The audition process culminated in the judges selecting 15 acts being selected for the Semi-Finals which take place at the Fountain Studios in Wembley (which is also used for The X Factor). Each Semi-Final has 5 acts with a 5 minute voting window at the end of the show to decide which 2 acts from each Semi-Final proceeds to the Final which takes place on the 19th September at Wembley Arena.
The winner of the show will receive a £100,000 cash fund rather than a record contract with an emphasis on giving the acts control over their careers. Additionally, every song performed on the show is available to download from iTunes and Sky Songs with 100% of the net profits of the songs and merchandise going to the musicians.
Joining Hero, Missing Andy, Emma's Imagination, Pepper & Piano and Daithi in front of a 10,000-strong packed house at Wembley Arena will be Arcade Fire-channelling indie boy-band the Pictures. What kind of impact such a vertiginous leap up the pop food chain will have on this fresh-faced lineup's capacity to build long-term careers remains to be seen. And it will be interesting to see how the music business responds to a development that must have chilled the marrow of Britain's hard-working A&R fraternity. But there is one asset each of these acts has in common (aside from their uniformly terrible names). When the time comes to utter that most reliable of reality-show finalist consolation phrases "We're all winners, really" – this usually bogus claim will actually have some financial substance to it.

"There are rehearsals I have to be at in London a few days before the final and I have to record the track Focus for release. I wrote the song for someone who means a lot to me."The final is going to be the biggest performance of my life.If I win the £100,000, it will all go into recording, touring and promotion. I am serious about this. I want to make music for the rest of my life so I am grabbing it by both horns.
In the years since Top of the Pops took its last journey to the merciful veterinarian, British TV's quest for a Simon Cowell-free prime-time music format has assumed the unlikely character of Ferdinand Magellan's search for the north-west passage. And if you were looking for likely sources of a radical restructuring of the relationship between TV and original songwriting, an early evening Sky talent show presented by Fearne Cotton would not be the first one you'd think of.

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