Here’s what’s going on with the ARIA Song Of The Year changes

On Wednesday, an email went out to ARIA members outlining changes to eligibility for two awards – the Jazz Album Of The Year and the Song Of The Year – late enough in the submission process that the deadline was extended until 7pm today to allow impacted ARIA members extra time to amend their entries.

The Jazz changes were uncontroversial – as TMN reported, they simply widened the range of albums that were eligible by removing the requirement that releases had appeared in the Jazz album chart.

However, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the Song Of Year changes.

The category, which was canned in 1998 but reintroduced in 2012 as a publicly voted prize, has had the eligibility period for releases essentially doubled under the new criteria. As with the International Artist Of The Year award, tracks that were released in the current eligibility period as well as the eligibility period for last year’s ARIAs now qualify.

The nominee pool is made up of the top ten Australian ARIA singles, calculated using sales data from the eligibility period – for which the dates have now changed. When entries for this year’s awards opened and up until this week, the eligibility period was September 2 2016 to September 7 2017. 

The new dates are October 1 2016 to October 5 2017.

So while songs released in September last year still qualify as they fall within the 2016 ARIAs eligibility period, September 2016 sales data which counted before the change will no longer be taken into account in the final nominees list.

It’s possible that a track that would previously have qualified as one of the top ten ARIA Australian singles using the sales figures between September 2 2016 and September 7 2017 could now that the window has shifted back a month, if that track had significant sales in September last year.

TMN has reason to believe that an independent artist could be impacted by the changes in this way, with a major-label artist newly qualifying in the top ten as it currently stands as a result of the shifted dates.

However, there are six more weeks in the period within which sales data counts towards the final list – so there is still time for any affected tracks to make up the numbers.

TMN put a number of questions to an ARIA spokesperson for further clarification on the changes. Their responses are below.

Why was this change to SOTY eligibility dates made?

In response to feedback from ARIA members.

Can you give more detail about the member feedback? Why were the previous cutoff dates an area of concern?

Given that the nominees from [sic] this Award is based on sales during the period, feedback from ARIA members was to ensure that the highest selling songs from that period were acknowledged.

Why make this change not only after entries had opened, but so close to the deadline for submitting entries for this year? Why not wait until next year?

We felt the changes were valid, and didn’t see why this year’s potential nominees should be impacted when there was still time to make the change.

If songs released in the previous year’s eligibility period are now eligible, does that mean that the release eligibility window for “song of the year” has now essentially expanded to two years?

Yes, as is the case for ‘Best International Artist’, although note that to be nominated the song has to be in the top 10 songs in terms of sales between Oct 1 2016 and 5 October 2017 and not have been nominated in the previous year.

But only the ARIA sales (and sale-equivalent stream) figures recorded for the given year’s awards eligibility period (i.e. now 1 October 2016 and 5 October 2017 inclusive this year) count towards the top ten and thus the nominees?

Correct.

So for example, a song that is nineteen months old (and thus is back catalogue for the label) that happens to have a huge boost in sales success a year after its initial release could be eligible for SOTY?

The change is intended to allow releases that have been standouts (ie. in the top 10 selling songs) during the current year to participate, given that products that are released closer to the current year cut off date are unlikely to have accumulated enough sales to compete in the previous year.

Is ARIA committing to making this change permanent? Will it be in place next year?

ARIA reviews the eligibility criteria each year.