19-year-old Melbourne native Ivana Ilic has been crowned the winner of Samsung Electronics Australia’s music reality show, UNDSCVRD. The second season of the show, which wrapped on Sunday night, offered five aspiring professional musicians a chance to develop their music and brand identity. This led to the creation of a personal music track and an accompanying music video filmed completely on Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra.
After last year’s Aussie music icons The Veronicas, this year UNDSVRD featured global R&B artist Tkay Maidza as a mentor. In regards to the UNDSCVRD show and her involvement, Tkay Maidza said, “As someone who benefited from an artist development program, it’s a privilege for me to be able to give back and work with local artists to discover their musical potential.”
Season 2 winner Ivana Ilic wowed the judges with her powerful vocals, heartfelt lyrics, and captivating stage presence, earning her the UNDSCVRD title and a total prize of $100K. She will receive the opportunity to create a 5 track EP featuring “Better Love”, her emotive debut single and music video, with four other new singles. Ilic will retain complete control of the resulting EP and its future success, giving her the means to kickstart her music career. The other four contestants will release their own singles in the coming days.
The four-week, documentary-style competition saw contestants working with industry heavyweights like global R&B artist Tkay Maidza, platinum producer James Angus, and multi-platinum songwriter Brooke Toia. The winner selection process factored in all elements from the competition, including songwriting capability, professionalism in the studio, working with others, musicality and performance style.
“I’m so grateful to have had this opportunity to learn from such passionate and talented people within the industry and to be able to share my music with so many people,” Ilic said. “With Samsung’s support and guidance from all the mentors, I feel like I’m coming out of UNDSCVRD as a singer-songwriter ready for the next chapter of my journey.”
Since its launch in October 2021, the UNDSCVRD series has amassed more than 64 million views and 1.3 million likes, shares and comments, demonstrating the good that can come from merging creativity and technology, and helping young Australians transform their sound and providing a platform to amplify their voice.
Each artist’s single will be available to stream on platforms from Friday 21 April and their singles are as follows:
- Ivana Ilic – Better Love
- HAZE – Looking for Love
- Vanessa – Hands
- Dylan Jett – Just Go
- Kalopsia – Glimmer
To watch the season finale and all other episodes head to the @UNDSCVRD_artist page on TikTok.
