Surprise, Surprise: No Females Nominated for EDM Award at This Year's AMAs

The American Music Awards, a self-described "fan-voted" awards show that is happening as we speak, selects best artist in categories such as Rock, Pop, R&B, Alternative, Country, and EDM. Seems pretty standard, right? But a closer look at the nominees tells otherwise. For one, no female was nominated for best EDM, discounting efforts by TOKiMONSTA, Nervo, Reid Speed and countless other talented DJs and Producers. In fact, since the category was enacted in 2012, nominations have not only gone overwhelmingly to white males—they have gone to exclusively white males. Considering that Forbes highlighted that the 12 highest paid DJs in the world are all men with few minorities among them, this shouldn't come as a surprise.

Other categories don't fare better: Favorite Rock / Pop duo or Group: white men. Favorite Album Soul / R&B: all male. The breaker of the trend goes to Nicki Minaj, who cleaned house in both the "Best Hip-Hop Artist" and "Best Hip-Hop Record" categories. While there are all female and all male categories, few women are placed in coed categories. As of this writing, Minaj is the only female nominated in a coed category to win an award. So why are the polls so biased?

For one, the system is preset. Voters go to the AMA site, tweet using the hashtag #AMAs, or comment on the AMA FB site to vote for pre-nominated candidates selected by the institution based on "sales, airplay, activity on social networks, and video viewing." Are these fair factors? Not really. Participating voters cannot, for instance, write in a nominee. Nor does this reflect a popular vote disconnected from corporate marketing and publicity, i.e. major corporations run the radios, and they decide what one should hear. Categories such as "Best Male" and "Female" are problematic, as they fall apart immediately when they go co-ed, and such factors heavily favor established white male acts. While it is tempting to say that these figures reflect blindspots in the voting public, they also seem to reflect the blindspots of a male dominated industry.