In battle rules it usu says never before published. Does this mean only never published on BotB or never published anywhere ever? I have a couple FTM creations I would like to submit to a battle some time but have had them up on YT.

ideally they should be created for the purpose of the compo, i know some people will downvote stuff that's already out there on the internet somewhere, so i suppose it depends on whether you want your song to 'do well'

personally im just glad you asked - its rare that new people do that

That's what I thought - the spirit is 'gladiator' composition, so everything is composed for the compo. I'm pretty slow at composing but maybe working under a deadline will help me speed up.