ARIA Adds Extra Round of Voting for 2023 Awards

The ARIA Awards in 2023 will undergo a shakeup, with the way winners are determined changing.

Industry-voted awards will now be subjected to a two-stage voting process.

The first stage will begin in early September. The ARIA Voting Academy panel of 1,000 industry voters along with genre expert category panels will be given the entire list of eligible entries and asked to select their first, second and third preferences.

Off the back of this, ARIA will announce the ARIA Awards nominees in late September.

There will then be a new, additional, step.

On nominations day, the second round of voting will commence. The voting panels will be asked to return and vote a second time, now selecting their first, second and third preferences from the list of final nominees.

ARIA said both stages of voting will be subject to an external audit, and that the process for publicly-voted awards remains the same.

Annabelle Herd, ARIA CEO, said she hopes the industry agrees that the two-stage voting process is an exciting step.

“It is an important evolution in the awards process that helps make sure our industry voting panel can really make certain that every one of their votes counts across each category to determine exactly who is winning each ARIA Award,” she said.

“This is also a fantastic opportunity to ensure a greater deal of consideration is going toward who is worthy of taking out a career-defining ARIA Award, and that each of our final nominees have their work heard and celebrated accordingly. It’s just another part of our continuing effort to evolve ARIA and represent the incredible homegrown musicians we’re so lucky to have. We can’t wait to celebrate Australian music’s night of nights later in the year.”

This is just the latest shakeup to the ARIA Awards and its surrounding processes since Herd came on board in 2021.

For the first awards under Herd’s leadership, gendered categories were removed, with Herd telling TMN there were two primary motivators behind the decision: allowing men and women to be placed on an equal platform, and ensuring the awards don’t exclude non-binary artists.

Then, last year, it was revealed the 2023 awards would create an award to acknowledge the advertising industry’s efforts to use Australian music in their commercials.

Further tweaks were then made to the criteria for the 2023 Awards, which ARIA said would “help shine a greater light on local artists”.