Do the ARIA Awards Snub Commercially Successful Australian Music Artists?
Do the ARIA Awards Need to Be More Commercial-Friendly?
Have the ARIA Awards become irrelevant? That’s the question some people are asking this morning (and have been asking for the past few years). One side of the discussion is that most of the ARIA nominees and subsequent winners aren’t mainstream enough, and that it’s mostly music industry insiders who know them. The ARIAs have been known to ‘snub’ commercially successful artists in the past — many of them come from competition shows like Australian Idol or The X Factor and are usually only eligible for awards based on music sales. Three-time winner Gotye has been lucky to receive lots of airplay for his single “Somebody That I Used to Know,” while also being embraced by the Australian music industry. Last night’s big winners Boy & Bear, an indie rock band from Sydney, are probably not as familiar to the general public, at least when compared to names like Guy Sebastian and Ricki-Lee Coulter. Do you think the ARIAs need to be more commercial-friendly?
