Submissions close Saturday at midnight. That’s the deadline facing Malayalam singers across the UAE who want their shot at performing on the Star Singer Season 10 set in Kochi, in front of playback legends K.S. Chithra, Sithara, and Vidhu Prathap.
Asianet ME launched its latest Star Singer UAE Talent Hunt on 6th February, giving vocalists aged 18 and above a narrow window to upload a two-minute video of themselves singing a Malayalam song. The prize? An all-expenses-paid trip to Kerala, a backstage pass to one of Malayalam television’s most-watched music shows, and a live performance slot.
For diaspora singers, that’s a considerable leap.
Most UAE-based Malayalam vocalists spend years rotating through community events, wedding stages, and college competitions—rarely breaking into the professional circuit back home. This contest, now in its latest iteration, functions as a direct pipeline from those community stages into South Indian mainstream entertainment. No intermediaries, no lengthy audition tours.
The format is straightforward: record two minutes of a Malayalam song, upload it to the contest portal, and wait. Selected finalists learn whether months of weekend rehearsals and cultural programme performances translate into something larger—a spot on a show that draws viewers across Kerala and the Gulf.
Star Singer itself has run for a decade on Asianet ME, building a reputation as one of the Malayalam-language market’s most established reality music platforms. Season 10 is currently in production, which means the winner’s appearance will slot into an active broadcast cycle rather than a pre-recorded special.
The judges matter here. K.S. Chithra has recorded thousands of film songs across five South Indian languages since the 1980s, winning six National Film Awards. Sithara and Vidhu Prathap bring similar credentials—decades in Malayalam playback singing, film soundtracks, and concert circuits. For an emerging singer, performing in front of that panel represents serious validation.
What the contest doesn’t guarantee is a recording contract or ongoing screen time. The prize is the trip, the set visit, and the performance itself. What happens after depends on the contestant’s ability to convert that single appearance into something more durable—industry contacts, social media traction, callback opportunities.
Still, the appeal is obvious. UAE-based talent often faces geographic disadvantage when chasing opportunities in Kerala’s film and music industries. Casting calls, studio sessions, and networking events happen in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, not Dubai or Abu Dhabi. This contest collapses that distance into a two-minute video file.
Asianet ME has positioned the hunt as an annual fixture, though the broadcaster hasn’t disclosed how many entries previous editions attracted or what happened to past winners after their on-screen moments. That information gap leaves prospective contestants guessing about their actual odds.
The two-minute format itself imposes constraints. Singers must choose material that showcases range without overstaying attention spans—a tricky balance between demonstrating technical skill and maintaining judges’ interest through a phone screen. Classical compositions risk sounding overwrought in that timeframe; film songs might play safer but offer less differentiation.
Entries must come from UAE residents, which excludes the broader Gulf diaspora in Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Whether Asianet ME plans parallel hunts in those markets remains unclear.
The 8th February cutoff leaves little room for perfectionism. Contestants filming this week are working against the clock—selecting songs, finding decent acoustics, managing lighting and framing on smartphone cameras, then uploading before Saturday turns into Sunday.
For someone who’s spent years as the go-to vocalist at Kerala association events, watching that deadline approach means deciding whether two minutes of recorded audio is enough to justify the risk of rejection. Or whether staying in the circuit they know is safer than reaching for the stage they don’t.
The submission window closes in 48 hours. After that, the selection process moves behind closed doors, and the next opportunity waits for whenever Asianet ME schedules another season.