Music Moves Europe Awards

The European sound of today and tomorrow

The Music Moves Europe Awards are the new European Union Prize for popular and contemporary music. The awards celebrate emerging artists who represent the European sound of today and tomorrow. Every year, eight outstanding artists will receive a Music Moves Europe Award in recognition of their international success, as well as being rewarded with a performance at ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag) and financial support for touring and promotion. In addition to this, one of sixteen nominees takes home the Public Choice Award. 

Celebrating European Talent
Compared to Anglo-American music, the total percentage of music originating from mainland Europe is relatively small. The Music Moves Europe Awards are therefore designed to accelerate the international careers of upcoming European artists.

Nominees Announcement
The fifteen nominees were revealed at Linecheck Music Meeting & Festival at BASE Milano in Italy on Monday November 22. It is now possible for the European audience to vote for their favourite emerging nominated artist. The nominee with the most votes will win the Public Choice Award 2022.

Award Ceremony
On Thursday January 20, all the winners, including the Public Choice Award winner and the Grand Jury Prize winner, will be announced at the Music Moves Europe Awards ceremony. The ceremony will take place at ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag) 2022 in Groningen, The Netherlands.

Prizes
From the nominations, an international jury will award 5 artists with a cash prize of €10.000. 1 artist will be named as the Grand Jury Award-winner, take home a cash prize of €10.000, and be handed a green touring voucher worth €5.000.
Additionally, one of the 15 nominees will also be presented with The Public Choice Award. The Public Choice Award (worth €5.000) will be given to the nominee who receives the most votes in an online voting campaign on mmeawards.eu.
Each nominee is also offered the opportunity to attend the Business Education Training Day at ESNS to further their skills in internationalising their careers. This day represents a value of €1.250 per artist and includes keynotes, expert meetings and training sessions.

Music Moves Europe 
Music is one of the most popular forms of art, widely consumed, and a vibrant expression of Europe’s cultural diversity. Music Moves Europe, the overarching framework for the European Commission’s initiatives and actions in support of the European music sector, and Creative Europe, the EU funding programme for the culture and audiovisual sectors, aim to help the music sector flourish by supporting the annual Music Moves Europe Awards.

The Music Moves Europe Awards are organised by ESNS and Reeperbahn Festival in partnership with Linecheck Music Meeting & Festival, Yourope, Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA), International Music Managers Forum (IMMF), ICMP-CIEM, Liveurope, Live DMA, European Music Exporters Exchange (EMEE), Digital Music Europe (DME), with support from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Province of Groningen and the City of Groningen. The awards are implemented in close cooperation with the European Commission and financially supported by Creative Europe.

Selection process

The selection process
The selection of the 16 nominees for the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards is a complex but well balanced process. The Selection Committee gathers data from a lot of resources which is put into a database. Here we discover the emerging artists that fulfil the criteria that are leading towards a nomination.

Main criteria

  • The artist needs to have a tour track record outside of his home country and is driven to achieve international success.
  • The artist’ first release is not older than 36 months (based on the registered release in Spotify).
  • Solo careers of artist previously in a band are allowed.
  • The artist is based in one of the Creative Europe countries.
  • No more than 1 artist from each of these countries can be nominated.

Step 1: Grosslist | Compiling the data
Between 1st of May and the 30th of June, the data on all emerging artists in our database is double checked on all details of the artist’s eligibility for the awards.

Professional recommendations
Once we compiled a list of artists that are eligible we ask music professionals in our European network to recommend their favourite emerging artists. For the 2020 edition the network consists of 179 professionals in 31 European countries that agreed on participating. All recommended artists are added to the grosslist. Multiple entries are noted.

Step 2: Longlist | Adding genres
In this phase, we add eight main genres to all the eligible artists. We use the genres to maximise the diversity in musical styles. The resulting eight lists are the base for the possible nominees of the Awards.

Step 3: Shortlist
The shortlist is the outcome of all the artists that are eligible and get additional points for registered (ETEP) festival performances, the amount of recommendations and the amount of countries that they are developing a career in. The compiled list is double-checked on a fair spread of participating countries and gender equality.

Step 4: List of nominees
The list of nominees is a selection of the Shortlist, where we have checked the activity of each artist in their Soundcharts artist profile. This is an accurate reflection of their activities and growth in popularity in the eligible period of 36 months. As a result this list of 16 nominees is a (data and research-driven) reflection of emerging artists of all 41 countries participating in Creative Europe, that are all driven to pursue a career outside their home country.

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