New Music Festival

Since 2004–2005, influenced by the Eurovision Song Contest and the large Internet community, online music contests are being realized all over Europe but in Net. NMF (New Music Festival) is one example of the large number of that contests and it is, currently, in Edition 2, held in Madrid Arena, Spain. Everyone can participate at [1] All countries of the world can participate, taking larger the possibility of more participants. Since June 2009, this contest is managed.

Format

Like Eurovision, NMF has semifinals, but this contest holds now three. The number of semifinals depends on the number of contestants. After that, the big final is realized, putting the best songs on scoreboard. The maximum number of finalists is 25, when there are semifinals, as 11 is the minimum of contestants to run the contest. Every edition has a logo, hosts, host arena and host city to take the contest more realistic. They are chosen by the last winner and the hosts have to be from the winning country, as the host arena and host city. Without songs, an online music contest is impossible to realize. So, to choose the songs, the contestants have to send to the manager, the video link, the music title and the singer name. In NMF 2,  Spain made a National Final to choose the song, and the winner of the NFinal, will represent Spain at the contest.

Voting

With all the songs chosen by players, the voting starts. Each participant has to listen all the songs of his semi/final and then, vote. The system of voting is like the Eurovision one. There are some differences. Each player give 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points to his 10 favorite songs. Then, the player has to send 3 reserves - They will be used only if a country withdraws (For example, a player of Japan gave Germany 10 points, but  Germany withdraws and the reserve 1 will take 1 point. The same player gave Iceland 6 points, and with the withdraw, he will give it 7 points, now).

Results

Ended the deadline of voting, the results are shown. In Semifinals, only qualifiers are revealed, usually in Windows Messenger. The Big Final, more exciting^{[peacock term]}, the results are powered by Scorewiz (www.escnation.com) and the country with the highest amount of points, win. As the rules say, if there is a tie at the first position, who received the most points from most juries, win.

Political and diaspora voting

Unlike Eurovision, there has been no evidence of a political or major diaspora vote within NMF. As with all online contests, friends can vote for each other but the probability of this having a significant impact is limited.

Rules

Rules can be found at NMF Site

Special Edition - NMF 5

Celebrating his 5th edition, New Music Festival thought that it was the time to take a break of normal editions where only 21st century songs can take part. It was the time, in NMF 5, of 80's sounds. The winner is unknown but the results will be announced after all rounds.

Format of Special

As this edition is Special, there is a lot of thing that changed, like the voting system. Instead of the Eurovision style, the manager proposed a thing that consists of duels. Each player rank all the songs, the number one is his favorite, proceeded by his number two... When NMF has got all ranks, the best song will compete with the worst, the second best with the second last... until we have the final duel, between 2 songs. The winner won't take it at all, because he won't gain the right to host next edition. The NMF4 winner,  France won't host this edition, but NMF 6

Reactions about the special format

Many participants are able to withdraw due to this format. When the manager announced this special format, he talked about one new rule that a singer only could send three songs in the whole contest and many players associated it to the special edition, making one of the biggest confusions on the show.

Editions

#	Country	City	Arena	Winner
01	Sweden	Stockholm	Globen Arena	Spain
02	Spain	Madrid	Madrid Arena	Canada
03	Canada	Toronto	Air Canada Centre	Cyprus
04	Cyprus	Limassol	Spyros Kyprianou Arena	France
05	Special	Special	Special	TBD