I've a few comments on this. While I wasn't a previous competitor, I did keep quite a close eye on the competition.
The prize money coming from the competitors is a decent idea. Spending an hour or two reviewing to compete is perfecting fair. You would have to keep in mind though that not everyone can write reviews at the desired quality.
If you definitely want to motivate people to participate (although I don't think it's strictly needed), then I suggest you also look at alternatives to cash prizes, games, etc. Perhaps if you have contacts in the music industry, you could send them the winning track? I'm sure people would much prefer some recognition to a cash prize. Maybe an extra "bragging right", tied to their account? Something simple like a "remixSite Winner" title.
Another point is that having open voting and cash prizes is a bad idea. I'm not commenting on the previous competition at all. If a user really wants the prize, then they'll do everything they can to win. With public voting, this is incredibly easy, and there's no real way you can prove it.
With about an hour of work, I could probably get 2000+ votes on a track, with a nice spread over 6 and 7, with a couple of 5s for "authenticity". Equally I could do the reverse to everyone elses track. No amount of analysing the curve, what subnet the votes came from, etc. would prove that there was any wrongdoing.
A much easier way is to get a few judges. As I posted in another thread:
4 judges and 1 guest judge (generally the winner of the previous competition). Each listens to the songs and give their top 5 (or 3, depending on the amount of entries). Winners are worked out from that.
So in the next competition, the guest judge would be KiddCabbage. For the other judges, you would try get a few people who enjoy several genres of music. Obviously if every judge mainly likes electronic music, then any tracks without this would suffer. It shouldn't be too hard to pick 4 judges with differing tastes. The guest judge also adds a bit of a difference to each month.
While you may think that each judge could be biased, rate friends or acquaintances higher, etc. (which is true), you should also keep in mind that the final winner is chosen from the overall data of all 5 toplists.
Hopefully you'll take this into consideration. Interest will be generated in the site with every competition, and you should see visitors and competitors increase as time goes on.
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