I'm not sure about everyone else, but I'm a bit tired of sending my SASEs on expensive rides around the country. As for this argument about an app fee causing possible entrants to self-select more carefully, I don't know too many composers who are just freewheelingly throwing contest applications around. It's an expensive process even without an application fee: it takes time to prepare materials to the specifications of each contest, and money to print / bind / burn CDs / mail this stuff out.
They're not bad people, obviously. This is just a bit annoying. I'm going to go back to listening to and writing about actual CULTURE now, rather than these stupid contests that claim to support it but really just form part of this immense and overpowering system from which it can be difficult to extricate one's priorities. The 8bb cats even told us, in their masterclass the other day, that they always recommend starting with people you know, commissioning locally, working with your friends. We should all be doing that, too, instead of trying to win contests run by people we don't know. (I suppose there's probably space for both.)
Christian Carey has also written an attack on the 8bb app fee over at S21. He accuses them, quite validly I think, of using the fees to "fund" a commission. A predictably enormous comments thread proceeded.
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