SKOWT – Revolutionizing the Independent Music Industry!

Kuala Lumpur: SKOWT, an innovative new music platform which caters to unsigned and independent talents, presented awards for the SKOWT-VIMA Best New Act at the SKOWT-VIMA Microawards Music Showcase at Oasis Discovery Centre (ODC), Ara Damansara.

Present at the ceremony were Skowt Head of Operations Kumar Krish, Head of Talent Khai Aziz and founder of VIMA Siva Zaphod Chandran. The top 3 winners were Mero (1st Place), Tash (2nd place) and Airwaves on Fire (3rd place).

Quote from the winner, Meroshana Thaiyalan – Singer songwriter, classical veenai instructor, doctor:

“Winning the SKOWT-VIMA award has been a surreal experience for me. From a girl who turned to her piano and scribbled out her feelings into lyrics, who never knew she had a chance to be heard, to winning the Best New Act award, this is for me, a huge milestone.

I’ve always believed in my dreams, but it’s magical to finally be able to see it come to life. I’ll never stop making music, and this award has just given me that extra confidence that will help me live and balance both my dreams, music and medicine.

Music is, the best medicine after all!

I thank my family, my loved ones and my supporters who believed in #meronation, Lawrence Soosai, Alan Thoo, the beautiful cast and crew behind Heart of Steel’s MV, SKOWT and VIMA. None of this would have been possible without all of you, all my love to each and everyone of you.”

The award, jointly organized and managed with VIMA Music Awards, was aimed at unearthing new Malaysian music talents and to help grow the acts onto the global stage.

“We were very happy to once again partner VIMA in recognising talent in the independent music scene. The SKOWT-VIMA 2018 Best New Act nominees and winners clearly highlights the quality of talent we have in the independent music scene. It was a humbling experience picking out the winners – everyone was very talented!

Congratulations to the winners Mero, Tash and Airwaves on Fire!

Since launching SKOWT, we now have 1000+ independent artists/bands and we are looking to find and support more independent artists globally. We have recently launched our new app and would like to encourage everyone to download and discover the artists that we have on our database. What we need are more partners that share our vision in supporting independent artists joining forces with us.” shared SKOWT founder Jheeva Subramanian.

Voting for the competition was held online on the SKOWT Facebook page (27th October – 2nd November) with 23 nominees selected from the SKOWT database.

Winners Mero and Tash took to the stage to perform their songs while guest band Social Circuit revved things up with some energetic numbers.

SKOWT also announced that it will be working closely with ODC in organizing and bringing more music related events to create a local music talent hub.

“We look forward to working with SKOWT to start our music talent hub and programs which will be led by the pool of independent artists from SKOWT. We believe through this music platform, the community will be brought closer, drawing more young talents” said AL Jazzura, Project Director of ODC.

ABOUT SKOWT – www.skowt.it

SKOWT enables unsigned artists to upload their songs and biography online, giving them the opportunity to connect with streaming music fans, other artists, licensing managers and event organizers. The platform is free to use and open to all independent artists or unsigned bands, regardless of their genre, language or location. The only registration requirement is that the artist must not be signed to any record labels. All of the music on SKOWT are uploaded by the artists, which makes it the ideal app for music fans, managers and media seeking new talent. Listeners will have the chance to like or dislike songs and build playlists. Based on the songs with the most likes and listens, SKOWT will build a Top 10 chart that features the most popular songs from the past week.

ABOUT VIMA

VIMA (which stands for Voice International Music Awards) is considered the most important and anticipated music award in South-east Asia. Launched in 2008, the awards has become a benchmark for many awards platform across the globe and often acts as a launch pad for music acts tipped to be the next big thing. Some of the past winners include Yuna, Altimet, The Great Spy Experiment (Singapore), Joe Flizzow, Project E.A.R (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia), Prema Yin, K-Town Clan, Ze Rebelle, Sasi The Don, Alex Subryn, An Honest Mistake, Inch Chua (Singapore), Feez Madea (Brunei), Electrico (Singapore), Pop Shuvit, Melissa Indot and many more.