Study: When Judging Music Competitions, Looks Matter Most

Now a new study may provide further ammunition for competition skeptics. Dr. Chia-Jung Tsay and her research team at University College London found that when it comes to judging a performance, people will focus more on an artist's stage presence than their musical prowess.

Tsay's team gave 1200 volunteers, including professional musicians and novices, recordings of three finalists from 10 international singing competitions, and asked them to guess the eventual winners. Some of the clips were only video, some were only audio and others contained both sound and images.  More