In October 2012 Russian television broadcasting exploded with a music première — The Voice. The show of talents surpasses all popularity ratings and for the first time in many years gathers viewers of different ages and social strata around the screens.
Applications for participation in the show were handled right until the beginning of September. More than 10 thousand applications were received, and only one in ten got over the preliminary selection stage. During auditions and interviews 150 persons were selected out of 1 thousand contestants. They became the main heroes of the first stage of the contest, the Blind Audition.
The Voice is radically different compared to conventional vocal contests and shows related to search of music talents.
Russian music stars ("mentors") — people whose songs are liked and listened to by the whole country — have been choosing from several hundreds of applicants and composed their teams. The uniqueness of the process is that the stars evaluate only the contestants’ voices and don’t see the performers. Four teams (with 12 vocalists in each) were formed based on results of the blind audition. The mentors of the Russian Voice are Alexander Gradskiy, Leonid Agutin, Pelageya and Dima Bilan.
While helping each of their mentees to be better prepared for the finale, the mentors at the same time make a tough internal selection in their teams during so called battles. These are musical duels where participants of one team compete with each other performing the same song. Those who fail go home, the remaining ones continue their way to the fame. The mentors make the difficult decisions alone. In comparison with the first and second seasons a few changes have been made.
Teams: Initially each team is consisted of 14 singers.
Battles and knockouts: At the battle phase mentors can "steal" the two singers from other mentors. Moreover, the number of battles in which the participants of one team compete with other teams increased.
Eventually each mentor will have only one performer in the line. These four performers will compete in the grand super final. And only one of them will become The Best Voice of the Country and will be honoured with the grand prize!