Djooky to reward fans’ A&R skills for identifying potential hits with global first HitHunter competition
New in-app HitHunter function enables music fans to win up to £750
Coincides with Djooky Music Awards Winter Season
Quarterly awards open to artists and songwriters across the world
GAONA from Peru scoops Djooky’s artist competition top prize of £7,500 & recording session at LA’s Capitol Records in Autumn Season
21 January 2021, Los Angeles: Emerging music and fintech startup Djooky has launched a new HitHunter function on its app enabling music fans to win cash prizes for identifying potential hits.
The new function, which is the first of its kind, follows the inception of the Djooky Music Awards this summer, which encourages app users to vote with their hearts by supporting their favourite songs.
HitHunter has been designed for users to vote with their heads, backing songs which they believe will grow to be popular on the platform. Djooky will run weekly and seasonal leaderboards for HitHunter via its app, with each user being granted 100 ‘Hit Points (HPs)’, which reset every week.
The more HPs a user allocates to a given song, the higher they will rank if the track proves a hit among other users in the Djooky Music Awards. Similarly, if a user is one of the first to give HPs to a track before it increases in popularity in the Djooky artist contest they will subsequently earn more points in the user rankings. HPs do not contribute to voting in the Djooky Music Awards.
Djooky is offering weekly prizes up to £75 and an overall global prize of £750 to the Ultimate HitHunter at the end of each season. Djooky’s Global HitHunter Final award is named after the late Don Grierson, a notable A&R executive who first signed Celine Dion to Epic Records and received a Golden Apple Award from The Beatles while at Capitol Records. At the time of his passing in January 2019, Grierson was an executive at Younk, a community label he co-founded with Andrew Dakhovsky, now co-founder & CEO at Djooky.
Andrew Dakhovsky (ex-Universal Ukraine executive and record producer) said: “These are incredibly difficult times for artists, and we are proud to be presenting the HitHunter function in our app to help new talent engage with new audiences. It extends the principle of music recommendation by involving our community in the curation process.”
Djooky co-founder/multi-platinum US producer, Brian Malouf, (whose credits include the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson) said: “We always envisioned that this competition would go beyond the songwriting aspect of the contest for our creative community, especially given that the fans play such a huge part in their success through the voting functionality. Now HitHunter gives the non-musicians in our community a fun and unique opportunity to showcase their talent-spotting prowess and more importantly become recognised for it in the form of leaderboards and prizes.”
HitHunter along with the awards feature is available to all registered users on the Djooky app now, with the Winter Season coming to a conclusion through the Global Voting Round on 28 February 2021.
Peru’s GAONA took home the first prize in the autumn edition, landing a trip to LA’s Capitol Recording Studios to record a song, post-COVID, with an all-star team and £7,500 cash. Artists from 91 countries submitting a total of 623 songs took part in the autumn edition — an increase of 65% from the first awards this summer. The organisers hope to see the awards grow until they have entries from all 193 member states of the United Nations.
Notes for Editors
Djooky is a free mobile app that can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play
Djooky is offering weekly prizes of £75, £50, £35, £20 and £10 for continental winners in Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Meanwhile, the seasonal competition offers an overall global prize of £750 to the ultimate HitHunter, with £375, £185, £75 and £35 being presented to users finishing second, third, fourth and fifth. In countries where cash prizes are not permitted, Djooky will offer gift cards with an equivalent cash value.
Djooky recently completed the second season of its Djooky Music Awards, with Peru’s GAONA taking home the first prize of the autumn contest with his song “The Last Two Minutes With You”. His prize includes a trip to LA’s Capitol Recording Studios to record a song, post-COVID, with an all-star team and £7,500 cash. Runners up Dominik Jesz from Germany and Genia Stormz (Eugenia Asiamah) from Ghana also received cash prizes.
Genre Winners, which are determined by the highest number of VPs in each genre, also received £750 each to upgrade their music equipment. The winners are as follows:
Alternative: The Last Two Minutes With You - GAONA (Peru)
Classical: Answer - LUMEN (Syria)
EDM/Electronic: Tribe Within - Aniroy (India)
Hip Hop/R&B/Soul: No Compe - Newell Music (Mexico)
Indie: Pesky Bee - arlomac_band (New Zealand)
Jazz/Blues: My Beat - Karan Music (Azerbaijan)
Latin: Bailalo - Keira Music (Mexico)
Pop: Let Me Know - Dominik Jesz (Germany)
Rock/Metal: Ulytau - Adai - Ulytau_kz (Kazakhstan)
About Djooky
Djooky Inc. is a music and fintech startup with an ambition to democratise and decentralise the global music industry.
Giving power back to the people, its aims are to create fairer opportunities for musicians who are struggling to break through existing power structures, which have been amplified as a result of the current pandemic. Djooky Inc. officially launched its operations in April 2020, but the team had been working tirelessly on the concept for the last two years.
Djooky operates as an international team based in Los Angeles (USA), Berlin (Germany), London (UK) and Kyiv (Ukraine). Co-founded by Brian Malouf the multi-platinum US producer who has worked with the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson, the Djooky team also includes Grammy-nominated artist and music director Patrice Rushen, UK Ivor Novello winning songwriter Sacha Skarbek, producer/music executive and songwriter Justin Gray (whose credits include Mariah Carey, John Legend and Avril Lavigne), and ex-Universal executive and record producer Andrew Dakhovsky, Djooky co-founder and CEO.
In July 2020, Djooky launched the world’s first global online music contest, the Djooky Music Awards. The competition is open to all artists and songwriters, amateur and professional, from all around the world and runs four times a year seasonally. Users can take part in the voting process via the Djooky app with the winning artist receiving $10k in cash and a recording session at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles (post-COVID).
For full Terms and Conditions, Contest Rules, Prizes and Awards of the Djooky Music Awards please visit https://djookyawards.com/