How the iHeartRadio Awards became our biggest hit with fan armies
BY DERON DALTON
The Golden Globes, Grammys and the Academy Awards are all major award shows that are responsible for how the Tylt built its awards coverage. The success of these series made it apparent that popular award shows (maybe not all, but most) deserve coverage. The iHeartRadio Awards aren’t actually as big or established as any of the other award shows during this season. But the iHeartRadio Awards has something over the rest—heavily mobilized fan armies that are allowed to vote and want to see their favorite stars win.
The 4th Annual iHeartRadio Music Awards took place on March 5 — celebrating the best music artists popularly heard across iHeartRadio stations from early 2016 to early 2017. Again—fan armies of mega pop stars were already mobilized in voting for their favorites in fan-based social voting categories. We definitely benefited from this. Yet—we focused on non-social voting categories to not only give fan army voices a higher elevation, but to actually further mobilize conversations about which stars should win in the TOP categories.
The Tylt engaged music fans by having them predict the winners in the major “Artist of the Year” categories with a series of iHeart mini brackets — including “Female Artist of the Year,” “Male Artist of the Year” and “Best Duo/Group of the Year.” These actual categories were voted on by the iHeart Awards committee. Though, our brackets gave fan armies an opportunity to predict the winners themselves separately from social categories they were allowed to vote in. Fan armies—like Sia’s Lovers, the Rihanna Navy, Adele’s Daydreamers, the BeyHive, the Mendes Army, Beliebers and the Weeknd’s XO Crew, and more all laid out the cases for why their favorite pop stars should win in these top categories.
Unfortunately, in the chosen five-nominee categories, we had to leave off a nominee in each of these mini-bracket series. We made hard (and stressful) decisions in not including Selena Gomez, Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line in our brackets. Although very tough and calculated calls, we figured the four out of the five nominees that were chosen for each bracket had the greatest shots of winning in their respective categories. Like in previous award series and brackets, these factors made it easy for the entertainment editor to appropriately face off comparable pop stars for each debate.
First Round Female Artist of the Year Bracket:
iHeartRadio Female Artist of the Year: Adele or Ariana Grande?
— Results: #TeamAdele progressed to the final round over #TeamAriana.
iHeartRadio Female Artist of the Year: Rihanna or Sia?
— Results: #TeamSia beat #TeamRihanna and made it to the final round.
First Round Male Artist of the Year Bracket:
iHeartRadio Male Artist of the Year: Drake or The Weeknd?
— Results: #TeamWeeknd won over #TeamDrake in the first round.
iHeartRadio Male Artist of the Year: Justin Bieber or Shawn Mendes?
— Results: #TeamMendes won over #TeamBieber and went on to the final round.
First Round Best Duo/Group of the Year Bracket:
iHeartRadio Best Duo/Group of the Year: Twenty One Pilots or Coldplay
— Results: #TeamTwentyOnePilots progressed to the final round over #TeamColdplay.
iHeartRadio Best Duo/Group of the Year: The Chainsmokers or DNCE?
— Results: #TeamDNCE managed to beat #TeamChainsmokers in the first round.
Final Rounds for Artist of the Year Brackets:
iHeartRadio Female Artist of the Year: Adele or Sia?
— Results: It was a tight race, but #TeamAdele won our poll over#TeamSia by 51 percent, and the award.
iHeartRadio Male Artist of the Year: Shawn Mendes or The Weeknd?
— Results: Shawn Mendes won the bracket. Justin Bieber lost in the first round, but he won the actual award.
iHeartRadio Best Duo/Group of the Year: Twenty One Pilots or DNCE?
— Results: Twenty One Pilots won the final round and the award, thanks to the Skelton Crew.
