A2IM: American Association of Independent Music

Posted in News by A2IM

A2IM congratulates the indie label community’s artists on 34 GRAMMY wins, led by Bon Iver’s two GRAMMY’s including the Best New Artist award. The indie community’s percentage share of GRAMMY wins increased over the prior year with additional multiple A2IM member label wins by Big Machine’s Taylor Swift, Concord Music Group’s (label winner of seven GRAMMY’s) Chick Corea, and Rounder’s Alison Krauss.  A number of A2IM member comments are included here in the A2IM press release and we congratulate them all!

In addition to these wins, Adele who is signed to Beggars/XL but licensed to and marketed by Columbia in the U.S. (and therefore excluded from the indie total), won six GRAMMY awards including Album of the Year. This marks the fourth consecutive year that an artist signed to an indie label has won Album of the Year, following  2011’s winner Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’, 2010’s winner Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ (Big Machine), and 2009’s winner Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ ‘Raising Sand’ (Rounder).

Posted in News by A2IM

A2IM wishes “Good Luck!” to our A2IM members at this Sunday’s 54th Annual Grammy Award ceremony.  The National Post article Seven Things You Need To Know About The Grammy Awards 7th thing listed, highlights the increase in indie music label nominations and awards won and gives attribution for that success to A2IM.

Posted in News by A2IM

A2IM congratulates this year’s Grammy Award nominees and, in particular, is pleased that independent music labels and artists earned tremendous recognition on par with last year from the voting members of The Recording Academy. Of the 387 total non-producer nominations for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, independents were celebrated with 194 – half of all nominations!

This week A2IM’s Vice President Jim Mahoney was quoted in two articles Electronic Musician and Music Connection Magazine.   A2IM thanks Billboard Magazine in Association with The Recording Academy for their January 7, 2012 Special Grammy Issue in which 3 pages were dedicated to independent artists, including a line listing of all independent music nominees.

A2IM congratulates all of our members on their artist’s nominations! Good Luck to All!!

Posted in News by A2IM

If you are a voting member of the Recording Academy, the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) encourages you to vote Independent for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards and to urge other members, labels and artists to do so as well.You can find the complete list of A2IM Member Nominations here.

By voting Independent, we are supporting labels and artists that are on the leading edge of creativity and advancement in music. Join us in supporting this vital part of the music label industry and vote Independent.

Your influence is important…MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT!  In this final round, voting members may vote in up to 20 Categories in the genre Fields plus the four Categories of the General Field. So voting in the categories and fields where Independents are nominated can really make a difference.

Please forward this message to your colleagues and friends who are Recording Academy voting members.

Posted in News, Press Releases by A2IM

A2IM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 1, 2011

Independents Recognized in Top GRAMMY Categories; 194 Nods Total

A2IM, the American Association of Independent Music, congratulates this year’s Grammy Award nominees and, in particular, is pleased that independent music labels and artists earned tremendous recognition on par with last year from the voting members of The Recording Academy. Of the 387 total non-producer nominations for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, independents were celebrated with 194 – half of all nominations!

Jim Mahoney, A2IM Vice President, says, “The music of independent labels and artists offers cultural diversity and breaks new ground for music fans. For the second year in a row, independent labels and artists have scored half of the total nominations; a true sign of the continued strength, presence, and the importance of independent music.”

Special congratulations go to A2IM label members Jagjaguwar and Glassnote Records, for their respective nominations for Bon Iver (Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album) and Mumford & Sons (Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song).

Of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Darius Van Arman of Jagjaguwar said, “All of us at Jagjaguwar are so proud to be associated with Justin Vernon and the whole Bon Iver extended family. As a company, we are inspired by his success, the way he has achieved it, and are absolutely committed to working with him in a way that reflects his values and overall approach to creating and sharing.” Glassnote’s Daniel Glass echoed his enthusiasm, saying “We are thrilled, ecstatic, proud, happy, and over the moon!”

A2IM would also like to acknowledge the recognition for joint partnerships between indie and major labels which include, excluded from the aforementioned 50% of nominations, six nominations for Adele (XL/Columbia Records) and a nod each for The Band Perry and Martina McBride (Big Machine Label Group/Universal Music/Republic Nashville). XL’s Kris Chen enthused, “We’re delighted to see Adele recognized for her incredible voice, poignant songwriting, and unique artistic vision; and wish to congratulate her and our partners at Columbia.”

