Dubai
For the region’s music talents, getting discovered needn’t mean getting hits on their YouTube videos or winning through to a reality TV show. They can try and do it the old-fashioned way — by doing it on stage.
The upcoming Step Music event is opening a window of 12 hours for acts to strut their stuff, get their vocal chords going and show off some nifty guitar riffs. “Whether it’s hip-hop or indie acts, there is an opportunity for regional talent,” said Ray Dargham, CEO of Step Group, which has been building on its digital media assets of late.
“There are a lot of underground acts in Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Egypt still waiting to be discovered. These are truly hidden talents. That’s what the Step Music event aims to become.” (The event is one of the headline events at the annual Step Conference, which opens early April in Dubai. This is the first time music gets a billing in the Step calendar.) It is surprising that a company with growing interests in digital media chose to pursue music the traditional way rather than step out with a web streaming service. Step Group owns yallafeed.com and stepfeed.com, which together have 3 million unique monthly users and 6 million views a month. And recently it stepped out to acquire the region-foussed video content platform Arab Vines.
“Adding music to our digital media assets is not part of our plans … at least for now,” said Dargham. “For Step Music, we did not go in for formal auditioning to get the acts. But there’s a huge gap between mainstream Arabic music and the niche. Down the line, we will try and go in for all sorts of genres.
“We want Step Music to be the place where the record labels come in and sign up new names.
“In the future, we might consider aligning with talent shows on TV to create wider platforms. There are potentially a lot of genuinely talented individuals out there who can turn into overnight celebrities. We will try and make that happen for them.”
