Awards
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King Stingray adds another major prize to their growing collection, winning the 2023 Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition with “Milkumana.”
Co-written by bandmates Roy Kellaway and Yirrŋa Gotjiringu Yunupingu, “Milkumana” scores the A$50,000 prize, courtesy of APRA AMCOS, Alberts and Sony Music Publishing — a sum said to be the biggest first-place bounty for any songwriting competition on the planet.
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The Stingers, as they’re affectionately known in these parts, have been riding a wave in recent months.
“Milkumana” won for best song at the 2022 National Indigenous Music Awards, was shortlisted for APRA song of the year 2022, and was nominated for most performed rock work of the year at the most recent edition of the APRA Music Awards, on a night when they closed out proceedings with a cover of Men at Work’s “Down Under,” led by Colin Hay.
Their trophy cabinet includes the 2023 Australian Music Prize, presented earlier this year for the Yolŋu surf rockers’ self-titled debut LP; the Michael Gudinski breakthrough artist award, presented at the 2022 ARIA Awards; and best new artist at the 2022 Rolling Stone Australia Awards.
The winning song “is about leadership and the people we look up to and now, all of a sudden, we’ve become leaders in our community and that concept is just so amazing. We come from a small place and we’re singing about big things,” comments Kellaway. “Thanks so much for the love, we can’t believe it.”
Second place (and the A$10,000 prize) goes to “Ready for the Sky” by Budjerah, co-written by Budjerah with Ainslie Wills, while the Stingers snagged third place (and an additional A$5,000) for “Camp Dog,” written by Kellaway.
Among the winners announced Thursday (June 8) was “Worst Taste In Girls” by Charley, co-written by Charley, Antonio Egizii and David Musumeci, which scoops the the AMPAL emerging songwriter prize (A$5,000), while the inaugural American Songwriter Spotlight Award was presented to Tia P., the Los Angeles hip-hop artist and songwriter who wins the A$1,500 cash prize and a forthcoming feature on the American Songwriter for her song “That Action.”
This year’s competition received 2,950 entries from 45 countries, organizers say. Each entry carries a A$50 fee, which this year raised a total of A$147,500, all of which supports the services of Noro Music Therapy Australia.
Named after the iconic songwriters and founding members of The Easybeats, Harry Vanda and the late George Young, the competition first took place in December 2009, and has since raised nearly A$1.75 million for the charity.
The 2023 judging panel featured artists, producers, media and music industry professionals including reps from The Brag Media, Double J, Jaxsta, Billboard, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Universal Music Australia, EMI Music Australia, American Songwriter and more.
Previous winners include Genesis Owusu in 2022, Thelma Plum in 2020, Amy Shark (2018), Gretta Ray (2016), Isabella Manfredi (2013), Kimbra (2011) and Megan Washington (2009).
Visit APRAAMCOS.com.au for more.
Ten years ago, Colombian music executive Diana Montes created the Premios Heat (Heat Latin Music Awards) brand with the mission to not only support and develop up-and-coming Latin artists but also offer a platform where their hard work is recognized.
The awards show officially launched in 2015 via the HTV and TBS networks and counted on the support of artists such as Juanes, Juan Luis Guerra, Nicky Jam and a then-rising J Balvin. “It was beautiful because truthfully, Premios Heat was born big already,” Montes, who has a 25-year career in music, tells Billboard.
Now, its eighth edition airing from Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic on Thursday, June 8, via HTV and TNT, the 2023 Heat Latin Music Awards is led by six-time nominees Karol G, Feid and Bad Bunny, followed by five-time nominee El Alfa and, with four nominations each, Romeo Santos and Bizarrap. Confirmed performers include El Alfa, Mau y Ricky, Greeicy, Mario Bautista, Grupo Niche and many more.
But beyond an awards show — which focuses on talent charting in Latin America as opposed to the United States — the Premios Heat brand has a festival franchise and “La Nueva Cepa,” a new partnership with Warner Music Latin and hitmaker Master Chris, to help promote newcomers making a name for themselves in their countries, as they’ve done in the past with Ryan Castro, Anitta, Yahaira Plasencia and Dekko.
“In five years, without a doubt, Premios Heat will be the strongest music brand in Latin America,” Montes assures. “We see it by our numbers, by the growth of the awards and the festival. We are more than an award; we are a television platform, and we see ourselves developing artists as a label in the future.”
In the below Q&A, Montes takes us more in-depth into the Heat Latin Music Awards:
Anitta
Premios Heat/Carlos Zambrano*
Can you briefly explain what Premios Heat is and why are they held on the beach?
