The Wire

The Aria Awards are on in a few weeks, but don’t expect to see too many winners who haven’t been commercially successful as well. So in the tradition of the Mercury Music prize in the UK, a new Australian Music prize, or AMP, has been established to reward musical excellence, regardless of commercial success. Cheryl Northey spoke to AMP Prize Director Scott Murphy about how the idea for the award came about, and to Spiderbait drummer Kram, who’s been on the awards’ steering commitee. Australian Music Radio Airplay Project manager Paul Mason told Andrew Liberts about how he hopes the AMP will be more inclusive than the ARIA’S.