Steemit and the community behind it never ceases to amaze me. Many of you know I host the Steemit Open Mic contest, a live music venue where musicians can share their music on Steemit, engage with the active community, get their music heard, and earn some followers and rewards.

Started 59 weeks ago, it has grown from 5 entries a week to about 90-100 entries per week and shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, it just keeps getting bigger and better.

Before I share with you the new developments happening right now and on the horizon, I first want to thank and acknowledge the strong support from @pfunk who has sponsored this contest from the beginning, the tireless efforts from the judges panel made up of @verbal-d, @krystle, @soundlegion, @jessamynorchard, @passion-ground, and myself @luzcypher, and the many great musical contributions from all the talented musicians entering and supporting the project.

I also want to thanks @xeldal for his +20,912 Steem Power delegation to my account that helps increase upvote rewards to the participants.

And @quinneaker for supporting Open Mic from day one and also funding me a ticket to SteemFest this year in Lisbon.

All of your efforts and support is what makes Open Mic a fun and active community.

I strongly urge you to go vote for @pfunk right now as a witness. He is currently one of the top 20 witnesses and you can do that here.

Now let me share with you some new developments.

Steemit Open Mic News

First off, @ausbitbank created a new account named @openmic and an Open Mic bot to go with it.

What does the Open Mic Bot do?

You can read all about it in his post titled, Announcing The Openmic Account And A Call For Help --- by @ausbitbank

To quote from his post:

He didn't stop there though. He also personally delegated 4,500 Steem Power to the @openmic account and asked others to delegate what they can. So far, in less than 24-hours since his post was published the @openmic account has (+20,999.452 STEEM) delegated to it!

This means that every valid Open Mic entry will now earn more. Don't you just love this community?

You can vote for @ausbitbank as witness here. He is one of the top 20 witnesses.

To the best of my knowledge at the time this post was published this is who contributed to the account.

Delegator	SP
@fulltimegeek	15,000 SP
@ausbitbank	4,500 SP
@luzcypher	1,000 SP
@steevc	200 SP
@buzzbeergeek	125 SP
@meno	100 SP

If I missed anyone please let me know so I can edit this post and include your contribution.

The support for Steemit Open Mic is amazing and I'm really blown away how much everyone has enjoyed this little thing of ours. Music is funny like that.

Thanks everyone for helping fund the account.

To anyone thinking they can now scam the Open Mic bot by posting under the openmic tag. BAD DOG NO! It doesn't work that way. It only follows what the judges upvote manually so you still have to follow the rules to have a valid entry.

If you would like to delegate Steem Power to the @openmic account you can. You still will have 100% access to your SP and can get it back at any time.

To Delegate SP use this handy tutorial:

Tutorial- How To Delegate Sp To Another User Using The Steemconnect Tool From Busy.Org --- by @timcliff

You can also just modify this link and pop in into your browser:

https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=YOURUSERNAM&delegatee=openmic&vesting_shares=AMOUNTOFSTEEMPOWER%20SP

NOTE: Change the YOURUSERNAME in the link above to your Steemit username and AMOUNTOFSTEEMPOWER to the amount you want to delegate. Leave everything else the same.

You must also have an account on SteemConnect.com first.

I was very wary giving my active key to a site at first, but when I talked with @ned at SteemFest he assured me using SteemConnect is secure. It is like when you sign into a website using Facebook, but for Steemit users.

Once you have made the changes paste the link into your browser and hit enter and follow the instructions to confirm.

You will come to a page like this:

/
The only difference is it will be your username and the amount you decided to delegate.

Once you enter your key it will show that it worked with a page like this:

If you ever change your mind or want your SP back - simply cancel your delegations with this link.

What If I Don't Have Much Steem Power?

Another way you can upvote valid Open Mic posts is to follow the Streemain trail for @openmic.

image credit

If you'd like to support verified #openmic entries by automatically voting on everything @openmic votes on, which you'll remember is still manually upvoted by the team, please

Support the entrants by following the Open Mic curation trail using Streemian. Click on the big, green + JOIN TRAIL button above.

We listen to and verify every entry to Open Mic so your votes will only go to real entries and you can unfollow the trail at any time.

Want To Win A Free Guitar?

Like I keep saying, the Steemit community never ceases to amaze me. Thanks to some amazingly generous sponsorship from @meno we are launching a Songwriters Contest within the next week and the grand prize to the winner is a new acoustic-electric guitar with a hard case!

That's right! We are giving away a brand new guitar!

Want to see it and hear it? Watch this video.

I will be announcing the contest before November is over so stay tuned, get your creative, musical juices going, and let's make some original music.

It's going to be a lot of fun and you just may win a new guitar!

By the way, this is @meno. Say thanks to @meno everyone!

Oh, wait a minute, that's Nemo. Well, hi anyway. Very, very high to you both. Can you play guitar?

So who is donating a guitar to this contest?

@meno

@meno good.

Get your songwriting chops tuned up and tuned in to the Songwriters Contest sponsored by @meno.

Open Mic Opens Possibilities

A touching story while having too much to drink in Lisbon...

At the Snooker Club in Lisbon during Steemfest this year I talked with the mystery man from Venezuela who made me realize how Open Mic can really make a difference in people's lives thanks to Steemit. -- @luzcypher

Who is this mystery man?

You can read all about it at Help Me Solve This Mystery - The Man That Blew My Mind At Steemfest

More About The Open Mic Bot

Read @ausbitbanks's full explanation on his post titled Announcing The Openmic Account And A Call For Help --- by @ausbitbank

Thanks To Everyone

In closing, I thank @ausbitbank for moving things along for the Open Mic community, each of you for participating, and will continue growing a thriving community for musicians on Steemit.