Tropical grand prix is in progress!

Head to the current GP's submission thread here!

Deadline for Tropical GP submissions is March 30th, 11:59 PM / 23:59 EDT!

Welcome to the first ever NGMC, the Newgrounds Musicians' Championship!

What is NGMC?

NGMC is a 10-week-long music event, where the point is first and foremost spontaneous collaboration with your fellow composers. Like Formula 1 racing, which serves as inspiration for NGMC, the competitors will form teams of two, and together they will compete against other teams. But unlike in F1, the silly season is always in progress, and the contestants may switch teams or retire freely after any round!

NGMC is split into 5 grand prixes, or GPs. Each GP lasts for two weeks, and takes place in a unique location. In addition, every NGMC season (2025 being the first) has also an overarching theme, which together with the GP location will form the GP theme, which you should try to convey with your entries to the best of your abilities.

So, what is the theme?

What else would be a better theme for the first season of NGMC than racing! Cold-blooded overtakes, foolhardy cornering at the very limit of grip, and incredible recoveries from certain failure. With mere inches separating total disaster and sweet victory, there's no shortage of drama and spectacle to draw inspiration from. Racing is also a theme which has a lot of potential ways to tackle it: one must not look further than Mario Kart and Need for Speed to hear the variety in fitting soundtracks.

The location for the second GP is also known, which is the Tropics!

From warm white beaches to treacherous jungle undergrowths, the low latitudes of the world are home to a stark juxtaposition of beauty and danger, precisely what motorsports are in their core as well. Get ready to make some blind jumps and last-second evasions, because where we are going not even space-age technology can help us navigate. Unless your definition of a tropical adventure is a plane ticket to the Florida Keys, in which case crack open a cold one, hop on your convertible, and enjoy the gentle breeze of sending it down the highway at 160 miles per hour.

With your teammate, compose a track which would fit a tropical racing scene!

How do I enter?

First of all, as this is a team event, you must find yourself a partner to collab with. For each GP you must enter as a team of two, but how you choose to split the workload is entirely up to you. You can work together on the entries, or if you decide to stick together for longer, you could take turns composing the submissions.

After you have finished your submission, either one of you must make a post on the active GP's forum thread, and link your entry there. When linking your submission, please tag your teammate on the post so that I can clearly see who they are. You should also include the other user in the submission's credits.

And as mentioned before, do note that you do not by any means need to compete in all GPs! You may join in at any time (provided of course that you have a teammate), and you may drop out of a GP or even the whole rest of the contest while still keeping your accumulated points.

I missed the deadline, can I still enter my submission?

Late submissions to GPs are accepted for up to 24 hours after the round has ended, but they will receive a penalty to the amount of votes gained. This is based on the amount of time the submission is late, and goes as follows:

• Less than 1 hour = 5% 
• 1 to 3 hours = 10% 
• 3 to 6 hours = 15%
• 6 to 24 hours = 20%
• more than 24 hours = 100%

This is the same formula which used is in NGUAC.

How are the submissions judged?

Contrary to most events, NGMC does not have a judging panel. Instead, the submissions are voted on by the contestants, and these votes dictate the finishing order of the entries for each GP. When the next GP begins, each contestant picks 5 submissions from the last GP which they feel executed the theme best, and which were the best made overall. They order them from 1st to 5th, with their 1st pick getting 5 votes, dropping by 1 vote per placement so that their 5th pick gets 1 vote.

The votes are tallied together, and the submission will then be awarded points based on it's finishing position, with 1st place getting 10 points, and 8th place getting 1 point, and placements 9 and below being left without any. More detailed breakdown of the scoring system is included in the voting rules.

