Moldova’s national broadcaster TRM has announced more information on how their entry for the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest, which will be held in Rotterdam this coming May, is going to be selected. The public will not be involved in the song selection this year, as Moldova’s act will be chosen by a professional jury only.

The professional jury will be made of an uneven number of music industry professionals – a minimum of five, and a maximum of 11. A public notary and a secretary will also be included in this jury, but they will have no vote – they will check the validity of the results.

All artists wishing to represent Moldova in Rotterdam need to submit their application containing:

• all information on the composer(s), artist(s), lyricist(s), etc.. (full name, date of birth, residence, address, contact information)
• printed version of the lyrics, and their translation (in case the song is not in Romanian)
• a full description of the project:
  • concept of interpretation
  • a brief description of the planned stage performance
  • storyboard, visual sketches, images, links to the stage creations
  • information on the number of people on stage
  • the concept of the outfits
  • musical instruments that may appear on stage
  • the mood and the atmosphere of the stage
  • the concept of the LED content
  • the estimated sketch of the lightning effects
  • information on the creative team
• as well as a filled out application form to the following address:
  mun. Chișinău,str. Hâncești, 64, TV Moldova 1 (anticamera TV)

Applications are being accepted from Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm local time. You can also send your application via email to eurovision@trm.md with the song in an mp3 file (256Kbps). The deadline to apply is the 17th of January at 5pm local time.

Singers wishing to represent Moldova must have Moldovan citizenship. In case of a band, or a collaboration between various artists, at least 50% of the total number of soloists must have Moldovan citizenship. One act is allowed to enter various songs to the competition.

The selection process will consist of two stages. After the submission deadline, all of the applications are going to be reviewed. Only the entries submitted with all required documents and files will be reviewed and by a majority vote of the preselection jury they will be admitted to the second round.

Phase two is going to be a live audition, where all of the acts are going to be invited to perform their song live in front of the main jury. Backing vocals can be recorded on the backing track for this stage, but the main vocals must be live. At this stage, the performers don’t need to have their actual costumes already, nor the choreography already prepared and presented. Participants who fail to attend the live audition will be disqualified. The auditions will be aired live on TRM2.

All jury members will mark all songs from 0 to 12, and as soon as the last song was performed, the public notary is going to calculate the results, and the winner is going to announced. In case of a tie, the act that got more times 12 points is going to win. If there’s a tie in all awarded points as well, the song that the youngest jury member prefers is going to be the winner.

All expenses of preparation and participation in the Contest and incurred by the participant.

Anna Odobescu won last year’s national selection O Melodie Pentru Europa, by winning the jury votes and finishing in second place in televoting. She went on to represent Moldova in Tel Aviv with “Stay”, and unfortunately failed to qualify for the Grand Final.