GarageSpin has been covering the Digital Entertainment & Media Excellence Awards in the music category. Awards for digital innovation? Great idea! The only problem: the winners make no sense.
Motorola’s iRadio wins the radio category, for instance, even though it’s basically marketing at this point — there’s no shipping product. It still managed to beat out internet radio technology and satellite radio. Maybe the judges got boozed up by Motorola like I did at a recent press event in New York — but even on, um, four mixed drinks, I still didn’t find iRadio impressive, or at least not yet. (Ugly Windows interface lets you put streams on your phone so you can Bluetooth broadcast music to your car for craptacular audio quality. Until we know what those “hundreds of stations” are, can I have my FM back, please?)
Yahoo Music Unlimited beats out better Windows subscription services and a better download service (iTunes), despite a clunky, bug-ridden interface and fewer features. (Okay, Yahoo was cheaper, but after a recent price hike on their part for downloading music to your player, who cares?)
Lil’ John wins in the “best use of technology by an artist” category; hoping that’s not for his use of ecards. Other winners include (more logically, perhaps) the Sonos Digital Music System and Paul McCartney.
Check out the other winners, and thanks, Mike! But I think we need our own music tech recognition: watch for some Naughty/Nice lists around Christmas and the Best of 2005 for the New Year.