The Midem 2018 conference only finished on Friday, but organiser Reed Midem has already announced one of the key planks in next year’s event: the Midem Music Awards.
The twist: “Entirely based on platform-enabled fan data and verified by an independent adjudicator, this innovative concept will introduce a completely new way to measure and reward outstanding success, bypassing the usual methods of discerning awards by jury or a voting system”.
French startup Soundcharts will be responsible for collecting and qualifying the data from audio and video-streaming services; audio-identification platforms (i.e. Shazam); social media services and live-music data sources. UK production firm Whizz Kid Entertainment will produce the awards, which will take place during Midem 2019.
There’s one risk to basing a new, global awards ceremony entirely on data: whoever the data shows as the winners are the stars you have to (ideally) get over to Cannes for the ceremony, around their existing schedule, otherwise it could be a night of video-acceptance speeches.
But there’s also an exciting opportunity here: for stars from Latin America, India, Asia and Africa (to name but four territories) to be garlanded alongside the big western stars of streaming and social-media platforms – reinforcing the ever-more-global competition on these services.
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