Sounds intriguing? Here's all the rules for the event neatly listed:

Submission & team rules

• Your team's submission must abide by the Newgrounds Audio Guidelines.
• Your team's submission must be an original composition, remixes / covers / VIPs etc are not allowed.
• Your team's submission must be made during the round / GP, you may not work on it before it has began.
• You may begin working on a potential submission before you have found a teammate.
• Your team may enter only one submission for a GP.
• Your team's submission must be published here on Newgrounds and linked on the relevant GP's thread before the GP's deadline.
• You may not modify your submission until the voting period for the GP it was submitted to has ended.
• You must enter as a team of exactly 2 users for each GP.
• You cannot be part of multiple teams within a single round.
• At least one member of your team must be a scouted artist on the Audio Portal by the GP's deadline.
• You are completely free to create a team and join the event while it is ongoing, even during the very last GP.
• You are completely free to change teams between GPs, in other words, tag teaming is allowed.
• You are completely free to skip GPs or even drop out completely, you will still keep the points you have scored until then
• You are completely free to divide the workload between your teammate in any way as you see fit. In theory your teammate doesn't need to do anything at all (but where's the fun in that?)
• And finally as a reminder, despite the competitive coat of paint (and lots of rules in this list, I like to be thorough :p), this is very much a non-serious event primarily meant to encourage collabing ;)

Voting & scoring rules

• After each GP, the contestants who took part in it will vote on the submissions made by other teams, choosing 5 entries and ordering them as their 1st to 5th choices, giving them 5 to 1 vote(s) respectively. The voting is not done as a team, and the members are free to choose their own rankings.
• You may not vote on your own team's submission.
• Failing to vote will mean that you will not get any points yourself, so remember to vote!
• You may vote publicly on the thread for the current GP (or the post-championship thread for the last GP), or you may PM me your votes here on Newgrounds.
• When voting, one should take into account how well it fits the theme of the GP, how fitting it would be as racing music, and how well made it is in general.
• Votes are then tallied and the entries are ordered based on votes gained, with most voted submission placing 1st, second most voted placing 2nd and so forth.
• In case of ties, the submission with most 1st place votes - or if those are identical - the submission with most 2nd place votes and so on will decide the order.
• If there are somehow still ties, the FIA (Federation Internationale de l'AED4) will act as the unelected jury and vote on those submissions.
• The actual points scored by the contestants are then given based on their submission's placement in regards to the Formula 1 scoring system from years '03 - '09 (10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for placements 1 to 8 respectively, 0 points for placements 9 and lower)
• Points are given to both team members, not to the team itself. Changing teams won't affect your own points.

Schedule

• Round 1 - The Arctic Grand Prix: MAR 04 to MAR 16
• Round 2 - The ??? Grand Prix: MAR 17 to MAR 30 (also R 1 voting)
• Round 3 - The ??? Grand Prix: MAR 31 to APR 13 (also R 2 voting, R 1 results)
• Round 4 - The ??? Grand Prix: APR 14 to APR 27 (also R 3 voting, R 2 results)
• Round 5 - The ??? Grand Prix: APR 28 to MAY 11 (also R 4 voting, R 3 results)
• Round 5 voting: MAY 12 to MAY 25 (also R 4 results)
• Round 5 results and total results: MAY 26

All Dates begin at 12:00 AM / 00:00 EST/EDT and end on 11:59 PM / 23:59 EST/EDT, same as Newgrounds' server time.

What happens if I win?

• The three contestants with most points in the end will be gifted a year-long supporter status by yours truly, and a cool signature to boast your placement with.

TL;DR

• Team up with someone for each round. You can team up with the same person for multiple rounds, or switch things up.
• Compose a track with a racing feel and which is a fit for the environment of the current round (currently Tropical)
• After the next round begins, vote on your 5 favourite submissions from the previous round on the current round's thread or by messaging me.

Still interested? Then get started on putting together a team and begin working on your submission!

If you have any further questions, ask away below in the comments, in the active grand prix thread, or in the #ngmc25-general channel on the Newgrounds Audio Pub discord server. We also have a channel #ngmc2025-teamup which might be a good place to start if you're wondering where/how to find a team.