Here we answer some frequently asked questions related to the 2027 Saskatchewan Music Awards and from previous years. Come back as we'll be add more insights from the survey, and as we get questions on this year's intake!

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Survey Notes 

Last year, we put out a survey, seeking input to improve the awards, and to understand if the people they were intended to celebrate and engage, supporting them in continuing. 

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Fortunately, we received significant support for them to continue. Better yet, many indicated that the reason we're doing them - celebration, pride, building community - were coming across. 

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Some insightful discussions took place around the survey. Across the answers and follow up chats, we were looking for recurring themes or consistent ideas/suggestions that could be taken into consideration. Many of the one-on-one follow up discussions that happened also provided an opportunity for the individual to get additional information about the process and rationales, or bounce around ideas to further promote the awards and nominees.

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Themes that emerged:

Commercial vs non-commercial intent. Should certain categories (such as Album of the Year) be more weighted towards ‘commercial releases’? From the beginning of our Best Sask Albums polls over a decade ago, the premise of Album of the Year was intended to recognize musicality - not commercial success. The process of a jury first narrowing down the selections was based on musical merit. The next step, which involved public voting, would arguably introduce the commercial, or ‘popularity’, aspect into it. Thus, a heavily artistic project that is not necessarily as well-known by the general public would not likely land among the finalists; likewise, a commercially mainstream album may not necessarily have resonated with jurors. To achieve Album of the Year, the artist had to essentially produce an album that hit the mark on both sides of the equation.

 

Should there be ties: There were some concerns expressed that allowing for tied winners weakens the results. In considering this argument, we have ultimately determined we aren’t prepared to send items back to the jury for a tiebreaking further round. The jurors vote; we tabulate; and sometimes ties happen. We don’t feel ties diminish the result; it’s just reflecting what happened.

 

Album of the Year: There was some great debate regarding this category, specifically in the way it is decided. You'll see updates to the way Album of the Year is decided for 2027, based directly on the most significant feedback received.

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Disqualifying Artists who get too popular: There was a small amount of survey discussion on the topic of moving artists out of contention once they ‘get too popular.’ At this time, we have decided we are not going to implement any policies that would see the most 'successful’ artists or industry personnel disqualified from submitting once they have won a category multiple times. In our opinion, it would not truly represent the province’s ‘best’ to simply remove the competition once they have achieved a notable level of success. We feel those winning should do so on merit, rather than on ‘who else didn’t apply’ (while acknowledging that it is up to the discretion of each potential nominee to decide to submit for the awards cycle, or not).

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Indigenous Artist of the Year discussions: The topic of whether to maintain additional categories for Contemporary and Traditional Indigenous artists was discussed. The greatest sentiment was to keep the categories, but provide additional information in the guidelines. The challenge of pretendians was also discussed. Ways to ensure Indigenous artists are receiving support in submitting, reporting achievements, and other items were discussed. The categories were discussed further with SaskMusic's Indigenous Advisory, resulting in some clarification in the guidelines. 

 

Recognizing Live Artists: It has been of interest to us to incorporate recognition of live performance skills - especially as our current Artist categories rely heavily on recorded product. Various category concepts were floated for discussion and these conversations have resulted in the new category for 2027 of Live Artist of the Year. We're very excited to see how this category will do! 

Sask Residency: The subject of artist residency was a hot topic, with strong sentiment on both sides – to put more stringent criteria in place, or to loosen residency requirements. Some felt we should allow artists who still consider Sask to be their home and who still identify as ‘from Sask’ to apply, whereas others felt ex-pat artists could be taking space from those who currently live and work here. In the end, sentiment balanced out somewhere in the middle, and we will be maintaining the intent of the previously used guidelines around residency, with a few updates.

 

Additional/new category suggestions discussed:

• Musician of the Year: some good suggestions were made, and we’ll consider how this could work for evaluation purposes, live vs studio players, which instruments, etc. How to determine the winners is our most significant challenge. 

• Songwriter/Song of the Year – we asked specific questions around how such a category might work. This one will need a lot more consensus and planning before we would be comfortable adding a new category.

• Genre limitations in Artist of the Year: We had discussions of sub-genres' inclusion and recognition, both within existing categories and proposing new genres. Broadly speaking, sufficient release/work needs to be happening in the province for a genre to merit its own category. All sub-genres are welcomed within the current broad categories, but not all are able to stand every year due to a lack of submissions in those genres. These will be evaluated each awards cycle to determine if an under-accessed category needs to be merged into another, or if a new genre has enough activity to merit its own category.

• Graphic Artist of the Year: This feels achievable, and you'll see the new Graphic Piece of the Year category now unveiled! Not only open to Album artwork, but encompassing other visual elements surrounding music, we hope we'll see good engagement for its first year.

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Can SaskMusic board and staff submit / be nominees / win an award?

 

Yes. There's a note in the submissions guidelines covering this. As per SaskMusic policies, SaskMusic staff and board members are eligible to stand as nominees. (See full note in this year's guidelines.)

 

Board members and staff are subject to the same eligibility criteria as everyone else, and have no involvement in the submission verification, or how juries are assembled (ie they don't know who is on the juries). Staff members who submit are completely excluded from involvement in the jury processes - jury selection, adjudicating, tabulations, etc. and do not have access to the materials of any other submissions, nor know who applied in their category(ies). Jurors themselves operate under a conflict of interest policy, and can (and do) remove themselves from evaluating a submission if they are in a conflict of interest.

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We have detailed conflict of interest policies for board and staff in our policy guide. The nut of it is that we want actively working artists and industry folks on our board and staff so they better understand the needs of our members and the industry, and preventing them from participating in our programs would mean we have less folks wanting to volunteer or work for us. 

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How do I become a juror for the SMAs?

A call for new jurors for the 2027 SMAs will be out soon. You can't jury for a category you are submitting into (obviously!) but you can jury OTHER categories!​