The battle of the bands tracker for your local scene

No two local band competitions are run quite the same way, but most follow a familiar shape. If you've been to one, a lot of this will ring a bell.

Heats, semis and a final

Competitions tend to start with a run of heats or early rounds, often spread over several weeks at the same venue or across a handful of venues in a town or city. Each night puts four to six acts on the bill, each playing a short set. The strongest go through to a semi-final, and the last few standing meet in a final, which is usually the busiest night of the lot.

Audience votes, judges, or both

Some competitions are decided purely by the crowd, with a ballot, a token in a jar or a show of hands. Others bring in a judging panel of promoters, sound engineers, local radio presenters or musicians, scoring things like performance, songwriting and stage presence. Plenty use a mix of the two, which is why every band spends the week beforehand begging their friends to turn up.

A guest headliner to round things off

While the votes are counted, many nights bring on a guest headliner: an established local band, a past winner or a touring act. Some also have a support band who isn't competing, warming the room up before the first contender plays.

Prizes worth playing for

Prizes vary, but common ones include studio time to record a single or EP, a slot at a local or regional festival, a support slot with a bigger act, gear vouchers, or a bit of cash. For a young band, a festival slot or a day in a proper studio can be a big step up.

A ballot slip in a coat pocket or a blurry phone photo of the running order isn't much of a record. A battle of the bands app gives you one place to keep it all, and because StubStash is also your gig diary, those nights sit alongside every concert and festival you've been to rather than in a separate notebook you'll lose.

The real payoff is the artist directory. Over time it fills up with unsigned bands you caught in a back room, and when one of them turns up on a festival line-up or a support tour years later, you can open the app and see exactly when and where you first saw them. That's the kind of thing a camera roll never tells you.

If you mostly go to bigger shows, our concert tracker app page covers how StubStash handles headliners, support acts, ticket prices and setlists.

Battle of the Bands nights pull in a mix of people, and StubStash works for all of them.

• Local music fans who go to every round because it's the cheapest, most surprising night out in town, and want to keep track of the new bands they find.
• Mates and families who turn up to cheer someone on. You'll have a record of every round you watched them play, and who they were up against.
• The bands themselves, who can log the rounds they played, the other acts on the bill and the headliners they shared a stage with. It's a handy way to remember how the band got started.

Whichever you are, it all goes into the same archive as the rest of your live music history. See the StubStash homepage for everything else the app does.