2024 AIR Awards Nominations Open, New Categories Added

It’s time to prepare for the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) Awards. The 2024 event will be held on Thursday, 1 August, at Adelaide’s Queen’s Theatre in conjunction with this year’s Indie-Con Australia Conference at Mercury Cinema (31 July-2 August).

Today, the nominations for all categories at the 2024 AIR Awards opened to all AIR members, with voting closing at midnight on Tuesday, 26 March. If you want to be involved with this year’s awards, head here to find out if you qualify for AIR membership.

As well as nominations opening today, AIR has added two new essential categories to this year’s awards: Independent Producer of the Year and Independent Music Video of the Year.

Australian producers and music video creators will be recognised for their work on a single, EP or album released by a fellow AIR musician during the eligibility period – only releases put out from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023 will be counted.

King Stingray were the big winners at last year’s AIR Awards, taking home three awards: the Breakthrough Independent Artist of the Year, Best Independent Rock Album or EP and Independent Album of the Year.

Elsewhere, Teen Jesus & The Jean Teasers won the Best Independent Punk Album or EP award, Genesis Owusu won the Independent Song of the Year, and Chapter Music took home the Independent Label of the Year award. You can find the remainder of last year’s AIR Awards winners here.

Last year, the AIR Awards added two new categories, the Independent Marketing Team of the Year and the Independent Publicity Team of the Year awards.

The annual AIR Awards, which began rewarding and recognising Australian talent 18 years ago, has presented over 250 awards (so far). For many nominees and winners, the ceremony has given artists and their teams their first taste of industry recognition and praise that has helped facilitate national and international attention.

Some of the award-winning and nominated artists include Genesis Owusu, Courtney Barnett, Vance Joy, Sampa The Great, Amyl & The Sniffers, Sheppard, Tones & I, A.B Original, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Violent Soho and many more.