worldmusicawards.com

Another Global Achievement:
"HitMarker" To Be The Official Source For The "World Music Awards"

By: Hitmarker.com | March 4, 2009.

After less than 2 months to launching "Hitmarker.com", the first source in the Arab World for charts of best selling albums and most popular songs, The site is not preceded by global achievement by any Arab media, where it was chosen by the "World Music Awards" to be their official source of Arabic album sales figures.

The executive producers of the WMAs Melissa Corken and John Martinotti , and the president of "Stars Café" Group Bashar Zidane, agreed last week to this cooperation, which comes after 3 years of cooperating between the 2 sides and building a trusty relationship. According to their agreement, "Hitmarker.com" will be providing the WMAs with sales figures of the Arabic albums, in order to know who will win the World Music Award for "Best-Selling Arabic artist of the year."

"Hitmarker.com" was launched on December 12 by "Stars Café" Group for Arabic Entertainment web-sites, after about 4 years of experience in this domain, and today with the support of the "World Music Awards", "Hitmarker.com" will have an additional strength to make a change in the Arabic Music Industry, which until recently have lacked a reliable source of sales figures for the music albums. "Hitmarker.com" tracks the album sales figures through 62 music stores all over the Arab World, and publishes charts of best selling albums and most popular songs on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis, being the first independent body that tracks album sales in the Arab World.

With this cooperation, the "World Music Awards" proves once again that they are concerned about knowing the true sales figures of the Arabic albums in the best ways, and giving the award to the rightful winner every year, and as a result, they are supporting "Hitmarker.com" to be their direct source in the Arab music markets. Executive producer of the WMAs John Martinotti says about this cooperation: "We care every year to figure out who is the best selling artist in the Arab World through all the possible ways, and one of the biggest difficulties we faced in the past years is that there is no independent source for sales figures in the Arab World apart from IFPI and the actual record companies themselves, so with Hitmarker.com the Arabic Music industry has gained this source, and therefore, we did not hesitate to undertake such cooperation and we are particularly confident of the professionalism and credibility of Stars Café Group, which has always been supportive to the WMAs over the past three years."

And about this international achievement says president of "Stars Café" Group Bashar Zidane: "The idea of Hitmarker.com was born 2 years ago, and we had to plan for it very well in order to let it come out at the highest professional level. The co-operation of the WMAs with us shows how much they care to support Arabic Music Industry and meet its needs. Absence of a source of sales figures in the Arab World was in a state of uncertainty over how to deal with the success of Arabic albums with fixed standards, and today Hitmarker.com fills this void, and with the support of the World Music Awards we will be able to set new rules to detect the facts about the success of Arabic music albums, so there is no room for doubt as to the eligibility of this star or that winning the World Music Award."

The World Music Awards celebrated its 20th anniversary in November 2008 and is the only international Music Awards show to include an Arabic winner and performer on its world-class stage each year. The 2 hour show features 12 top world performers and airs in 160 countries including America where the show is broadcast from 8 – 10pm on MY Network TV, the young hit Fox channel associated to MySpace. This year 6 million viewers tuned in to see the special which included a knock out performance from Nancy Ajram who the American public have never seen before on US television. Nancy was welcomed by the US audience, especially those Americans of Middle Eastern descent which amount to 20 million, one tenth of the USA’s population! The World Music Awards is also proud to promote the Arabic superstar each year in over 140 countries outside America and the Middle East. No other Music show has this much international exposure for a Middle Eastern artist! The World Music Awards is also the only non commercial Music Awards show with a serious charity mission. In fact 100% of the proceeds from the World Music Awards evening are donated each year to the construction of a hospital, school or orphanage in the 3rd world. From the 2008 proceeds, the WMAs will be building a hospital in Burundi, Africa. On December 13th the WMAs officially opened its 20th centre in Rwanda, a hospital curing mainly aids and malaria victims.