It’s an experience. The musical platform where you can make a real connection—the beach gives us that feeling of closeness. What was clear to me when we did the treatment of the awards is that I did not want to do them in the United States for various reasons beginning with we did not have the resources to compete with the larger awards show. Initially, we spoke with Cartagena de Indias but for some reason, we arrived in Cap Cana, and we’ve been hosting the awards here for nine years now. That’s the difference from a traditional award, here you see everyone working and networking but in a bathing suit and with a beer in hand.
How do you determine the nominees for each awards season?
They were initially chosen by the artists that rotated on HTV. Right now it is a mix of HTV, LosHeat.TV—our new platform that in its second year debuted as the best platform in Latin America, following TikTok—and what we see in the Latin American regions. We visit many countries. We have very young people monetizing the local charts and social media in countries like Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
The Heat Latin Music Awards has stood out for discovering, supporting and promoting emerging talents such as J Balvin, Karol G, Bad Bunny and many more: Which artist of the new generation do you see possibly reaching that superstar status?
We have Dekko here, who won the 2022 musical promise award. I feel that he is already doing a crossover. I see a very strong Dayanara Peralta from Ecuador, with impressive numbers. I see Mar Rendon and an ADSO doing very interesting things. I see a Young Miko, who carries a very strong movement. We have seen the musical movement in Latin America very closely and the important thing for us is not to look at what’s sounding or trending in the U.S. but rather what’s happening in Peru? What’s happening in Colombia? I feel that these artists need a platform and we have the vision to see that great talent.
Can you elaborate a bit more on the “La Nueva Cepa” initiative and its importance?
It’s an idea we’ve been around for a long time and basically celebrates Master Chris’ 25 years as a music producer. Instead of making a record with artists he has produced like Alexis y Fido, Greeicy, and J Balvin, he wanted to follow the Heat Awards philosophy and discover the talent that exists in Latin America. We are not a record label but on our platform, we have developed many talents. With this initiative, what we are going to do is record them, make videos for them, and put them on HTV.
Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin will co-host The Tony Awards: Act One, a live pre-show on Pluto TV, on Sunday June 11 from 6:30-8:00 p.m. ET/3:30-5:00 p.m. PT. Both stars have found success both on stage and television. Hough, star of last season’s Broadway play Potus, has received three Primetime Emmy nominations for outstanding choreography on […]
The Nashville music industry gathered Tuesday (June 6) to celebrate its most influential members and several of its brightest stars.
Hosted by Billboard to celebrate the recently published 2023 Country Power Players list, the event took place at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works, with execs, artists, agents and others mingling in the chic, industrial space.
Billboard’s executive editor, West Coast and Nashville Melinda Newman opened the evening’s awards presentation, first acknowledging Seth England of Big Loud, the recipient of the first ever Billboard Country Power Players Choice Award. Newman then introduced Ernest, who recounted the story of his first time meeting Jelly Roll when a mutual friend of his was selling the singer a truck. “Not long later,” said Ernest said, “he was charting on Billboard.”
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Jelly Roll then took the stage, noting in a funny, impassioned speech that “there’s a story my daddy used to tell that you could work harder than everybody, you can put in more hours than everybody, you can be more talented than everybody, you could be nicer than everybody, you could care more than everybody, but if a little luck don’t show up with you, you are screwed in this world, and I can tell you that God blessed me to be lucky to have friends like Ernest and Hardy and Ashley and these people that have came through and helped me put out my first debut country album that was commemorated by my cover on Billboard.”
Next up was Hardy, who presented the Rookie Of The Year award to Bailey Zimmerman. “I tried singing two and a half years ago and my life completely switched,” Zimmerman said in his speech. “I went from digging ditches and building pipelines to being an artist…Enjoying the moment is something I’ve really been focusing on, and I’ve never had a moment like this.”
Terri Clark then took the stage to present the Groundbreaker award to her friend, Ashley McBryde. “I’ve had the privilege of watching her build a career that will stand the test of time. She came up to me [once] and said, ‘You know when I was a teenager I was looking to women in country music who I felt like i could relate to, people who were a little bit different, and when I looked to you, I saw that. And now Ashley’s doing that very thing to many little girls and girls with a dream all over the place who want to be country singers.”
McBryde then gave an emotional speech about how when she first moved to Nashville, she was told her hair was too curly, that she had too many tattoos, that she needed to lose weight and that she should be writing different kinds of songs. “It means a lot to receive this,” she said with tears streaming down her face, “because it means betting on yourself is the right thing to do.”
Finally, Newman presented the Executive of the Year award to Rusty Gaston of Sony Music Publishing Nashville, which has earned the top spot on Billboard’s Country Radio Airplay Publishers list for the last three quarters.
