Djooky app rewards fans' A&R skills for identifying hits

21 January 2021 - Press release

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.