The launch of the American Music Awards (AMAs) “Favorite K-Pop Artist” category was a groundbreaking effort that leveraged the power of Discord. The AMAs were created in 1974 and are the world’s largest fan voted award show. Discord is a popular voice, video, and text communications service with over 150 million active users.
The AMAs are always looking to enable fan connection and by creating a Discord server for the show, fans across the globe were brought together seamlessly. In addition to voting for Favorite K-Pop Artist in the AMAs Discord Server, fans could engage in channels created for nominated artists and for the genres of music recognized by the AMAs. These channels are still active and will be hubs for conversation for years to come.
The AMAs’ partnership with Discord, which marked the first-ever music award show voting activation on Discord, continued the show’s commitment to partnering with the top social media platforms for fan voting. Past voting partners for the AMAs have included TikTok, Twitter, Google Search and more.
The AMAs partnered with a developer to build a custom Discord app that allowed fans to vote for their favorite K-Pop nominees in a new, interactive way on the AMAs Discord Server. The AMAs Discord app allowed fans to cast 22 votes per day for artists like BLACKPINK, BTS, SEVENTEEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and TWICE, over a three-week period leading up to the event. Telescope was brought in to validate the vote and provide authenticated vote totals. Additionally, a team of moderators was deployed to monitor conversations within the Discord server to ensure that fans were respectful of each other.
The Discord vote campaign and AMAs Discord Server are perfect examples of the impact that can be made through the effective use of technology and community management. The team's diligent work in making sure the app was accurate, as well as their collaboration with multiple parties to moderate the server’s content, showed the collective commitment to delivering an enjoyable experience for fans.
From voting for their favorite K-Pop artist to connect with others over a favorite music genre or potential artist of the year, there was a chat happening for everyone.
Creating an inviting fan experience on Discord paid off. Millions of votes were cast via Discord for the Favorite K-Pop Artist award. Additionally, the AMAs Discord server attracted over 133K+ unique members to join during the campaign’s three-week flight. The AMAs Discord server is still active with six-figure membership and K-Pop fans continue to return daily to catch up with their fandoms.
