Like every year, the Italian music scene is getting ready for the Sanremo Festival. In about one month Italy's most important pop music event will start: from February 17th to 22nd a great part of the Italian audience will watch the 59th edition, on RAI 1 as usual. This year, there will be some important changes to the usual format, thanks to Paolo Bonolis' organization. In the newly-introduced online competition for young talent we meet MiOdio, who represented San Marino in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest.

Beside the usual competition between "Big" (famous singers) and "Nuove proposte" (young, deburing artists), Bonolis thought of a third competition, something completely new for the Sanremo Festival: an online contest for young singers/groups.

Visiting the Sanremo official site here (in Italian) you will be able to watch all the videos and listen to all the songs chosen for this online contest. The voting (through telephone and sms) will be divided into several phases:

From January 18th to 25th: 1st phase – 50 songs proceed to the 2nd phase
From January 26th to February 1st : 2nd phase – 30 songs proceed to the 3rd phase
From February 2nd to 8th: 3rd phase – 10 songs proceed to the 4th phase
From February 9th to 19th: 4th phase

Among the participating artists we find MiOdio, the band which represented San Marino in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Evoluzione genetica. Their song can be found on page 5 of the list.

A report by Cristina Giuntini, president of OGAE Italy.