1. The Australian Music Prize (the AMP) is considered by some to be a prestigious award: one that, by its very charter, judges music on aesthetic terms, not commercial. As such, it cannot afford to be perceived as following any of the other Australian music awards on offer —  not least because if the winner of the AMP coincided with the winner of an Aria or J Award, it would make the whole process of giving the award meaningless.Such an occurrence isn’t that uncommon: a few years back, British music paper NME invented the Brat Award as direct riposte to the music industry establishments’ Brit Awards. Imagine their embarrassment when they woke up a few years later to discover the exact same artists had been nominated for both.
  2. It is a bun-fest for those involved (a select panel of — Jesus — 27 people made up of music critics, musicians, retailers and broadcasters, all firmly placed within the mainstream of the Australian music industry). To take their place as judges, they are sent a load of CDs, flown around the country, put up in swank hotels and generally made to feel very important. Some of these folk — possibly most — are nice folk indeed, and pride themselves on their personal integrity, rightly so.And some of them are Dom Alessio.

    The award sponsors (drinks companies, PPCA, Channel V, various music magazines and websites) gives $30,000 to the eventual winner. One wonders quite how much more they could award to the winner if a) they didn’t have such a large panel of judges and b) they didn’t put them all up in swank hotels.

    Or am I missing something here? Is the award meant to benefit judges and judged?

  3. In her article on Crikey, judge and music critic Clem Bastow argues that the one and only motivating factor behind giving the award this year to Lisa Mitchell was the music. Not so fast, Clem.The AMP is inspired by the UK Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize (nothing like a spot of cultural cringe to help get the critical juices flowing in Australia). One year, the UK panel notoriously awarded the prize to flimflam pop outfit The M People because they were terrified of being called out for only supporting one style of music (indie rock).

    The AMP judges are equally terrified — and rightly so, looking at the similarities between the artists they’ve awarded the prize to in previous years. The judges knew that, in previous years, they hadn’t recognised either the pop element in Australian music or the female element. A few of them decided, in advance, to do something about it. So the AMP is having its M People year. It’s understandable, for sure — but hardly conducive to awarding a prestigious industry prize based on “merit”.

    Hey, I totally sympathise with their predicament. I too wouldn’t want to be involved in an award that automatically excludes half of the population and any genre that doesn’t involve guitars. Indeed, I’ve been vocal throughout my career as a writer and editor in positively discriminating in favour of female musicians — I see nothing wrong with that, not when the overwhelming majority of music titles discriminate in favour of men. I just think that moderator Chris Johnston and the AMP judges should be more up-front about it.

    Listen. I’ll state it out plainly for anyone who’s been dozing off. Appreciating and loving music is never a matter of listening to the music alone — a thousand, a million other factors come into play. Everything is context. The context behind this year’s AMP was one where a couple of the judges woke up to the fact that awarding the prize had become formulaic and decided to do something about it. Good on them! I’m totally in favour of biased decisions.

    But to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

  4. Also: any decision made by a panel of judges based on meritocracy ends up giving the award to the album that offended the least people. The award will be given to the fifth favourite album of the greatest number of people. Democratic, sure — but “best”? Hardly.Listening to music is a supremely personal experience, one that does not translate to a consortium of 27 people. Arguing that Lisa Mitchell won the AMP on musical merit alone is hogwash. Music does not exist in a vacuum.
  5. Then there’s that damning chart that pedestrian.tv printed, showing that the AMP does not get awarded to a winner of an Aria or J Award. Sarah Blasko — the favourite in many outsiders’ eyes (because she was so feted by the critics among the panel members) — didn’t ever stand a chance of winning. Or perhaps it was coincidence? Pretty tall coincidence.Personally, I couldn’t give a crap either way —  Blasko and Mitchell have made pleasingly throwaway pop albums that are conducive for blocking out the outside world when working on my computer — but it does make a nonsense of the idea of the AMP being given on merit alone, when certain artists are disqualified because they’ve won other awards.

    And I certainly couldn’t care less whether the AMP supports the independent sector or not. That’s up to them.

    One of the reasons the AMP was created was as a reaction to the music industry-, sales- and popularity-, driven awards. So we come to the opening point again. The AMP cannot afford to be perceived to be imitating the Arias.

    Also: wait a second. The Arias are given out by the …  spit …  Australian music industry.

    Whereas the AMP is given out by the … um … Australian music industry.

    Plus ca change.

  6. For the record, I too love pop music.