This year’s edition of the Ghana Music Awards has taken off with an invitation by the organizers, Charter House, to record labels, artistes and producers among other stakeholders to submit music works to the Nominations Committee.

By a press release last week, the organizers have invited submission of works which were released between November 1, 2003 to October 31, 2004 and should come under the following music genres, hiplife, gospel, highlife, contemporary highlife, reggae and traditional music.

All entries should include details such as the title of the song, the entry category, the date of public release, the record label, the producer, sound engineer and five copies of the CD or cassette.

The deadline for submission of entries to the offices of Charter House is March 4. As part of its repackaging and general overhauling process there have been some modifications to this year’s event structure chiefly among them being new voting percentages.

Under the new structure, the public have been allocated 30 percent with the Selection Committee and the Planning Committee accounting for 35 percent apiece. This year, a Nominations Committee made up of industry professionals which is responsible for the proper categorisation of entries has been setup.

Again this year, the Selection Committee will be made up of industry professionals who are not related to any of the works which will be in contention for the awards. The Planning Committee will be made up of a select group of mature, discerning and objective industry professionals and the organizers who will focus on the smooth running of the process of the award scheme while the Organizing Committee will focus solely on planning and executing the event only while KPMG remains the event statisticians.

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