at an award ceremony at KL Tower in December 2010. "This is a tremendous achievement especially in the digital age of music consumption. Maher's debut album is actually the highest selling music album in Malaysia in the last decade," said Mr. Cheng.

Awakening Records artist Maher Zain enters 2011 as the most popular Muslim artist on Facebook. With over 1.6m fans in just under a year since his debut album release, Maher is fast becoming a global music icon for millions of music lovers across the world. "Facebook has been a revolutionary platform in promoting the music of our artists. It allows record labels and artists to communicate and interact directly with their fans. We are proud that Maher Zain actually became the first Muslim artist to reach one million fans on Facebook within a year of his debut album release." said Wassim Malak, director of AE2Live – Awakening's artist and event management division.

AE2Live in association with Zedny organised an historic concert for its artist Hamza Namira, who was billed as the 'New Sayyid Darwish' by Al-Ahram Newspaper. Held at the prestigious Azhar Park in Cairo, nearly 4,000 attended the sold-out concert which brought parts of Cairo to a traffic standstill. The Azhar Park was renovated by the Agha Khan and is a prominent tourist attraction.

Awakening Records artist Hussein Zahawy mesmerised the audience with his two outstanding performances at the Celebration of Entrepreneurship summit in Dubai. Performing with his band 'BeyondBorders' in front of the region's leading entrepreneurs, Hussein's passionate and energetic performances were enthusiastically received by the diverse audience, and in the words of one leading entrepreneur: "His performance symbolises the cross cultural and cross civilisational universal appeal of music".