Make Music? Painfully Skint? Enter Now To Win $20,000
Are you talented but skint? Musical but broke? Good news - we're here to bless you.
Up and Monster Children, in association with BIGSOUND, present Upstarters, a new initiative we’ve created offering emerging Australian artists the chance to win $20,000 to support touring, recording, and the next creative chapter of their career. Free and easy to enter—all you need is a name, a song, and a story.
Judged by guests from the Australian music industry, the top five shortlisted artists will play the inaugural Up x Monster Children showcase at BIGSOUND 2026 in Brisbane (1–4 September), with one artist taking home the grand prize: twenty thousand gorgeous Australian dollarydoos to throw at whatever musical thing they like.
Do you know what you could buy with $20k? You could head overseas on your first international tour. You could actually book some studio time for your next recording. You could finally press your album to vinyl. You could buy five Fender Limited Edition '65 Deluxe Reverb Western Creamback amplifiers. You could buy seven thousand guitar picks. You could buy twenty-nine and three-quarters of a Behringer JN-80 Analog Synthesizer. You could buy twenty thousand songs on the jukebox at the pub. The possibilities are endless.
How it works:
One Artist or Band:Submit a link to your artist or band Instagram or Tik Tok profile.
One Song: Submit a link to an original song that's already available on a streaming or hosting platform (e.g. Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, YouTube or Bandcamp).
One Story. - Submit a link (e.g. a public Google Drive Link, Youtube link, Instagram link) to a 15-second 9:16 portrait video answering the question: What would you or your band do with the $20,000 Upstarters grant?
Click HERE to enter, and best of luck to you.
BIGSOUND is Australia's premier music industry conference and showcase festival, held annually in September in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. It’s the Southern Hemisphere's largest Music Industry Conference & Festival and has a strong focus on discovering and developing emerging Australian artists
Up is a digital bank building tools that help young Aussies get better at money. Built to give, not take, Up has been doing just that since 2018. That same philosophy extends beyond banking, with a long-standing commitment to backing Australian artists, musicians and creatives through partnerships and initiatives like Upstarters.
