A considerable amount of literature analyzes factors of success in music contests, particularly those where the audience votes for the winner. However, one aspect highlighted by the economic theory of stardom is generally neglected in the literature: the role of (pre-contest) popularity of the contestants. In this paper, we tackle this research gap by focusing on a national music contest in Germany and investigating how pre-contest popularity of the participating artists influences the final voting results. We employ two different concepts of popularity. First, we collected data on the artist’s former success (MacDonald-popularity) using music charts. Second, we proxy the media presence of the artists (Adler-popularity) using hits in traditional and new media. In our analysis, we find empirical evidence that the artist’s ex-ante popularity positively affects the outcome of voting results. Interestingly, media presence matters more than former success. Furthermore, displaying the characteristics of a one-hit-wonder harms success in the contest.