ARIA Awards change eligibility for two categories

The 2017 ARIA Awards have changed the eligibility criteria for two categories, “following feedback from members”, allowing a wider range of records to be up for consideration.

These cover the Best Jazz Album, which is judged by a judging school, and Song of the Year which is publicly voted.

For Best Jazz Album, the initial criteria was that the album had to have appeared in the relevant period on the ARIA Top 20 Jazz and Blues Albums chart.

This has now been removed.

In the new criteria, says ARIA, “solo artists and groups are eligible. Only album recordings are eligible.

“Recordings where a minimum of 50% of artists featured on the Album packaging meet the Artist eligibility criteria are eligible, even when ensembles or orchestras contain more than 50% of non-Australian artists.”

ARIA is specific: “Recordings cannot be entered in any other genre category.”

For Song of the Year, the eligible product had to be released during the 2017 eligibility period.

The amended criteria now matches that of Best International Artist, which is also a public-voted category.

ARIA says, “The nominee pool for Song of the Year will be drawn from eligible Single releases by Australian artists.

“The ten highest selling Singles from these entries, based on ARIA sales statistics for the charts published between 1 October 2016 and 5 October 2017 inclusive, will form the nominee pool.

“Sales of different releases by the same artist during the period cannot be aggregated for the purpose of this category.

“Qualifying releases must have been released in the Eligibility Period or the Eligibility Period for the immediately preceding ARIA Awards, but may be an Album track subsequently released as a Single if the official media or video servicing date is within either Eligibility Period.

“Products previously nominated in this award category are ineligible.

“An artist will only appear on the nominee list once, even if that artist has multiple releases that may otherwise be eligible.”

As these changes will widen the range of eligible releases, ARIA is contacting its members to provide additional material as album cover art and visuals so they can be considered.

Members who have already submitted entrieswill also be allowed to reconsider their choices.

As a result, the entry period has been extended by 24 hours to Friday August 25 at 7pm AEST.

Voting will open on 11 September.

This article has been updated to clarify the opportunity window for entries to be resubmitted.