• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 24, 2009

AT&T wants to give aspiring musicians a chance to realize their dreams. With help from Microsoft, the telecom carrier has launched the Lips Open Mic Contest, named after the Xbox game, Lips.

The grand prize winner's song will be turned into a free downloadable karaoke tune for the Xbox 360 game and an original score for the Zune MP3 player.

U.S. residents ages 18 and older can enter the competition by composing an original song, score and lyrics by the March 13 deadline. A panel of judges will pick five finalists and the videos will be posted on Xbox LIVE and Zune.net on April 10. U.S. residents can vote for their favorite song and AT&T users can double their votes by texting their favorite to 991.

Chuck Frizelle, director, Xbox new media strategy and planning at Microsoft, said consumers who have the Xbox game Lips will be able to download the tune and perform it like any other karaoke song. The original song will become available to download into Zune, too. "The media program integrates across Xbox Live, Xbox.com and Zune, along with submissions that drive traffic to sites," he said. "It all makes up a viral-formatted campaign. Gamers, for better or worse, are extremely vocal, and it's these type of programs they embrace. So, I expect a whole lot of chatter once we get this down to the final five."

The winner also gets a trip to Los Angeles, tickets to the Warped Tour on Aug. 23, flat-screen TV, Xbox 360 console and Zune 120-GB digital media player. The four runners-up will receive an Xbox Elite 360 console and a Zune player.

The video game industry saw consumers spend a record $63 billion globally in 2008, according to The NPD. Citing the research firm's stats, Microsoft said games sales rose 35% in the U.S., compared with the prior year.