Kuwaiti Sound

Kuwaiti Sound (Arabic: الصوت الكويتي / Alsawt Alkuaytiu) is the national selection process for Kuwait in the Own Asiavision Song Contest. The first edition took place on 5 March 2020 to select the Kuwaiti entry for Own Asiavision Song Contest 23.

Location
Kuwaiti Sound is hosted at the Jaber al-Ahmad International Stadium (Arabic: ملعب جابر الأحمد الدولي‎) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Ardhiyah area of Kuwait City, Kuwait. Completed in 2009, it is used mostly for football matches and athletics. The stadium has a capacity of 60,001 seated spectators, the building is constructed in 4 levels, with 54 corporate boxes and parking lot with a 6,000 car capacity. It was expected to open in second quarter of 2010, but the building failed structural-integrity testing and remained closed due to a miscalculation by structural engineers for nearly half a decade. However it was finally opened on 18 December 2015. Jaber Al-Ahmad stadium is currently the new home of the Kuwait national football team.The stadium was named after late Amir of Kuwait Shaikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah. Kuwait celebrated their winning of Gulf Cup 20 in the stadium.

History
The first edition of Kuwaiti Sound took place on 5 March 2020 to select the Kuwaiti entry for Own Asiavision Song Contest 23, the Kuwaiti delegation launched the national selection in hopes of achieving good results for Kuwait in the contest. While the first edition suffered some organisational and technical problems with the voting and was initially deemed a failure, the winning song, "You Got Me" by Ghaneema, ended up getting Kuwait's best result in OASC at the time as it finished 14th. Following this success, Kuwaiti Sound returned for a second edition to select an entry for Own Asiavision Song Contest 24 and the edition was a huge success with 17 juries voting, the highest number to date, and the winning song, "Spiral" by Fatima Al Qadiri and Bobo Secret, getting Kuwait's best result again as it finished 9th in OASC.

Following the huge success of the second edition, a third edition commenced to select the Kuwaiti entry for Own Asiavision Song Contest 25, it again was a success but the winning song, "Loving You Is Loving Art" by Flowerbxmb, failed to qualify for the final, becoming the first Kuwaiti Sound winner to do so. Despite the failure, a fourth edition was launched to select the Kuwaiti entry for Own Asiavision Song Contest 26, however the edition did not experience success with a low amount of juries voting, rushed production and accusations of bias and lack of impartiality in the song selection process. The winner of the fourth edition, "Upside Down" by R.A.D.A, did not even make it to the semi finals as it failed to qualify from the quarter final.

After the immense failure of the fourth edition, Kuwaiti Sound was suspended until further notice and Kuwait internally selected their entries in OASC for the following 3 editions, however these did not do any better with all failing to qualify to the final, including another quarter final failure. These results dramatically decreased interest in OASC in Kuwait and almost resulted in the delegation withdrawing from the contest.

Following the 29th edition of OASC where Kuwait finished 13th in the semi final and only 16 points away from qualification, interest in the contest was slightly renewed and the Kuwaiti delegation considered bringing back the national selection. On 18 May 2022 it was announced that a fifth edition of Kuwaiti Sound was in the works and it was highly likely that it would return for Own Asiavision Song Contest 30. The format was changed with this time only 3 songs participating and instead of a points system, juries would cast only 1 vote to one of the participating entries.

Format
Currently 3 songs participate in the contest and after all the songs have performed the voting commences, all participating nations in the edition of OASC that the Kuwaiti entry would be participating in are invited to vote in the contest by sending a professional jury to cast their votes. Non-participating nations are also invited to vote as part of the Rest of the World. The juries cast 1 vote to their favourite song out of the three, the song with the most votes won and got the opportunity to represent Kuwait at the upcoming edition of Own Asiavision Song Contest.

In the format used in the first 4 editions, votes were given to 5 songs with the voting set being: 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 points. In addition, eight songs participated instead of three.

Editions
There has been 4 editions of the contest.