ARIA Awards signs partnership deal with Telstra

Telstra has been unveiled as the presenting partner for this year’s ARIA Awards.

The 28^th annual awards will once again take place at The Star on Sydney on November 26 and be broadcast on Channel Ten, the official broadcast partner for the show. The event will also be simulcast online by Ten, although Telstra will provide ‘second screen’ activations as well as online and social media engagement.

This year’s ARIAs will undoubtedly draw huge attention from both local and international audiences. Australian artists including Sia, Iggy Azalea and 5 Seconds Of Summer have dominated charts around the world, while locally there have been eleven #1 Australian albums so far in 2014 with Australian artists holding the #1 spot on the ARIA Album charts for 19 out of 38 weeks.

ARIA CEO Dan Rosen told TMN, “It has been an incredible year for Australian artists, proving that our artists are world class. We have always had an excellent reputation overseas, and we have a great history in particular genres like rock music, but now the tyranny of distance has been broken down and we’re riding high in so many other genres, such as hip hop and pop music. We’ve been getting a lot of calls from the industry and media overseas and it’s no surprise. Every year we stage the ARIAs we receive more and more attention, but this year is definitely going to be very special.”

ARIA has confirmed that partner Qantas will come on board for a second year, flying in acts from across Australia and overseas, while also developing in-house promotional opportunities for the ARIAs and Australian artists. David Jones will continue its longstanding association with the event by continuing to sponsor the Red Carpet. Rosen explains, “There has always been that association between music and fashion and how they influence each other. We are very happy to give both creative sectors and opportunity to shine on the night and to give a platform to local designers.”

ARIA and the NSW Government, through Destination NSW, have also announced the return of ARIA Week in 2014, after the success of last year’s program. ARIA Week will host a broad range of showcases, curated gigs, and conferences, including the popular ARIA Masterclass. The full ARIA Week schedule will be released in the coming weeks.

PPCA, meanwhile, will sponsor the ‘Breakthrough Artist’ ARIA Award for a fourth consecutive year, continuing its support of Australia’s emerging artists.

Australian music fans will once again have the chance to have their say in who takes home an ARIA Award, with four publicly-voted awards, including ’Song Of The Year’, ’Best International Artist’, ’Best Australian Live Act’ and ’Best Video’. Voting for these categories opens on Tuesday, October 7.

The winners of the ARIA Fine Arts (Best Classical Album, Best Jazz Album, Best World Music Album and Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album) and Artisan Awards (Engineer Of The Year, Producer Of The Year and Best Cover Art) will be announced at the 2014 ARIA Nominations event on Tuesday, October 7 at the Art Gallery of NSW.