The Association of Music Producers has issued the call for entries for the 2023 AMP Awards for Music & Sound, marking the 10th Anniversary of the only non-profit juried competition for music and sound for brands. . The deadline for submitting entries is March 5.
The AMP Awards are open to music and sound design created or sourced for commercial release and commissioned by a client for TV, theater, the web, mobile devices or other medium able to deliver in the moving image. Winners will be presented at a gala awards presentation, which will include live performances from top artists, scheduled for May 22 at Sony Hall in New York City.
“The importance of music and sound in the success of any ad campaign can’t be underestimated, and that’s what AMP’s mission is all about,” said Carol Dunn, executive producer at Human Worldwide and president of AMP’s National Board. “As we celebrate not only the 10th Anniversary of our signature event, the AMP Awards, but also our 25th year of industry advocacy, innovation and education, we want to remind the ad community of the role our members play in making their work ring true and reaffirm AMP’s position as a progressive trade association that’s an activist for best practices.”
Celebrating great creative work is the goal of the AMP Awards, and the competition has a long history of recognizing creative and executional excellence in music and sound. Last year, over 400 industry professionals from the agency, label, music publishing, brand and music production communities attended AMP’s first live awards show since 2019. The program opened with a stirring acapella performance from Ukrainian Village Voices, along with a performance from the brother and sister-led soul/pop band Lawrence.
A number of industry veterans recalled what it meant to their companies to win an AMP Award. Wilson Brown, executive creative director and partner at Antfood, reflected on their Best in Show honor at the inaugural AMP Awards show in 2013: “Winning Best in Show for Good Books was immensely meaningful to us, and helped validate and inform our work and process since. The film had a fantastic script and visual design, and was for a good cause, but at the end of the day it was a psychedelic and esoteric journey that we thought may have been a bit abstract for some people’s tastes! From a craft perspective, it was something we put a lot of love and detail into for our peers – all practitioners of the sonic arts – so to receive their recognition was both unexpected and truly special. For me, it helped set the tenor of what’s so unique and important about the AMP Awards.”
Duotone won Best in Show in 2014 for the music it provided for an animated short film titled “The Scarecrow,” created by CAA for Chipotle. David Leinheardt, music supervisor at the company, recalled the experience this way: “Getting AMP’s Best In Show award for ‘The Scarecrow’ was particularly rewarding for us, as it was the follow-up to Chipotle’s ‘Back To The Start,’ (2011), for which we also provided music and talent supervision. That piece won all kinds of awards, including the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Branded Entertainment, but none specifically for music–because none existed at the time! In fact, Cannes Lions added music and sound categories a couple of years later, in part, we were told, because numerous juries had wanted to award the music from ‘Back To The Start,’ but there was no way for them to do so. So to receive the top honor for “The Scarecrow,” especially from our music peers at AMP, was very validating and heartening indeed.”
Chris Clark, executive creative producer and music supervisor at Squeak E. Clean Studios in Chicago, was formerly director of music at Leo Burnett, and played an instrumental role in the production of the 2015 Best in Show winner, an animated short film promoting LGBTQ acceptance produced for Allstate. “Winning Best In Show for Allstate’s ‘Safe In My Hands’ was a big deal, both for myself and the creative team at Leo Burnett, because it validated the approach of developing an original song with an artist/songwriter, Eli Lieb, on a national and social issue as important as LGBTQ rights,” he recalled.
“Creative director Christopher Warmanen wanted the song to embrace the bravery to hold hands with your partner in public, and Eli coincidentally released the song featured in the spot just before same-sex marriage was legally recognized, a month after the awards show,” Clark continues. “It was my first major recognition as Director of Music at Leo Burnett, and the way the AMP community embraced it both surprised me and brought me much closer to the creative values of the organization.”
Wave Studios, the audio post and sound design shop, won back to back Best in Show honors at the AMP Awards in 2019 and 2020, for “Fearless” for The New York Times and Droga5 and “Infamous Since 1864” for Smirnoff and 72andSunny. Vicky Ferraro, executive producer, had this to say about the experience: “As sound is a craft that can often be overlooked, it’s refreshing to see an organization like the AMP Awards show their unwavering commitment to our industry by celebrating the achievements in sound and music in advertising. And while it’s always an honor to get recognized for our work, it was particularly special for Wave NY to be selected as Best in Show by the AMP Awards two years in a row, even more so since we’ve only been in New York for five years.”
As the 2023 AMP Awards draws closer, the Association will continue showing its support for two important initiatives. The first is its ongoing contributions to the Musicians Foundation, which provides financial assistance to musicians in need. The other is its recently introduced AMP x Save The Music Foundation scholarship. First introduced at the AMP Awards show in 2022, this initiative, undertaken by AMP’s Diversity & Inclusion committee, seeks to provide scholarships to study music and music production to high school students from underrepresented communities across the country.
AMP members who enter before the early deadline of January 30 will qualify for a 30 percent discount. For full details on entering, along with fees, category descriptions and rules, visit here.
