Image Credit: John Shearer/Getty Images
This Sunday, the 39th annual American Music Awards will be beamed into your living room live from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. The fact that they even hand out those strange props from 2001: A Space Odyssey as prizes is barely the point; did you actually remember that Justin Bieber walked away with four awards in 2010?
Even the show itself seems to know the actual statuettes are sort of arbitrary; they will be doled out according to fan voting, which means that the artists with the most mobilized internet presences will be walking away with new mantlepieces.
But the American Music Awards do prove useful for the music business — they provide a big, spangly event that showcases (most of) pop’s major artists right around the time that people are thinking of making their holiday music purchases.
Like many other businesses that rely on retail sales, the music industry always gets a huge boost during the holidays as people rush to fill stockings with new releases, holiday albums, iTunes gift cards, and luxury items like box sets and vinyl. Conveniently, the AMAs give artists with product to move a stage on which to make their pitches to a national television audience, provided that people actually tune in ( this Sunday night’s NFL game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles promises to cut into the numbers some). READ FULL STORY »
