DJ Contest

A DJ contest is an open call attached to one event. DJs submit a set from the event's public page, you shortlist the finalists, and the public votes on the sets. By default nobody is told which set belongs to whom, which is the point: the subtitle of the screen reads Run an anonymized DJ contest on this event.

One event holds one contest at a time, and the whole thing is driven from a single screen: DJ Contest, in the Lineup group of the event sidebar.

Before you start

You need the permission. The DJ Contest row is greyed out for anyone without Manage DJ contest on that event. Reaching the screen anyway leaves every button on it disabled.

The event must be published. The public contest page lives at /event/<id>/djcontest, and it stays invisible until the event itself is public — see Publish an event. Your own team can still open it before then, and so can you, through the preview links below.

The event must have a promoter. Creating a contest on an event with no promoter attached fails. Publishing already requires one, so in practice this is covered.

Create the contest

1. Open your event, then DJ Contest in the sidebar.
2. On the No contest yet screen, click Create contest.
3. The Contest settings panel opens on its own. Fill it in, then click Save.
4. You land on Overview with a Draft badge. Nothing is public yet.
5. When the dates and the rules are right, click Activate.

To reopen the settings panel later, use Edit at the top right of the screen.

Contest settings

Once voting has started, the settings that decide fairness are locked and the screen says so: Mode, both identity toggles, the finalist-name announcement, Tally visibility, Result mode and the finalist counts. The windows, the rules, the cover image and the auto-publish toggle stay editable.

How entries arrive

While a contest is active, the public event page shows a View contest card leading to the contest page. Entrants land on Submit your set.

To enter, a DJ must be signed in with a Sway account whose email is confirmed. The address attached to an entry is always that account's own address, never something typed into the form.

The form asks for:

• Artist name — required.
• SoundCloud profile — optional. When given, Sway also tries to link or create the matching artist page.
• Link to your set — required, and it has to be a SoundCloud track Sway can resolve: either a public track, or a valid private link. Anything else is refused as the entrant submits.
• Short description (optional) and Presskit link (optional).
• A confirmation checkbox and a security check.

One account, one entry: submitting again during the window edits the existing one. An entrant can also Withdraw, but only while submissions are open. After that, removing an entry is your job, not theirs.

Review the entries

1. Open the Entries tab.
2. Play each set with the Listen player on the card. Audio link not resolved yet. means the SoundCloud track has not been resolved, and there is nothing to listen to for now.
3. Click Shortlist to keep an entry, or No to reject it.
4. Keep going until you have at least Min finalists shortlisted.

Each card carries the entry's current state (submitted, shortlisted, rejected, disqualified or withdrawn) and the set player. Outside blind review it also shows the entrant's description and a Presskit link when they gave one. Contact details are never shown on the card. Once voting is under way, a vote count appears on the finalist cards; it is read when the page loads, so reload to refresh it.

Blind team review

With Mode set to the team option and Hide artist identity during preselection on, the tab opens with Blind team review is on — entries are shown without artist identity. Entries are listed as Entry 1, Entry 2 and so on, with no name, no profile link and no contact details.

Reveal identity on a card shows that entrant's name and email address and marks the card Revealed. It is deliberate, it is one entry at a time, and every use is recorded. Use it when the decision genuinely needs it — before a disqualification, or on a rights complaint.

Finalise the shortlist

1. Go to Overview.
2. Click Finalize shortlist and confirm.

This closes submissions immediately, even if the submissions window has not ended, freezes the finalist list, and moves the public page on to voting. If fewer entries are shortlisted than Min finalists, it refuses and tells you so.

From that moment Shortlist and No disappear from the entry cards. Disqualify is the only remaining way to remove someone.

Reopen shortlist appears on Overview as an undo, but only while submissions have not genuinely closed yet and voting has not opened. Past either point the button is gone and finalising is the forward path, not a mistake to undo. Reopening un-freezes the list and reopens submissions on the public page, and you have to finalise again before voting can start.

Disqualify a finalist

1. On Entries, click Disqualify on a shortlisted entry.
2. Read the modal, and if you are in blind review, use Reveal identity there to check who it is.
3. Type Disqualify in the field and confirm.

The entry keeps its slot in the frozen finalist list and its votes stop counting towards the standings. This works mid-voting, which is exactly why it is behind a typed confirmation rather than a click.

Publish the results

The Results tab stays on No results yet until voting closes and the standings are frozen.

Publish results appears under that empty state as soon as voting has closed, in both modes.

• With Automatically publish results after voting closes on, publication happens by itself shortly after the voting window ends, and the button is an early-publish override for the wait in between.
• With it off, nothing is revealed until you click it. That click is the only way the results ever become public.

Publishing is refused before voting closes, so there is no way to leak a live tally to voters who have not made up their minds.

Once published, the tab lists the finalists in vote order with their names, their SoundCloud profile and presskit links, and their vote counts.

Recompute results rebuilds the standings from the votes that are currently valid and replaces the published table. Use it after disqualifying a finalist late — the published order does not change on its own.

Confirming a winner

Confirm as winner only exists when Result mode is Public advises — promoter confirms. In that mode the tab opens with Public vote is advisory in this contest — confirm the final winner below, and the vote decides nothing on its own until you pick.

Clicking it is immediate, with no confirmation step, and the choice is shown on the public results page straight away. You can move the Winner badge to another finalist afterwards, but everyone who looked in between has already seen the first name.

The four states

The badge and the buttons on Overview follow the contest's state.

Archive is offered on a draft only, and it is a one-way door in this interface: an archived contest is no longer loaded by this screen, which falls back to No contest yet and offers to create a new one. Close a live contest instead of archiving anything you may still want.

Preview the public page

Immediately above the preview row, Overview shows the public link to the contest with a Copy button, ready for your announcement.