Vans is set to give someone the opportunity of a lifetime with the launch of their Musicians Wanted competition for 2021, which will see the winner share the stage with Brit hitmaker YUNGBLUD.
The Vans competition aims to celebrate new “Off The Wall” talent, with any artists located across Europe, America and the Asia-Pacific regions eligible to enter the contest, with all languages and genres welcome to apply.
In an innovative twist to the competition, Vans has also partnered with AI Music Tech company Musiio, which uses technology to organise, search, playlist, and find the best submissions from all submitted, generating shortlists that go to the Vans A&R team for manual review.
Using their Tagging and Hit Potential Algorithm, they then aggregate the info into their Search dashboard to sort and reveal the best musical talent.
Basically, the technology uses the actual audio file to tell you how much commercial potential a track has, with these scores then use to assist the team in prioritising and listening to the best music first.
With AI solutions, every track gets analysed and processed, vs the manual approach which is often randomised and could never hope to manually listen to each track. This gives as many artists a shot as possible, hooray!
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The top five artists picked will then be picked by the panel to perform at the Vans Musicians Wanted virtual concert series in September 2021 for the final for the Vans Musicians Wanted virtual concert series in September 2021.
Judges for this year’s competition will include rapper Denzel Curry, Grammy-nominated pop star and songwriter Julia Michaels, 88rising’s founder Sean Miyashiro, as well as YUNGBLUD himself.
Hazel Savage, CEO and Co-Founder of Musiio, said of the contest: “The biggest challenge with AI is people saying, but what if it misses something, to them I say, no system is ever 100%, but with our AI, every track will be processed.
“I guarantee if you try to listen to 10,000 tracks manually you will only be able to do a few 100, giving so many less artists an opportunity to be heard.
“AI is the future when it comes to addressing the amazing volume we now see in the Music Industry, I am proud of VANS and the APAC region for being at the forefront of this approach.”
The Vans team said of the amazing opportunity: “Here at Vans, we love to work with partners who have the same passion for music that we do.
“This year, working with Musiio as a technical partner will really help us to streamline our processes and maximise the effectiveness of our competition.
“We have many great partners this year, including Tunecore, Spotify, KRK, Kramer and Musiio. It’s an all-star lineup to support an all-star lineup of musicians that we can’t wait to discover all over APAC.”
On top of the Yungblud support slot, winners may also receive Vans products, gear from guitar company Kramer, a premium TuneCore prize pack, global music distribution, Spotify playlisting opportunities and more.
Applications opened on July 7 and close on July 23. You also must be over 18 by July 23 and must be original (so no cover songs). You can apply by heading here.
Check out ‘Mars’ by YUNGBLUD:
