Your teen can explore 0Skips before you decide.

Parent FAQ

This page explains how 0Skips works in plain language. It is not a legal document; see the privacy notice and the legal pages for those.

Who runs this?

0Skips is a student music contest running a pilot in Utah for students 13 and older. The people responsible for it, and how to reach a real person, are on our About page. You can also contact us any time.

What can my teen do before I give permission?

Your teen can create a basic account, pick a stage name, explore the AI-Assisted, Cover and Original paths, look at the planning checklist and see what the next steps are.

If your teen is under 18, your permission is required before anything official happens: uploads, coaching, official submission, and any public or supporter-facing feature. Permission to publish is separate, and you give it one video at a time.

What if my student is 18?

Students who are 18 can give permission for themselves. Students under 18 need a parent or guardian’s permission before they move past signing up and exploring.

What do you collect about my child?

As little as we can run on.

At signup: your child’s email or sign-in identity, a birth-year band, a stage name they choose, and your email so we can ask for your permission.

While they work: their drafts, lyrics, images, notes about their process, and their answers to the reflection questions in the builder.

If they publish: the YouTube link they submit, and the public counts around it.

We do not ask for a home address unless we need to ship a T-shirt, and we do not ask for college savings account details at signup.

Who can see my child’s work?

• Drafts are private. Only your child, the coach reviewing their entry, and 0Skips staff who need to look. Drafts are never public and are never on a public URL.
• Their stage name and avatar are what the site shows. Not their real name, not their school, not their face unless they choose to put it in their own video.
• Nothing student-made becomes public without a named human approving it, and that approval is written into a log that cannot be edited afterward.
• The Artist Support Crew sees progress, not drafts. People your child invites can see their contest stage, milestones, and public numbers. They cannot see private drafts, private messages, consent controls, or anything financial.
• There is no messaging between accounts. No adult can send your child a private message through 0Skips. Encouragement from the Support Crew is one-way, from a fixed set of options, visible to you, and logged.

How do coaches work with students?

They don’t work with students directly. Coaches are adults who work behind the scenes: they review feedback and scoring guidance inside 0Skips before it reaches a student. AI helps draft that feedback; a person reviews it and stays responsible for it.

Three things are true regardless of who the coach is:

• A coach never has a private channel to your child. No messages, no calls, no meetings.
• Feedback reaches your child through 0Skips within 5 business days, and you can see every piece of feedback that was released, in Coach’s Notes.
• A coach is never assigned the same student twice across a season.

How are volunteer coaches and judges screened?

Before a volunteer coach or judge can see any unpublished student work, they:

• complete a short application,
• agree to the 0Skips Code of Conduct and confidentiality requirements,
• complete required training, and
• verify their identity.

Each volunteer sees only the information their role needs, and all communication with students goes through 0Skips.

What messages will my teen get from 0Skips?

0Skips may send your teen age-appropriate messages: reminders, encouragement, progress prompts, deadline reminders, and invitations to continue or come back. They say plainly what they are, and they are never deceptive. If your teen is under 18, you are copied on what we send them, including reminders.

How do I delete everything?

From your Roadie Leader account: Delete my child’s account and work. You can also contact us and we will do it.

When you do, we remove the account, the profile, the drafts, the uploads, and the entries from the live systems, and from backups as they rotate. Anything already published on your own YouTube channel is yours to delete — we cannot reach it, because it was never ours.

Two things survive deletion, and we would rather tell you now: records we are legally required to keep, such as payment records if money moved, and entries in the safety and audit logs, which are kept without personal details. When you ask, we will tell you exactly what applies to your request.

How do prizes and the $200 boosts reach a college savings account?

Short version: money goes toward your child’s education savings, not to your child.

Direct support. If your child has an eligible college savings account (a 529 plan) set up, supporters can contribute to it directly. That money never passes through 0Skips.

The $200 boosts. 0Skips can add up to four $200 boosts to your child’s own 529, $800 at most. The first needs $500 in qualifying contributions during the contest period. The next three need higher running totals plus recruiting: $1,000 and 3 qualifying recruits (Band Leader), $1,500 and 10 (Talent Scout), $2,000 and 20 (Label Executive). A qualifying recruit is a student your child brought in who actually enters the contest and scores 8.00 or higher; signing up alone does not count, and each member of a recruited group that qualifies counts. Qualifying contributions from the student, immediate family, and other supporters can count toward the $500 threshold when received during the contest period and verified. You upload a statement showing those contributions, we verify it, and the $200 is authorized.

The contest period is January 1 through April 30, 2027, 11:59 PM Mountain Time. The same dollars cannot be counted twice.

If your child does not have a 529 set up, supporters can give to a shared pool that supports students generally. Contributions to that shared pool do not count toward your child’s own $500 threshold, because they did not go into your child’s account.

Statements and account details live in a separate protected vault that the public site cannot reach at all.

What does “controlled exposure” mean?

It means your child gets an audience on purpose, in a shape you can see, instead of by accident.

Concretely:

• Their work is private while they are making it.
• It becomes public only after it qualifies, after a named human approves it, and after you and your child both consent — per video, not once for everything.
• They publish on your family’s own YouTube channel, so you hold the off switch.
• Their video can stay unlisted while they make it and test it. Once the entry is live in the contest, the official video is public, under a stage name, not a real name.
• No stranger can contact them through 0Skips. There is no inbox.
• They can withdraw. If they change their mind, tell us and we take the contest page down.

How is AI used?

AI assists; people stay responsible. AI tools help draft feedback and help screen entries. A person reviews what matters: a below-threshold AI screening result needs a human decision before it is final, and nothing a student makes becomes public without a named person’s approval. The privacy notice explains exactly what an AI provider receives and what it never receives.

What is a Boost Point, and what is it not?

A Boost Point is a contest engagement point. People earn them by doing verified things. The first way, planned and not open yet, is the Sponsor Visit Boost: 500 points for a verified public social post at a participating sponsor while wearing an official 0Skips shirt, with #0Skips and the sponsor identified. No purchase or receipt is required. The limit is two approved posts a day, at different sponsors. Other ways may be added later. Sponsors receive planned weekly Boost pots by their approved sponsorship tier. A contestant cannot give their own Boost Points to their own entry.

Boost Points are not:

• Not a way to buy an advantage. Individuals cannot buy them.
• Not part of qualifying. They never change a judge’s score or whether your child’s video meets the 8.00 standard. Judges decide that, on the rubric, alone.
• Not votes. Voting is a separate system with its own rules.
• Not money. They cannot be cashed out, converted, or transferred for value.
• Not a college savings contribution. That is a third, separate system.

Where they do count: Boost Points are 0.20 of the 1.00-point Reach & Attention part of the Contest Score (watch time 0.50, views 0.30, Boost Points 0.20), which ranks category finalists, and 15% of the People’s Choice ranking (views 30%, watch time 30%, listener surveys 25%, Boost Points 15%). Judges’ scores and qualification stay separate. Exactly how Boost Points count at the Finale will be published in the official rules before the season opens.

School comes first

0Skips is designed to help a student’s future, not get in its way. It should never replace school, work, family time or sleep. If participation appears to be hurting school, 0Skips may ask you to pause your teen’s account until they are back on track. 0Skips does not routinely collect grades or report cards.

What if something goes wrong?

Every page has a route to a person, not a form queue. If your child writes something that worries us — about their own safety, or anyone’s — a named adult sees it quickly, and you are contacted. To raise a concern yourself, report a safety concern. If a student may be at risk right now, contact your local emergency services first.