2021 UK Country Music Spotlight Awards – All The Info You’ll Need!
It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to the UK Country Music Spotlight Awards, and we thought we’d let you all know exactly how things are going to work for the awards in February 2021. As always, transparency is key and below we’ll describe exactly how we are going to achieve that, along with the voting process.
To start with, let’s look at the panel. Over the last few months, in fact pretty much as soon as the last awards ended, we started working on the panel. We put out ads for applications to be members of the panel and the response has been brilliant – there is still time to get involved yourself. If you host a country music radio show or a podcast, run a website, or are involved in the promotion of UK country music, then we’d like to have you on the panel. Please apply at [email protected]
For the 2021 Awards, there will be no voting involvement from Belles and Gals or any of the Belles and Gals team – apart from the team getting together to hand out our special award. The only role Belles and Gals will have in the awards is in the counting of the votes and the handing out of the awards themseleves. Any individual on the panel who has any professional alignment with an artist will not be able to vote for the said individual/group.
At the end of this month we’ll be sending out voting forms to all of the members of the panel, who will be asked to vote a 1-2-3 in each of the categories. From this initial round of voting we will narrow down each of the categories to the four nominated songs/albums/artists. At this point we will be announcing the nominees. Then there will be a second round of voting from the panel, this time based on the nominated songs/albums/artists only.
This year we will be publishing the names of all the panellists, to ensure complete transparency in the awards – you’ve already seen some on our social media, and these announcements will continue. We also have sponsors for the awards this year, with the sponsors on hand to announce nominations and to hand over the awards!
With the current Covid-19 situation, it’s a little unclear as to how exactly the awards will go ahead in 2021. Yes, we have a date and a venue (Saturday February 20th at the Water Rats in London) – but whether we can have a crowd, or host live music at all is up in the air right now. We’ll keep you informed!
