Hans Erik

Independent music has seen an upsurge in the past few years, mainly because of the recognition and interest it has garnered, and it is solely due to the quality of independent music.

To recognize the quality work, the independent music awards were created in 1999 to honor indie musicians and artists, and it was produced by the Music Resource Group. The initiative was first taken up so that it would help the huge number of indie musicians to be recognized, and it would help the artists with marketing, sales support, independent music distribution, and performance opportunities, rather than cash prizes.

The approach is similar to the one created by the Tupelo Super Store which has a huge portal where indie musicians can create their profiles, upload music to be recognized in the huge independent music market, they also provide innovative marketing solutions to promote your music.

Coming back to the awards, the unique aspect of the indie music awards is that the submission is done across 6 continents, covering at least 70 different countries.

The review process of the independent music awards is completely fair and the evaluation is done entirely on a merit basis, simply by the quality of the music. Generally there are a lot of self recorded submissions; it is the completed and polished work that advances through the rounds of judgment and demos are not accepted.

The judge’s panel for the independent music awards is carefully picked, and it is made sure that respected and honorable artists in the industry are roped in to judge the process.

The categories under which the awards are given away are across a variety of genre and cover almost every domain that you can think of. The categories that have been added for this year’s 9th edition of the indie music awards include, Love Song, Acoustic Song, Story Song, Concept Album, Eclectic Album, and Long Form Music Video.

The program provides a great fillip to independent musicians, and the various people who are superstars today were recognized on this platform including the like of Martin Sexton, Jeff Healey, Chris Whitley, Speech, Koko Taylor, Ike Turner, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Dan Zanes, Miquel Migs, Lionel Louke, and The Apples in stereo.

F or this year’s indie music awards, the deadline for submission has been extended till 14 September 2009, so better hurry up.

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