one coherent release of 8 to 16 distinct MP3 tracks. Entering an LP also enters its eligible tracks in the applicable Single award at no extra cost. Each Single or LP must enter exactly one of Pop, Electronic, Cinematic and Experimental. Every eligible Single also enters NEXT SOUND — Best Single; every eligible LP also enters NEXT SOUND — Best LP.
If the same recording is entered alone and on an LP, it has one chance in its applicable Single award; the LP is judged separately as a release. We may correct an obvious category error after notifying you and giving you a reasonable chance to respond. File size and technical limits shown at upload apply. If a file cannot be played, we will explain the problem and allow a correction during the entry window where practicable.
4. Passes and extra free entries
The LP Competition Pass costs $10 USD and covers one LP. The Unlimited Competition Pass costs $20 USD and allows additional genuine, distinct Singles and LPs from the same account during this edition. “Unlimited” has no numerical cap, but does not permit duplicates, trivial alternate versions, automated submissions or flooding. Passes do not renew and give no scoring or judging advantage. Buying Unlimited after an LP Pass does not itself refund the LP Pass.
You can also earn one extra free standalone Single entry for 100 qualified ratings on 100 different tracks, one for an eligible public share that clearly discloses the entry reward, and one for each qualifying paid referral. A qualified rating follows at least 30 seconds of listening, or the full track if shorter, and passes integrity checks. A referral qualifies when a genuinely new person buys a pass through your link and keeps the purchase beyond the refund period. Self-referrals, fake shares, duplicate accounts and manipulated ratings do not qualify. These rewards have no cash value and expire with this edition.
Prices are shown in USD. Applicable taxes and the final amount are displayed before you pay. A pass becomes active when payment succeeds.
5. Cancellation and refunds
You may cancel a paid 2026 pass within 14 calendar days of purchase by emailing hello@NextSoundAwards.com from your account email. We will refund the original payment method even if you have already submitted a work. Entries that relied on the cancelled pass leave the competition unless another valid entitlement covers them. We normally initiate the refund within 14 days of your request; your bank or payment provider may take longer to show it.
We also refund a pass if we cancel the edition, cannot provide the purchased entry opportunity because of our own failure, or the law requires it. A rejected work does not automatically trigger a refund if you can still submit an eligible replacement before the deadline. This policy does not remove any mandatory consumer right.
6. Judging and audience ratings
The jury judges Singles as songs and LPs as complete releases. It considers musical quality, originality, artistic direction, emotional impact, coherence, production and how the AI-assisted process serves the music. At least three jurors without a material conflict score each eligible work from 0 to 10. Their average is J.
Registered listeners may give one active 0–10 rating per track and correct it once before the audience cutoff. Invalid, automated, paid or coordinated ratings are excluded after review. To avoid a few ratings deciding an award, the adjusted audience score for each track is A = (n × r + 20 × g) ÷ (n + 20), where n is its number of valid ratings, r is their average and g is the average of all valid ratings in this edition. If there are none, g = 5. For an LP award, A is the average adjusted score of its eligible tracks. No minimum number of ratings is required.
The final score is 80% J + 20% A. The highest eligible score wins each category. A tie goes first to the higher jury score, then to the higher median juror score; if still tied, non-conflicted jurors make a recorded majority decision using the criteria above. NEXT SOUND keeps a record of scoring and may publish a short explanation of results without revealing private voter or juror data.
You may not rate your own work or manipulate ratings or accounts. A material exclusion or disqualification is reviewed by a person, not made automatically from a fraud signal alone.
7. Winners and payment
A potential winner may be asked to verify age, identity, authority to enter the work, rights, the declared AI process and the details needed to pay and report a prize. Respond within 30 calendar days unless we grant a reasonable extension. If a potential winner is ineligible, declines or cannot lawfully receive payment, the next highest eligible work receives that category's prize under the same rules.
We pay confirmed winners by electronic transfer in USD within 60 calendar days after verification is complete. Prize amounts are gross; any legally required withholding or reporting applies. We pay our ordinary transfer fee, while a winner's bank or currency-conversion charges may affect the amount received. Winners are responsible for their own tax obligations. No winner must pay a fee to claim a prize. We may announce the winning artist name, work, category and country.
8. Ownership and five-year Awards licence
Your music stays yours. By submitting a work, you grant the organiser a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence for five years from submission to store and technically process the recording, stream it on NEXT SOUND's own website and apps, display its submitted title, artist name, credits and artwork, and use the work or reasonable excerpts to promote the NEXT SOUND Awards, including on NEXT SOUND's social and advertising channels. Service providers may handle the work only to deliver those uses.
This licence does not transfer ownership. It does not permit standalone sale or distribution, remixes or artistic adaptations, business-venue playback, an independent third-party licence, or a commercial music catalogue. Any future commercial programme requires a new, separate acceptance for each work. When the five years end, NEXT SOUND stops new active streams and promotions and removes audio from its controlled active services within 60 days, subject to ordinary technical caches. Earlier removal may be requested for a substantiated rights, safety or legal issue. A historical record of awards and credits may remain without full-length audio; third-party posts may remain outside our control.
9. Problems, changes and acceptance
We may reject or remove a work for a material rights or eligibility problem, false information, payment fraud, duplicate accounts, rating manipulation or technical interference. Where practicable, we will explain the issue and let you respond or fix a non-fraudulent error. Administrative or eligibility decisions may be challenged at hello@NextSoundAwards.com within 14 days; we will review and respond within 30 days. Artistic scores can be challenged only for a demonstrable calculation or eligibility error.
We will not retroactively reduce the prize pool, shorten the entry window or expand an existing work's licence. Necessary material changes will be announced to affected entrants. If the edition cannot fairly continue, we will explain why and refund paid 2026 passes.
The current Rules must be available before buying a pass and before each submission. Submission requires an unticked acceptance checkbox; NEXT SOUND records the accepted version and time and provides a copy in a durable form. Acceptance does not opt you into marketing or a future commercial programme. The Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice are also available on the site. Spanish law applies, without limiting mandatory rights available to participants in their own location.