In the world of aspiring DJs and producers everyone wants to be Dillon Francis!

Now, aspiring producers will have a chance to build upon greatness using the new Audius “Remix Contests Dashboard,” with the inaugural remix competition with DJ Dillon Francis launching today on Audius. Francis is lending his expertise and track “Real Love ft. Aleyna Tilki” to the contest. 

The contest is the first to utilize the newest tool available to Audius’ 6 million+ users – the “Remix Contests Dashboard’ that displays all of the ongoing competitions in one place – allowing aspiring producers to survey and select the songs they’d like to reinterpret and rerelease on the platform. 

For “Real Love,” contestants will have until January 27 to submit their reworked track. Winners will be selected by Dillon by February 10, with first place receiving $250 and signed merchandise, 2nd place receiving $150 and a Happy Machine merch pack, and 3rd place rounding out the podium with $100 and a Happy Machine merch pack. 

The stem pack is available for download here on the decentralized streaming service. 

“I’m stoked to let everyone remix ‘Real Love’ because Aleyna is an amazing vocalist AND this is how I came up in music – DJing and remixing my favorite records. The Audius community has that same feeling now, where everyone gets to be creative while supporting each other. I can’t wait to hear some remixes!” Francis said of the contest.

Clayton Blaha, Audius’ Head of Partnerships, said past remix contests regularly field hundreds of entries from emerging producers. It is not uncommon in these contests, he said, for artist teams to even release a few of the remixes officially through the artists’ labels.

Previously, if artists wanted to drop stems to let their fans interpret their work they’d need to do so with a third party host such as Dropbox, taking the collaborative creativity and the engagement that comes from it off platform with the hope that it somehow finds its way back to the original artist. 

With Audius, fans can tag the original track and have their version upvoted by fellow fans or even the artist themselves, stack-ranking the best takes and adding a competitive yet friendly dynamic to the process. Best of all, if the original artist likes or reposts a fan’s remix, that producer gets a “cosign” on their track – the ultimate recognition in the producer-DJ world.

The beginning of this contest also signals the official launch of the Audius “Remix Contests Dashboard.”

“This new feature came from the community recognizing Audius as a great place to collaborate and the need for more tools to do so, especially with their favorite artists,” Blaha said. “Remix contests continually stoke the excitement from the underground community that is growing so quickly on Audius. We see producers and fans sharing each other’s work on socials and shouting out their favorites all the time. They now have a tool to optimize that further and we’re excited that it’s drawing in international superstars like Dillon.”