“I love this community,” Gaston said in his speech, “and what I love most about country music is that we are a community — we are a group of friends who get to work together to help each other succeed, but we aren’t work friends, we’re life friends.”
The Tony Awards have never had a best song category, honoring the year’s best song from a Broadway musical. The Grammys have presented a song of the year award every year since they were founded in 1958. Three times, the award has gone to a Broadway song. We’ll take a closer look at those three […]
Josh Groban is nominated in a marquee category at the 2023 Tony Awards on Sunday June 11. The singer/actor is nominated for best leading actor in a musical for his performance in a revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This is his second nod in that category. Groban has also notched […]
The 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards reports 87% year-over-year audience growth, as compared to 2022. The show also saw record increases in viewership and interactions across its owned-and-operated sites and social media platforms, as well as Harmony, Penske Media’s proprietary livestreaming platform.
The 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards was the No. 1 program across all social media platforms for TV and streaming on May 11 (excluding sports), according to Talkwalker, which monitors social content ratings.
This year’s ACM Awards amassed 60.6 million video views across the ACM’s official Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok from May 11 through May 22, marking a record increase of 94% in year-over-year social media views, per ListenFirst.
The Official ACM Awards Red Carpet Show garnered 3.2 million live and video-on-demand views in the first 24 hours on Harmony, which livestreams PMC’s portfolio of live entertainment shows and industry experiences across all of Penske Media’s owned and operated websites and PMC social media accounts.
As of June 2, there are more than 7.1 million views across all 18 full show performances on ACM Award performers’ YouTube channels since May 12.
Keith Urban, Ed Sheeran with Luke Combs, Lainey Wilson and Miranda Lambert all saw streaming increases of 200% or more following live performances on the ACM Awards stage.
Urban’s performance of his 2018 song “Texas Time” — in honor of the ACM Awards’ return to Texas — was followed by a 428% increase in total on-demand streams on the day following the show and consistent streams through the weekend post-show (+337%), according to data from Luminate.
Sheeran and Combs performed “Life Goes On” live together for the first time on the show. Following this performance, there was a 281% increase of total on-demand streams on the day following the show and consistent streams through the weekend (+210%), per Luminate.
Also according to data from Luminate, Wilson’s performance of “Grease” was followed by an increase in total on-demand streams on the day following the show (+221%) and saw an average increase of 206% through the weekend post-show.
Lambert’s “Carousel,” released in April 2022, saw a 209% increase in total on-demand streams on the day following the ACM Awards and consistent streams through the weekend post-show (+142%), per data from Luminate.
Also, Jelly Roll — who is the cover star of Billboard‘s latest issue — and Wilson performed a new duet version of “Save Me,” which landed at No. 4 on Country Digital Song Sales following the show.
58th ACM Awards co-host Dolly Parton’s “World on Fire,” the lead single from her highly anticipated rock album Rockstar, landed at No. 1 on the Rock Digital Song Sales chart as well as No. 3 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart.
Notes: For the day following the show, the percent change was measured from May 11 to May 12. For the weekend stats, a three-day average of May 12, May 13 and May 14 was compared to stats from May 11.
This marked the second year on Prime Video for the ACM Awards, which in 2022 became the first major awards show to stream live exclusively for a global audience. Co-hosted by Parton and Garth Brooks, the two-hour, commercial-free concert event streamed live for an international audience on May 11 across 240+ countries and territories exclusively on Prime Video and the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, from The Star in Frisco, Texas.
The show featured 18 performances from 24 artists, including Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Combs, Jordan Davis, HARDY, Cody Johnson, Lambert, Parton, Jelly Roll, Urban, The War And Treaty, Wilson, and Bailey Zimmerman. Collaborations included Sheeran and Combs; Carly Pearce and Trisha Yearwood; Cole Swindell and Jo Dee Messina; and Ashley McBryde featuring Brandy Clark, Caylee Hammack, Pillbox Patti, and John Osborne.
The full rebroadcast is now available to watch on Prime Video, the Amazon Music App, and for free on Amazon Freevee.
The 58th Academy of Country Music Awards was produced by Dick Clark Productions, with Raj Kapoor, Barry Adelman, and Fonda Anita serving as executive producers, and Damon Whiteside serving as executive producer for the Academy of Country Music. Patrick Menton was co-executive producer.
The ACM Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions. DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldridge. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.
Brandon Lake, for King & Country, Lauren Daigle and MercyMe were among the evening’s big winners on Friday evening (June 2), when the K-LOVE Fan Awards aired on TBN, having previously been taped at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House on May 28.
