Last night, YouTube held its first awards ceremony. Specifically, the YouTube Music Awards broadcast live around the globe starting at 6PM EST with region-specific live performances, guests, presenters, and more. I didn’t watch live, but I sure got a face full of it on Twitter. YouTube’s actually put up the live highlights and is featuring the winners on the homepage today.
There are a couple cool things about the YouTube Music Awards. Most Internet-specific awards shows are decided on popular vote (I should start my Lammy’s campaign sooner this year) and YouTube’s were no exception. The difference is how the winners and nominees were even chosen. The nominees were selected by video views, subscriptions, likes, and comments since September 2012. Then, a video was created for each nominee in each category that was voted on by sharing the link on social media–Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. The nomination process is the perfect way to handle awards through YouTube. There can’t be any questions. These videos had more views, comments, likes, and channel subscriptions than other possible nominees.
Another great aspect of the awards: brevity. There were only six categories: Video of the Year, Artist of the Year, Innovation of the Year, YouTube Breakthrough, YouTube Phenomenon, and YouTube Response. Innovation meant creative advances in video design and was the only category not decided entirely by views/likes/subscriptions/comments. Phenomenon was basically the viral video category, the music trends you couldn’t escape over the past year. Response was the cover song category.