FemMetal Awards General Info

Last edited January 23rd, 2024

Introduction

FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal is an online music magazine and journal dedicated to women performing in the Rock and Metal scenes. We also target feminist and human rights issues through our variety of articles and events. You can learn more about our message and goals here.

The goal of the awards presented by the ‘FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal’ website is to honour the achievements of Rock and Metal musicians. A huge portion of the award is dedicated to new Rock and Metal musicians.

The event’s first edition was in 2018. During the first three years of the event, we felt it would be more appropriate for our young publication to cover only new and underground musicians through the awards. In 2021, we decided it is time for the event to start covering all female musicians in Rock and Metal. However, the awards remain focused on giving a spotlight to new musicians through three of the twelve categories.

The Categories of FemMetal Awards

The event has had many changes in categories so we would keep improving the chances for more musicians to be under the spotlight. The categories in the latest edition in 2022 were:

1. Best Metal Act

2. Best Rock & Alternative Act

3. Best Album

4. Best Music Video

5. Best Instrument Player

6. Best Vocals

7. Best Brutal Vocals

8. Best Breakthrough Metal Act

9. Best Breakthrough Rock Act

10. Best Release by a Breakthrough Act

11. Best Rock / Metal Influencer

12. Write-In Musician or Act

How are the nominees chosen?

We invite our contacts and friends in the Metal and Rock music community to draft names of eligible acts and musicians for each category. We believe that the nomination is the most critical stage of the event. Moreover, we do not consider mass public voting a proper way to pick the nominees, as it can be greatly affected by the popularity of the artists. The professional music-related surroundings would pick names to run for the final public vote, diminishing the effect of popularity on the procedures of the event at this level.

Therefore, the “community members” invited are experts in the Rock and Metal scenes, such as promoters, journalists, influencers, label executives, former and active musicians, and artists. Later, the FemMetal Awards Committee is formed from a subgroup of the invited personnel to vote for the final nominees who will be picked from the list of drafted names. The number of nominees for each award would vary depending on the number of drafted musicians.

Voting Process

In the early years of the award, the polls were live and each category had a separate poll and sometimes even a different directory on which to vote. This often resulted in some cases of “fierce” competition between two or more musicians.

In order to make the voting process more professional and less competitive, we have decided, starting in 2021, to replace the polling policy with a more “data collection”-oriented method rather than a “poll race” method. The public voting lasts for a week. Votes are restricted by email addresses (1 vote per email address). The voting page is protected by invisible reCaptcha to avoid bots and scripts. The polling takes the form of a survey, in which the voter can, but is not forced to vote for all categories, to help avoid misleading curves. To prevent harmful competition, we do not show live results of the polls and will only announce the winners and voting outcomes after the competition.

To ensure the transparency of the voting and counting process, any nominee or member of the drafting community can request a copy of the results.

Theme

Every year, a woman-empowerment theme is picked for the event and the aliases and the name of the Hall of Fame are decided through that theme.

Promotion

Promoting this event to our followers, readers, and the general public is our responsibility. Nominees are not required to do anything about it. We will inform our readers and advertise the event to make the polling sample as wide as possible.

Awards

• All nominees in all categories are added to the All-Time Hall of Fame.
• All nominees in all categories will be present on the annual thematical Hall of Fame page.
• A number of the nominees will receive an advertisement spot on the sidebar and footer (only footer on mobile devices) of the website. Below is an explanation of how we determine these winners.
• All winners will receive a digital certificate.
• All members of the Committee will receive a participation certificate and a mention in the credits of the Hall of Fame page.

How are the Ad Space Winners determined?

The number of winners differs every year. In 2024, the number was 20.

The table below specifies the awards tiers and limits. This table will be used in the steps below. We have given breakthrough categories an advantage since new bands and musicians would benefit from the ad space more.

Procedure

For demonstration purposes denote by X the number of winners to be selected.

To determine the winners, we follow the steps below:

1. List all first-place acts in the order of their category’s weight using the number of votes received as a tie-breaker.
2. Remove duplicates
3. Repeat the same process for following rankings, respecting the limits for each category until we have X different acts on our list or more
4. The top X acts are the winners

Advertisement Content Conditions

The content of the advertisements placed must satisfy the following conditions:

1. The advertisement may not contain a message of support for a politician or political party.
2. The advertisement may not be clickbait (displaying misleading text with a URL destination that leads to a page the user would not expect)
3. The advertisement may not display a message that might be considered misogynistic, racist, or homophobic, or associated with a personality or an organization that has displayed or supported misogynistic, racist, or homophobic behaviour. 

For any further questions about the FemMetal Awards, please write to awards@femmetal.rocks.