A cultural revolution is taking place in Saudi Arabia, as the art, fashion, and film scenes are booming with emerging talents. This is largely due to government-led initiatives to support these industries and promote local talent, with the goal of eventually exporting Saudi culture globally.

However, when it comes to the music industry, the discovery of up-and-coming talent has been lacking, with popular music talent competitions proving to be mostly self-serving in commercial value, while providing short-lived moments of fame and only a limited few being discovered.

Recognizing the need to play a meaningful role in Saudi talent discovery, we needed an initiative that engages the largest number of audiences possible and uncovers potential raw talents in the Kingdom, while giving those who otherwise may never have had a chance to be discovered a fair opportunity to shine.

Pursuing a career in music in Saudi is often met with industry and sociocultural roadblocks, leading to discouragement among talented Saudis. We wanted to break these barriers by fostering an inclusive environment that frees talents from self-doubt and allows new voices to be discovered.

The idea was to create a virtual stage (The biggest virtual OPEN MIC) for individuals to confidently showcase their hidden talents and pursue their passions from the comfort of their own home and directly on their mobiles.

The aim was to launch the country's largest ever talent search to discover 10 world-class music artists to represent Saudi on the global stage. A roadmap has been set in collaboration and partnership with the region's biggest music streaming platform, adding actual long-term industry and career value for discovered talents.

Given the country's young, digitally-savvy population and the shift towards short-form and user-centric content, we chose to launch the initiative on TikTok; a platform widely used by young Saudis as a search engine, source of entertainment and a music-discovery platform.

Our multi-platform initiative was a music audition, with the public casting votes for their favorite talents. The winners' journey was created to include music production, celebrity duets, lifetime training and marketing.

The digitally-led, ultra-fast talent audition, Sound of Saudi was launched in three phases: qualifications, finals, and winners over a period of 5 months. The big-bang launch included famous music artists promoting the competition and creating excitement about the hashtag challenge and page #Sound_of_Saudi.

Participants used branded filters for their video submissions on TikTok and the audience voted to determine the first shortlists on a dedicated TikTok H5 page.

Afterwards, 10 famous TikTokers remarked on the 60 shortlisted participants on their own accounts, using the TikTok-Duet feature.

Finally, ten winners were announced and celebrated online and during Saudi's biggest music conference. The winners also had duet songs with famous music artists on TikTok, as well as original music productions exclusively launched on the regions biggest music streaming platform.

Sound of Saudi has truly taken the world by storm, with an incredible 1.3M votes registered on the H5 page and 700.3M hashtag page views on TikTok. The success of the initiative was also reflected in the staggering 500M views of participants' TikTok videos, and 5.9M social interactions.

However, the real story here is the sheer volume of talent participation, with 26K individuals confidently showcasing their talent.

It wasn't just the public that has joined the conversation, with big brands like Pepsi Max Music sponsoring the competition, and top music artists showing their support for the initiative.

The outcome has created a first-of-its-kind database for musical talents and inspired plans to continue the competition in the coming years, as well as adopting the concept across other cultural areas.