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This blog post was contributed by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

ZIO is going to be all over CMJ this year. So much so that we're covering it already! Read on for part one of our three-part preview of CMJ 2009.

Every music showcase has winners and losers. No matter how sprawling and overstuffed SXSW and CMJ might get, there will always be a handful of artists that wake up the following week anointed "a winner of CMJ." It's a fleeting and fairly arbitrary title, but it can lead to almost anything: a record contract, a cover story in a magazine, even endorsement or licensing deals.

But the losers wake up feeling much different. In most cases, that feeling involves a vicious hangover and a sense that they've let something slip away. For the following five artists, each of whom has a nice mix of cache and momentum heading into next week, that sense of loss would be especially acute, and they enter next week just trying not to screw things up. These are the Artists Who Have the Most to Lose at CMJ.

(in no particular order...)
Cold Cave
This Philly/Brooklyn synth/noise outfit started the year as an unsigned duo releasing 12" singles on their own, but they've very quietly built up a huge amount of momentum: Matador will be reissuing their debut EP, Love Comes Close, in November, and they're slated to open for Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. around Thanksgiving. If they fail to impress next week, it could cost them a seriously fat record contract (assuming those things still exist).

Das Racist
The creators of either the most retarded or the most brilliant summer-stoner jam of the decade ("Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell") spent the dog days of August getting fawned over by everybody from The Village Voice to The New York Times, and recent output suggests they could be more than a flash in the pan. But they've yet to prove that they give a shit about performing, and unless the mob of Wesleyan groupies that follows them around NYC takes over their CMJ shows, they could have a heavy dose of backlash on their hands.

The xx
As previously noted, the xx is not exactly hurting for publicity right now. Their debut album is already penciled in on dozens of Best of '09 lists, and they've got features in The Fader and NME all ready to hit newsstands in the coming weeks. But their music seems especially ill-fitted to the chaotic, noisy messes that frequently constitute CMJ crowds. As arguably the hottest band playing, they will not be expected to sound okay; they will be expected to blow people out of the water.

Bear in Heaven
This Brooklyn quartet is a bit different from the rest of this list's entries; they're only playing three shows, and they're basically forgoing a huge opportunity to bring their inimitable prog-psych-synth buzz to a wider audience. Like the xx, their music might not be an immediate hit with the bored, swag-hungry scenesters, but with a record that just came out on Tuesday, these guys need to be pounding the pavement a little harder.