Jury and Selection Process
There is no submission process or entry fee for the Polaris Music Prize. Jurors select what they consider to be the five best Canadian albums released in the previous year. The ballots are tabulated with each number one pick awarded five points, a number two pick awarded four points and so on. A long list of 40 titles is tabulated, released in mid June and promoted to the public. The long list is then sent back to the jury. The jurors then re-submit five top picks from this long list.
These ballots are re-tabulated and the top ten titles form the Polaris short list. This list is released in early July and promoted to the public. The ultimate winner is decided by a smaller group of 11 jury members ("The Grand Jury") who convene in Toronto at the Polaris Music Prize gala in late September, and the decision is finalized during the gala as the nominated bands perform.
Jurors are selected by the Polaris Music Prize board of directors. The jury list includes more than 200 Canadian music journalists, bloggers and broadcasters. To ensure an impartial outcome, no one with direct financial relationships with artists is eligible to become a jury member. The organization itself is a registered, not-for-profit corporation. Another key benefit of enlisting music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers as judges is the increased media coverage and creates the conditions to draw attention to quality music in a cluttered commercial landscape and increasingly fractured music scene.
Notable jurors have included former MuchMusic VJs Hannah Sung and Hannah Simone, Toronto Star music columnists Ben Rayner and John Sakamoto, Darryl Sterdan (Winnipeg Sun), Mike Bell (Calgary Herald), Stuart Derdeyn (Vancouver Province), Stephen Cooke (The Chronicle Herald), T'Cha Dunlevy (Montreal Gazette), Sandra Sperounes (Edmonton Journal), Brad Wheeler (The Globe and Mail), Alan Ranta (Exclaim!), Explore Music broadcaster Alan Cross, CBC Radio personalities Jowi Taylor, Patti Schmidt, Jian Ghomeshi, Matt Galloway, Grant Lawrence, Lana Gay, Lisa Christiansen and Amanda Putz, Voir music journalists Stéphane Martel, Patrick Baillargeon and Olivier Robillard-Laveaux and The Hour host George Stroumboulopoulos.
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