International Dance Music Awards (IDMA) Have Revealed 2018 Winners
As you can see through our lack of time to cover literally ANYTHING about ANYTHING onther than Miami Music Week, the time is upon us. Festival Season. With Hundreds of thousands of people migrating down to South Beach and Miami, news continues to flow. Most recently, the IDMA winners have been announced. The IDMA’s are the longest running dance music specific award ceremony (32 years) and sees votes from over 209 countries and territories. The award focuses on honoring and recognizing incredible achievements in several different categories.
Over the past weeks, fans have had the ability to login and cast their votes for their favorites across the EDM spectrum in categories like: Best Male and Female Artists, Best Underground Artist, Best Podcast/Radio Show, Best Album, Best Music Festival (well gee I wonder who won that one), Best Club (to name a few). As WMC/MMW have now kicked off and Ultra is on the horizon, take a look at the winners!
Thoughts? Any of your Favorites get snubbed? Let us know and be sure to check back with your Premier source for all MMW and Ultra news through the week!
Photo Cred: RUKES
The IDMAs have been running since the mid-80s, which is ancient by EDM standards
Most dance music award shows and blogs covering the scene didn’t even exist yet when the IDMAs first kicked off, so the fact that this ceremony had already hit over three decades by 2018 says a lot about how much weight it carries within the industry compared to newer, more social-media-driven “best of” lists. Getting recognized here means something different than winning a fan poll on Twitter, it’s peer and industry voting that’s been refined over literally decades of dance music history.
Timing this right alongside Miami Music Week isn’t a coincidence
Stacking the IDMA announcement right into the same week as Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week means the ceremony gets maximum attention from an industry that’s already got its eyes on Miami for the week. Every major label, agent, and artist in dance music tends to be in town for that stretch anyway, so tying the awards to that exact window guarantees way more buzz than dropping them during some random month with nothing else going on.
Voting from 209 countries is a bigger deal than the number alone suggests
That’s essentially every recognized country and territory on earth casting a vote, which makes the IDMAs a genuinely global measure of an artist’s reach rather than just a regional popularity contest. For an artist to actually win one of these categories means their fanbase spans a huge chunk of the planet, not just wherever their home scene happens to be strongest.
