Ugandan Artists Rewarded At The MTN CallerTunez Awards

Telecom company, MTN, launched MTN CallerTunez in April 2010 to allow MTN mobile customer to personalize their conventional ring-back tone that the calling party will hear while waiting for the called party to accept/answer the call.

In July 2015, the company launched the MTN CallerTunez awards to recognize the talents and efforts of these artistes whose music is consumed by listeners in form of MTN CallerTunez.

During the award ceremony which was held on Wednesday, 25th May, 2016 at the MTN Uganda Towers, Rema Namakula emerged as the overall winner with her single ‘Mchuzi’ which got 350,487 downloads from the time the awards were launched. The diva managed to walk away with the award and also winning herself 2.5 million ugx, plus other monthly CallerTunez prizes.

MTN is focusing on changing society through digital innovations where artists can be able to supply their music content and customers are able to consume this content using a platform like MTN callerTunez which is currently subscribed by over 1,400,00 users.

While addressing the media and guests at the finale of the MTN callerTunez awards Ms Mapula Bodibe, the MTN Chief Marketing Officer, said “phones have become a channel through which we’re delivering other customer needs like entertainment, over and above the traditional voice, in simple and affordable ways”. She added that MTN CallerTunez have made strong gains at a time when CD sales are waning and paving way for digital content consumption with CRBTs being one of the major revenue streams for industry stakeholders.”

Among other artist that won include; Moze Radio – accepted the award for the Most Downloaded RnB song; ‘Neera’, Mirembe Catherine for her ‘Nali Manyi’ as the Most Downloaded Religious song, David Lutalo’s ‘Manya’ as the Most Download Afro-Beat & Afro-Pop song, as ‘Friendly Match’ by Ziza Bafana ft. Zanie Brown was the Most Downloaded Dancehall & Ragga song, Bebe Cool’s ‘African Gal’ let him walk away with the award for the Most Downloaded Reggae song, while Gravity Omutujju’s ‘Broken English’ was the Most Downloaded Hip-Hop song and finally Vincent Segawa walked away with the award for his Most Downloaded Traditional song ‘Balemddwa Okwekolera’

The awards included monthly recognition of artists with the most downloaded CallerTunez every month and customers with the most CallerTunez downloads.

The artist with the most downloads in each category received 2.5 million UGX while the customers who downloaded the most CallerTunez received awesome prizes from Huawei and MTN Mobile Money worth 100,000 UGX, to eleven other customers.

“We are very grateful to all our customers who have embraced this service and for the support you have given us and the artistes. We recognize the hard work artistes put in to make the content and appreciate the fans, who are out customers for consuming the music,” Ms. Mapula concluded.

Summary of the 2015 MTN CallerTunez “Artist and Category” winners were;

To subscribe to MTN CallerTunez, dial *170*1# or SMS the word Join to 170.