2013 Taite Music Prize Nominations Open

Nominations for the fourth annual Taite Music Prize are now open. The award, which seeks to celebrate the artistic integrity of New Zealand releases over the popularity of the band/musician or their albums' chart success, is open to all New Zealand musicians who have released an album in 2012. Past winners include Lawrence Arabia for Chant Darling in 2010, Ladi6 for The Liberation Of in 2011 and this year Unknown Mortal Orchestra took out the award for their debut self-titled album. See press below for full details and here are clips from the Taite Prize winning albums to date...

Lawrence Arabia - 'The Beautiful Young Crew'

Ladi6- 'Bang Bang'

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - 'Ffunny Ffrends'

Press Release:

The Taite Music Prize: in search of this year's finest New Zealand album.

We are very excited to announce that nominations are now open for the Taite Music Prize 2013.

Named after the late Dylan Taite, one of the country's most highly respected music journalists, this will be the fourth year for the award. In a similar vein to several international awards, The Taite Music Prize's purpose is to recognise outstanding creativity for an entire collection of music contained on one album. The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000, to be spent as they wish. The cash prize is kindly supplied by PPNZ Music Licensing.

Acknowledging originality, creativity and musicianship regardless of sales figures or genre, The Taite Music Prize was established to champion the finest release by a New Zealand artist or group – the previous winners have all been excellent albums that demonstrate these criteria well.

The nominated finalist albums will be selected by votes from all IMNZ members and a thirty person judging group - comprising musicians, record label representatives, music journalists and radio staff. There will then be a secondary group of ten music judges that will decide the overall winner.

The judges will make their decision based entirely on the music on the finalist albums. Sales, genres, artist recognition or popularity are not contributing factors in their decision making process. The winner will then be announced at a presentation in Auckland on 17th April 2013. The event will be live-streamed to the public via the NZ Herald Online.

Any New Zealand album released during 2012 is eligible for nomination for the Taite Music Prize 2013. For more detail on eligibility and nomination forms please visit www.indies.co.nz. Nominations close on 21st January 2013.

Previous winners are:
2010 - Lawrence Arabia ‘Chant Darling’ (Honorary Bedouin Records)
2011 - Ladi6 - The Liberation Of (What? Music)
2012 - Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Seeing Records)