It was expected to become the first ever televised and big-scale music competition across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond since the ABU Golden Kite World Song Festivals[1] which were held between 1989 and 1991.

[4] The initial working title of the project was named as the "ABU TV Cup Song Contest" and it was expected to debut in 2017.

[7] In January 2019, the ABU announced Qingdao as the host city, with West Coast Star Island as the selected venue for the 2019 contest.

[8] Between 17 and 20 May 2019, Javad Mottaghi, the Acting Secretary-General of the ABU, visited Qingdao for observing the preparation of the contest which the trip was also accompanied by the Deputy Director General of the NRTA.

[9] In May 2019, Mottaghi continued his trip to Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong, for discussing the contest further with the head of the province's radio and television administration.

[11] On 4 September 2019, the ABU has formally relaunched the call for participants in the edition of 2020 as well as a renewed press release towards illustrating a more concrete vision about the project.

[2] The ABU explicitly expressed it did not have a target number of participating countries for the contest, but was highly confident that there could be sufficient interest out there to warrant a semi-final to be held.

The organisation also reasoned that the recommendation of such selection process could facilitate the need of introducing the contest to the broader viewers of the region leading up to the semi-final and final in October.

[19] Five countries had confirmed their participation prior to the cancelation of the contest: Brunei,[20] Indonesia,[21] Vanuatu,[22] Vietnam,[23] and China, the latter of which would have been an automatic finalist.