On October 10, Korean media reported that the 2024 MAMA Awards announced the addition of a new award category, as well as updated the evaluation criteria for the most prestigious awards such as "Album of the Year".
First, a new award category has been added to this year’s MAMA, “Best Choreography.” This award will honor K-pop choreographers and artists who have contributed to the global success of K-pop by creating synchronized dance moves and visually appealing performances.
Next, new judging criteria are established for important categories such as Daesang (Grand Prize) that will reflect the multi-faceted success of artists, songs, albums, and music videos.
For example, the “Album of the Year” category used to be 80% sales and 20% jury score. But this year, it will take into account the entire content of the album, including the album’s packaging, production quality, art and visuals, individual songs, the album’s impact on the music industry, etc.
Meanwhile, this year's MAMA awards ceremony will be held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles (USA) on November 21, and at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka (Japan) on November 22-23. This is the first time that a major Korean music award ceremony will enter the US - the world's number 1 music market.
According to Allkpop, the change in the criteria for judging Album of the Year (one of the Daesang categories) has made the winner more unpredictable.
If the Album of the Year award were given based on the same criteria, Seventeen's mini album “Seventeenth Heaven” would likely win without a single opponent.
Because the sales of this album reached 5.7 million copies, far surpassing the groups and artists with the best-selling albums of the year, such as Stray Kids with the album "Rock-Star" (4.2 million copies), ENHYPEN with "Romance: Untold" (2.9 million copies), Jungkook BTS with "Golden" (2.8 million copies), TXT with "The Name Chapter: Freefall" (2.6 million copies)...
MAMA's sudden change in criteria has led many to believe that the organizers are looking for a way to prevent Seventeen from winning the Daesang Album of the Year trophy.
Besides, there are also opinions agreeing with the change of criteria. Because normally, Kpop boy bands always have an overwhelming advantage in album sales compared to girl bands, so throughout the nearly 20-year history of the award ceremony, 2NE1 is the only girl group to have won the Album of the Year category (in 2010).
Boy groups with large fan communities like BTS and EXO have even continuously won this award for many years thanks to large album sales.
Girl group songs tend to perform better than boy groups on Korean music charts, but album sales are the opposite.
When MAMA criteria change, it will help open up more opportunities for girl groups.
