Grand prize: $1,000
Second place: $500
Third place: $250
July 3: Submissions open
July 9, 11:59 PM EST: Submissions close
July 14: Winners announced
2020 probably hasn’t been what any of us had in mind when planning our New Year resolutions—but it has been a year of growth and change. To help us come to terms with they way our years have turned out so far, we're turning to music. Make the case for your 2020 anthem: the one song that perfectly sums up your year so far, or has been on repeat getting you through some of the difficult times, or has made you hopeful that 2021 will be a brighter year. Enter the Challenge and tell us why when you look back on the year, this song is the one that will remind you of where you were in 2020.
For your story to be considered, please embed your song in the body of your story (we want to give it a listen!) For more on how to embed media, take a look at this guide.
For your story to be eligible, it must be between 600 and 5,000 words and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Stories published on Vocal and entered into the contest up until July 9 2020, at 11:59 PM EST will be entered for consideration. Official Rules for the Challenge can be found here.
The 2020 Anthem Challenge is exclusive to Vocal+ members. To learn more and upgrade to Vocal+ visit https://vocal.media/vocal-plus.
To be eligible to win the grand prize, second place, or third place prizes, you must be over the age of 13 and residing in a country where Stripe is available at the time of entry. A complete list of countries where Stripe is available can be found here—winners will need to have a Stripe account created and connected in order to receive the prizes. For this reason, entrants located outside of any of these 35 countries will not be eligible to win.
After my internship ended early from the coronavirus pandemic and freelance film industry jobs were left in shambles, I found myself with an overabundance of time and a lack of money. Fortunately, I remembered a little website called Vocal where I won a writing Challenge the year before.
Today we’re excited to introduce Challenges, a new way for creators to get inspired and join the rest of the Vocal community in some friendly competition. Starting this week, creators will be able to participate in various Challenges across a range of topics and interests for the chance to win cash prizes, experiences, and much more.
There’s no one right way to tell a story. Inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes, and we want to see what yours looks like. Challenges are meant to inspire this creativity, and we want to see you tell a story that’s unique and authentic to you—but there are just a few things we look for across the board to be sure we’re judging every entry consistently and fairly.