The New York Times - 7th Annual Student Podcast Contest

We invite students to create an original podcast of five minutes or less that informs or entertains. Contest dates: April 17 to May 15.

A Few Rules

In addition to the guidelines above, here are a few more details:

• You must be a student ages 13 to 19 in middle school or high school to participate, and all students must have parent or guardian permission to enter. Please see the F.A.Q. section for additional eligibility details.

• Please be sure to use non-copyrighted sound effects or music, with some exceptions. You can find royalty-free music and sound effects on Freesound and SoundBible, or by doing a web search for royalty-free files. You can also use audio editing software to create your own music or sound effects. There are limited fair use exceptions when you can legally use copyrighted music or sound effects, such as when you are critiquing a song or reporting on a film. Read more about those exceptions to ensure that your use of copyrighted material does not infringe on copyright protections. If you use any music or sounds effects, please list the sources in the designated field in the submission form.

• We suggest uploading your podcast to SoundCloud to make it easier for our judges to listen to your work. Make sure that the track settings are set to “public.” Our judges will also listen to entries hosted on other podcasting sites, including Podomatic, Buzzsprout, Anchor, Spreaker and Podbean. Please make sure you follow your hosting site’s terms of service. Note: Our judges have often had difficulty listening to podcasts hosted on GoogleDrive, so we strongly recommend you use a different method.

• Your piece should be no longer than five minutes. Please be sure to check the length of your audio file before submitting. Just to be very clear, 5:01 is longer than five minutes.

• The work you submit should be fundamentally your own — it should not be plagiarized, written by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence.

• Your podcast must be original for this contest. That means it should not already have been published at the time of submission, whether by a radio station, another contest or an any other site (not including your own page or a teacher’s class page). However, after you submit to this contest, you are allowed to submit your entry to another publication or contest for possible publication.

• Keep in mind that the work you send in should be appropriate for a Times audience — that is, something that could be published in a family newspaper (so, please, no curse words).

• You may work alone or with a group, but students should submit only one entry each.

• You must also submit a short, informal “artist’s statement” as part of your submission, that describes your process. These statements, which will not be used to choose finalists, help us to design and refine our contests. See the F.A.Q. to learn more.

• All entries must be submitted by May 15, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time using the electronic form below.

What’s the prize?

• Having your work published on The Learning Network.

When will the winners be announced?

• About six to eight weeks after the contest has closed.