Lancaster Music Festival have announced they will play host to the winner of Live and Unsigned 2012, but they have gone even further and confirmed that they will also be giving three other Live and Unsigned acts from Manchester festival slots!

Lancaster Music Festival is set to take place across the city of Lancaster from 12th – 14th October 2012. The 2011 festival saw thousands of festival goers of all ages flock to the city centre’s pubs, clubs, restaurants and outdoor markets for over 100 acts representing every conceivable genre of live music from punk, blues, blue grass, pop, indie, grunge, post-grunge, heavy metal, funk, folk, rock, world, classical, maritime and avant-garde and 2012 should be no exception with nearly 30 confirmed venues already.

Lancaster Music Festival 2012In 2012 it is expected to expand the outdoor stages in addition to making more use of public buildings and spaces. They also hope to host industry workshops for those in the music business who want to develop their music livelihood further. The Lancaster Music Festival was primarily set up to celebrate the simply staggering variety and talent of musicians and music organisations that thrive and survive in the many regular live music venues in this attractive market town. A soggier version of Austin’s SXSW in the making but with better views (when the sun shines).

Ben Ruth, festival coordinator at Lancaster Music Festival, said; "Live and unsigned describes pretty much most of our acts as a grassroots / community run festival with some good international connections.

Being part of the winner’s UK tour is probably the one new thing we were hoping for to add to the programming for this year to keep things growing and colourful year on year..."

How to play the Lancashire festival

Lancaster Music Festival will play host to three bands hand-picked from Manchester as well being one of the last festival stops on the UK Tour for the overall winner of Live and Unsigned 2012. Other festivals confirmed in the winner’s tour are Relentless Energy Drink Boardmasters, Strawberry Fields Festival, Brownstock, Bingley Music Live, Butserfest, Norfolk Spectacular and London Summer Jam.

Live & Unsigned is the biggest unsigned music competition for original unsigned bands and artists in the UK. It offers the finalists the chance to play at The O2 in London alongside some of the UK's best musicians at Live Fest, London’s biggest indoor festival. There’s also £100,000 worth of prizes to be won, including an additional new main cash prize of £10,000 for the winning act to spend on development.

Auditions will begin in January 2012 and all acts in the competition are auditioned live. Acts that make it through the audition stage will get to perform to industry judges, A & R associates and celebrity guests. Judging last year’s competition and hopefully set to join the panel again in 2012 include; Radio 1 DJ’s Annie Nightingale, Ras Kwame, Tom Deacon and Daniel P Carter; Kerrang’s Alex Baker; and Happy Mondays star Bez.

If you are interested in playing the best festivals of 2012, including Lancashire festival Lancaster Music Festival 2012, click here to check out all the festival partners for Live and Unsigned 2012.