Riding a three-year winning streak of Album of the Year Grammys going to A2IM member artists (2010’s “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire on Merge, 2009’s “Fearless” by Taylor Swift on Big Machine Records and 2008’s “Raising Sand” collaboration by Alison Krauss & Robert Plant from Rounder Records), excellent independent music continues to be recognized by the voting members of The Recording Academy. Independent releases are nominated in 66 of 76 non-producer categories (excluding the aforementioned partnerships) which is 87% of all nomination categories, up from 81% in 2010, before the recent Recording Academy consolidation of award categories. Many categories were dominated by Indies, including the categories for Alternative Album, Bluegrass, Blues, Children’s, Folk, Reggae, and World, and all of the Classical, Latin, and Jazz categories.

Mahoney continues, “We applaud the recognition of our entire independent label community. Independents come in all shapes and sizes, business models and musical genres. For every independent, garnering a Grammy nomination is a reward and testament to the tremendous contributions that independents offer to music fans and reflects the hard work music labels poured into supporting these great artists.”

Among the many independents that have been recognized by The Recording Academy this year, there are large independent music label groups like Concord (leading all independents with 16 nominations), Naxos and Cedille in classical (9 and 4 nominations, respectively), Mack Avenue (4 nominations), and 3 nominations each for Big Machine, Epitaph/ANTI-, Ultra… the list goes on and on. Naxos of America CEO Jim Selby noted that Naxos is honored to have American Classics recordings nominated for numerous Grammy Awards this year. The importance of recording American ensembles performing new works by American composers has now been fully recognized by the voting members of the Academy and Naxos is proud to play a role in bringing this important music to a wider audience around the world.

For a full list of A2IM member nominees, click HERE. If you are an A2IM member, who had an artist who was nominated that is not listed here, please let us know before we do our outreach.

Grammy nominees can download the official Grammy Nomination sticker/banner artwork HERE.

About A2IM:

A2IM is a not-for-profit trade organization serving the Independent music community as a unified voice representing a sector that comprises over 30% of the music industry’s market share in the United States (and almost 40% of SoundScan digital sales). The organization represents the Independents’ interests in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill, and as part of the global music community. A2IM is headquartered in New York City. The organization’s board of directors is composed of the following: Concord Music Group President Glen Barros; Sub Pop VP Business Affairs Eric Brown; tinyOGRE Entertainment COO Jim Cooperman; Epitaph General Manager Dave Hansen; Yep Roc Records co-owner Tor Hansen; Alligator Records Founder/CEO Bruce Iglauer; The Beggars Group Founder/CEO Martin Mills; Kill Rock Stars President Portia Sabin; Jim Selby, Naxos of America CEO, Tommy Boy CEO/Founder Tom Silverman; Razor & Tie COO Victor Zaraya.

For press information on A2IM, please contact Elizabeth Lutz (elutz@shorefire.com) or

David McTiernan (dmctiernan@shorefire.com) at Shore Fire Media, 718.522.7171

Posted in News by A2IM

A2IM will be messaging our members’ 1st round nominees for official GRAMMY nomination to our full contact database but in order to include yours we need for you to send us the entry ballot info by the close of business Wednesday, October 19th.

The first-round ballot of all artists, albums, and singles that have made the 1st round for consideration as a final nomination has been mailed to all voting members of The Recording Academy.  If your submission(s) has been selected for GRAMMY nomination consideration you should have received notification from The Recording Academy.

We are creating a list of our members’ nominees and circulating this list to our full contact list late this week. To have your 1st round nominees included in our messaging please send Sheryl Cohen a list of your 54th Annual GRAMMY 1st round nominations from the distributed first-round ballots.

We need you to send to us the following info filled out into the spreadsheet attached HERE (include info for all columns on the spreadsheet):

*Part (either 1 or 2, 1 for general field, 2 for all other fields):
*Field Number (29 in total, there no field numbers for general categories):
*Field Title (ie. General, Pop, Dance, Rock, etc.):
*Category Number (78 in total):
*Category Title (ie. Record of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album, etc.):
*3 Digit Entry Number (assigned by The Recording Academy, not the number you used for submission):
*Artist:
*Album / Song Title:
*Label Name:

All relevant info is available on the official voting ballot distributed to all voting members of The Recording Academy (if you are not a voter and don’t know a voting member please let us know).

If you have any questions on the above, please don’t hesitate to contact Sheryl Cohen at 212 999 6113 ext. 3.

IMPORTANT:  If not in the above format using the spreadsheet, your nominees will not be included in our members list that we’ll be distributing to our contacts.  We’ll be sending our comprehensive list in a quick turnaround to get into the hands of as many Recording Academy voters as possible by October 21st as all 1st round ballots are due back to The Recording Academy by November 2nd.

If you are a voting member please hold your ballots and tell your friends to hold theirs until we send out our list so you can support and vote for your fellow A2IM members.

Good luck and remember, VOTE INDEPENDENT!