Gold Coast Music Awards Announce Massive Expansion In 2017

The Gold Coast Music Awards are going bigger, bolder and better than ever for their third annual event in 2017, with organisers announcing a massive expansion for April's prizegiving ceremony.

The 2017 GCMAs will be quite literally nearly 10 times the size of this year's event, with attendance limits now lifted from 350 to 3000 as a result of the Awards' upcoming move to the beach at Surfers Paradise, part of its newly minted partnership with the Surfers Paradise Alliance.

The new agreement will initially run for the next three years, with Surfers Paradise Alliance chief executive Mike Winlaw praising the Gold Coast's music industry and its continued growth as a key point of attraction for the company.

"We've been very impressed with the calibre of local artists recognised by the Awards ... so teaming up is the perfect alignment for both organisations," he said in a statement.

The beachside event will now kick off the wider Surfers Paradise LIVE festival, which puts Gold Coast musicians front-and-centre (as well as Brisbane-bred sisters The Veronicas, who have been unveiled as the first artists set to grace the 2017 shindig), so expect to see a number of awesome local artists join the bill in the coming weeks and months.

"We’ll have a massive stage at the end of the mall where we’ll showcase some of the best Gold Coast bands," GCMA co-founder Chloe Popa said. "And adjacent to that, we’ll have our VIP marquee to present our awards in front of the music industry.

"This move means we can open the awards up to a much bigger audience — Gold Coasters will be able to come along for free and discover their new favourite local band."

The organisers won't have a hard time filling out those stages or their roster with the GC's finest, either, considering the city's local cohort already includes breakout acts such as multi-award-winning songstress Amy Shark (herself no stranger to GCMA wins), veteran rockers Delta Riggs, electro-prodigies Lastlings and The Kite String Tangle, and ever-affable singer-songwriter Bobby Alu, to name a few. 

Plenty of those artists will doubtlessly be up for Gold Coast Music Awards when the finalists are announced following the nominations period, which runs from 20 January until 10 March at the GCMAs website. New categories are set to be announced in the near future, as are new opportunities for finalists and winners.

It all forms part of the Awards' continued plan for growth; in fact, GCMA co-founder and director Samantha Morris has been loosely planning this move for some time — she just didn't think she'd get a chance to see it happen so soon.

"We’re thrilled to take the Music Awards program to the next level and to be working with venues and partners from across the city to showcase everything that makes the Gold Coast music scene so unique," she said.

"When we launched the awards in 2015 and it was such a success, people asked where we saw the event in 10 years' time. Straight away, I said, 'On the beach at Surfers Paradise'. I didn’t think we’d be there in our third year!

"Surfers Paradise has always been the beating heart of the Gold Coast, so there's an obvious synergy here."

The Gold Coast Music Awards will be held in Surfers Paradise on Thursday 27 April. See the event's website for more information.

Surfers Paradise LIVE hits the Gold Coast from Friday 28 April to Sunday 30 April. Line-up details are yet to be announced.

See a highlight reel from this year's GCMAs below.