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Lake led this year’s winners, taking home three honors, including male artist. He also earned song of the year and worship song of the year, both for “Gratitude.”
Sibling duo for King & Country earned artist of the year, while Daigle took home female artist of the year, and MercyMe earned their first K-LOVE Fan Award, for group of the year.
The evening also featured an array of powerful performances, as Colton Dixon was joined by Gabby Barrett for their duet “Build a Boat.” A plethora of collaborations filled the evening, including MercyMe with David Leonard on “Then Christ Came,” Katy Nichole and Big Daddy Weave on “God Is in This Story,” Lake teamed with Benjamin William Hastings for “Gratitude,” while Mac Powell and Jason Crabb performed “New Creation.” Tasha Layton offered “How Far,” while Jon Reddick performed “I Believe It.”
In one of the evening’s most affecting moments, Blessing Offor had students from Nashville’s Covenant School join him for a performance of Offor’s “Brighter Days.” Steven Curtis Chapman, who was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2018, was honored for his lengthy history of enduring songs, as he was joined by Bart Millard, Matthew West and Mac Powell.
See the full list of K-LOVE Fan Awards winners for 2023 below:
Artist of the Yearfor KING & COUNTRY
Male artistBrandon Lake
Female artistLauren Daigle
Group of the yearMercyMe
Worship song of the yearBrandon Lake“Gratitude”
Song of the yearBrandon Lake“Gratitude”
Breakout single“Perfectly Loved”Rachael Lampa ft. TobyMac
Film & television impactThe ChosenSeason Three Finale
Book impactOn Our KneesPhil Wickham
Podcast impactUNASHAMEDPhil & Jase Robertson
Walt “Baby” Love, a 2022 inductee into the Radio Hall of Fame, will receive another honor in October as he’s one of eight individuals slated to be recognized by the Living Legends Foundation at its annual awards dinner and gala. Love will receive the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s event.
Love has hosted three long-running radio programs — The Countdown with Walt “Baby” Love, Gospel Traxx and The Urban AC Countdown. For 21 years, Love worked at Radio & Records as its urban radio and music editor while simultaneously hosting his syndicated radio shows.
Nelson George, who likewise first made his mark in music trade journalism before broadening his focus, will also be honored. George, who wrote for Billboard in the 1980s before becoming a noted author and filmmaker, will receive the Media Icon Award.
The other honorees are Ed Lover, star of The Ed Lover Show with Monie Love (Jerry Boulding Radio Award); Lionel Ridenour, founder/CEO of Anchor Promotions (Music Executive Award); Tracey Jordan, partner of Lazin/Jordan Productions (Mike Bernardo Female Executive Award); Rocky Bucano, executive director of the Universal Hip Hop Museum (Hip Hop Visionary Award); Vernon Brown, Esq., founder of V. Brown & Company (Entertainment Advocate Award); and Shanti Das, former music executive and founder of Silence The Shame (A.D. Washington Chairman’s Award).
“This year is particularly special because, in addition to our annual awards ceremony, we are also celebrating 50 years of hip-hop,” said Living Legends Foundation chairman David C. Linton in a statement. “We are the first generation of music executives to help break and recognize hip-hop as a global music art form. Most of our board and advisory members were responsible for signing many of today’s hip-hop legends and icons to recording contracts and record label imprint deals, ultimately creating the phenomenon known to the world as ‘hip-hop culture.’ Additionally, for the past three to four decades, many of our board members have guided the careers of these legends and icons via management, marketing, radio promotions, publicity, sales, and A&R.”
This year’s awards dinner and gala will be held on Friday, Oct. 6 at Taglyan Cultural Complex, 1201 N. Vine Street, Hollywood. The red carpet and cocktail reception begin at 6:30 p.m. with the awards dinner starting at 7:30 p.m.
This year’s dinner chairs are Skip Dillard, brand manager and program director for Audacy’s WXBK/94.7, the Block, New York City; and Lady B, on-air personality at Classix 107.9 in Philadelphia.
Founded in 1991 and incorporated in 1992, the Living Legends Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax-exempt organization and has been funded primarily by corporate contributions and individual donations. The organization has expanded its mission to assist those who have served the music industry and who have what it calls “a confirmable need.”
Over the past 30 years, the foundation has honored more than 100 leaders in the areas of broadcasting, film, recorded music, media, publishing, radio, publicity and marketing.
For more information, visit the organization’s website.
A musical based on the classic 1959 Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot was the top winner at the 67th Annual Drama Desk Awards, which were announced on Wednesday (May 31). The show — for which Mariah Carey is one of the producers — won eight awards, including outstanding musical and outstanding lyrics for […]