The Netherlands at Instaglobal Song Contest 19

The Netherlands took part in the 19th Instaglobal Song Contest. It was also the 19th time the country participated in the contest. AVROTROS was responsible for the Dutch entry, that was selected by a national final called *Nederlands Songfestival* for the ninth time. The final was won by FAYA with the song 'Time Will Tell'. At Instaglobal, she came 8th in the semi-final, thereby going to the wildcard round. She didn't got the wildcard, meaning she didn't qualify for the grand final eventually.

AVROTROS was unhappy with the low results the country had the past five years, not coming further than an 18th place in edition 16. Even though the broadcaster stayed with the same format of *Nederlands Songfestival* as previous editions, it chose ultimately only artists that never participated in the national selection before. The country needed, as the Dutch HoD stated, 'a fresh and new artist for Instaglobal'.

## Nederlands Songfestival IX

### Format

AVROTROS decided to go back to the format before the eighth edition: one final with eight songs where a Province Jury and an Instaglobal Jury decide the winner. In the eighth edition, AVROTROS used three prerounds for the final because songs pre-2014 could participate. Since this was only a one-time rule, the broadcaster decided to delete these prerounds and go back to one final again.

### Participants

As stated above, all participants were newcomers to the event. Artists like VanVelzen and Edsilia Rombley were real veterans in the Dutch music industry, while artists like FAYA and Handsome Poets were also more new there. Marshmello was initially to participate, but when it was revealed that the DJ wasn't Dutch, his participation was cancelled. Therefore, only seven participants took part, since it was too late to find another artist to step in Marshmello's place. An interesting newcomer was Kati Ran, who had mostly a career in Finland and also sang her song 'Suurin' in Finnish. It would be the fourth language to appear at *Nederlands Songfestival* (after English, Dutch and Albanian).

### Voting

The voting went just as in the previous editions of *Nederlands Songfestival*. 12 provinces (together the Province Jury) and 28 Instaglobal delegations (together the Instaglobal Jury) could all rank the eight songs with the next point system: 0-2-4-6-8-10-12, with the favourite getting 12 and the least favourite getting 0. The song with the most points would be the Dutch representative for Instaglobal 19.

### Results

In gold: winner of *Nederlands Songfestival IX*

In silver: runner-up, candidate for *Second Chance 9*

## At Instaglobal

In Boston, FAYA had to perform 15th in the first semi-final, before Switzerland and after Kosovo. She managed to get 99 points, enough for an 8th place. This meant she wasn't directly qualified for the final, but she could go to the wildcard round with two other countries to fight for the wildcard. There, FAYA performed against Alina Eremia & Mark Stam from Moldova and Mark Les & Moniqué from Lithuania. FAYA came second with 11 votes, just not enough to defeat the Moldovan duo who won with 13 votes. Thus, FAYA didn't qualify for the final. In an interview after the wildcard round, she stated that she experienced the contest as 'a big rollercoaster' with 'many extra rounds and rules, it was weird to not qualify directly and then still have to fight in a wildcard round because it's not the final yet but also not the semis'.

### At Second Chance

Kati Ran was supposed to go to Instaglobal Second Chance 9, but due to problems inside the SCC organisation, the contest was delayed. AVROTROS decided due to this delay that the runner-up of next *Nederlands Songfestival* would go to Second Chance.