YouTube, Amr Diab Announce the Launch of “Amr Diab Academy”

Amr Diab announced today he is joining forces with the world’s largest video platform, YouTube, to conduct a global competition to find and nurture talent from the region through the Amr Diab Academy.

This is the first global YouTube competition based in the Middle East. The Amr Diab Academy will leverage the power of YouTube’s popularity and love for music to find talented artists. The winner of the competition will sing live on stage with Amr Diab during his New Year’s Eve concert. Over the next six months, competitors will be judged by a panel of experts and users from the YouTube community will vote for their favorites. Finalists will receive mentoring and training from Amr Diab’s dream team on everything from vocal coaching and sound production, to performing and writing lyrics.

“This is the first time ever that a fan will be joining me on stage to sing live with me, said Amr Diab. I’m looking forward to engaging with my fans through YouTube – launching the Academy will allow me to discover the brilliant talent that exists and I can’t wait to see the entries.”

With over 72 hours of video uploaded on to YouTube every minute globally, YouTube continues to see explosive growth. And the MENA region has the second highest viewership rates worldwide after the United States with over 167 million views per day. YouTube is also the second largest search engine behind Google.

Launching the Amr Diab Academy showcases how dynamic and interactive YouTube truly is, said Wael Fakharany, Google Regional Manager for Egypt and North Africa. It’s not only a platform to view the latest music or news videos, YouTube is the place to come and share your own magic and experience the momentum with the entire YouTube community.”

The competition will be monitored via a panel of experts who – alongside the YouTube community – will take turns voting for the participants and filtering them through the various phases. Amr Diab will announce the Top 30 finalists on September 15th at a special event.

The finalists will receive Google+ hangout workshops with vocalists, music producers and sound engineers will provide crucial guidance and tutorials to improve their performance at every round. The Top 5 finalists will get a chance to interact directly with Amr Diab via Google+ Hangouts in November 2012. This will be their chance to speak with the icon himself, share their thoughts and get some final words of advice.

The final winner will get a chance to sing with Amr Diab during his New Year’s concert. The winner will be announced on December 15th 2012.