Album Submission Application for CASA Programs

Please provide all requested contact information for the group or CARA/Sing liaison. Certificates and stickers will be sent to this address if your submission wins a CARA.

The Contemporary A cappella Recording Awards are the world's pre-eminent recording awards exclusively for a cappella music. If you choose to participate, your album will be listened to by a worldwide team of nominators, and a small number of the best albums will be judged by a panel consisting of professional a cappella artists, producers, and critics.

Sing is an all-vocal compilation album founded in the spirit of unifying collegiate and professional a cappella groups. The series began in 2003 and has quickly developed into a yearly collection of some of the world's finest and most diverse vocal music. In addition to collegiate and professional groups from the United States, the albums now feature talent from high schools across the country and internationally acclaimed professional a cappella groups.

Sing was created to showcase a slice of the best of contemporary a cappella to both the existing vocal music establishment and the a cappella virgin masses. The purpose of the compilation is to give talented groups and individuals an opportunity to be heard on a worldwide stage by placing their music alongside some of the biggest names in the a cappella universe. As the compilation has grown, the series has begun to thrive on choosing groups and tracks that stretch the limits of the genre, including groundbreaking original music from some of the hottest new stars. In listening to any Sing album, our hope is that each listener will appreciate the growing creativity of the a cappella art form and will be challenged and even inspired to bring this ingenuity into their own local spheres of vocal performance. Sing is the only compilation that has garnered a perfect RARB score ever — and we have done it multiple times!

Now an eagerly anticipated annual phenomenon, the Sing series boasts five installments, each album filled with innovative, exceptional tracks that display the versatile power of the human voice. The compilation's most recent volume, Sing V: Groovus, features two world exclusives, an international collaboration, and nine original tracks (two from collegiate ensembles).

Beginning with Sing 6, the compilation album will be available online for free to all CASA members and will be featured on CASA radio on an ongoing basis. Thus, participation provides selected artists with great exposure to the biggest group of a cappella fans in the world!

Many other compilations require artists to pay to play; groups have to fork over money for albums that they may or may not wish to sell. In an effort to maintain our extremely high standards, we have gotten rid of this requirement. Albums will be available as digital downloads only, via CASA's website (www.casa.org), A Cappella Records (www.acappellarecords.com), and iTunes. Extremely limited edition physical albums will be available at SoJAM (www.sojam.net) but only until they sell out (most likely on the first night).

If selected for inclusion on the Sing compilation, I hereby grant CASA the usage of any track on the album unless otherwise indicated. CASA will be able to use said recording in any way they desire without further compensation to the qualifying group. Qualifying group agrees to hold harmless CASA with respect to any legal considerations. Please type your name here to indicate an electronic signature of agreement, and indicate any special instructions here.

Tunes To Teens (TTT) is a nonprofit program of the Contemporary A Cappella Society designed to put a cappella CDs into the hands of developing singers. Chorus by chorus, TTT sends junior high and high school students a cappella CDs donated by a variety of sources. Choruses participating for the first time can receive up to 100 CDs for free. The program's goals are to spark interest in a cappella music in up-and-coming singers, and to serve as a touchstone for directors to teach their students the basics of music theory. Since 2003, over 4000 students across the United States and Canada have received CDs from TTT.

Donated a cappella CDs in a variety of styles are sent out to junior high and high school chorus directors, and they give each of their students a CD to keep as their own. The students can lend or swap them with their friends, showing them how cool a cappella music can be. Choruses with up to 100 students are eligible for free CDs, if it's their first time participating in the program. For bigger choruses, the first 100 students can receive free CDs, with additional CDs available for $1 per student (US$1.50 each for choruses outside the US).

Donated CDs come from anyone and anywhere-- from organizations who have extra CDs they would like to contribute, to groups who would like their CDs heard by young singers, to fans who have CDs they'd like to pass along, to benefactors who want to invest in the future of a cappella music. Donors can also write off the donation as a tax deduction, under CASA's non-profit status.

If you would like to include any extra albums above the required 3 for inclusion in the Tunes to Teens program, please feel free to do so. Make sure that there is no profanity on the album as we cannot pass these on to schools.