Just Plain Folks Announces JPF Music Awards Nominees

Now that we've gotten that pesky weekend out of the way, we wanted to tell you that Just Plain Folks have announced the nominees for the Just Plain Folks 2009 Music Awards.

For those unfamiliar, JPF (founded by FMC advisory board member, Brian Austin Whitney) is a website community comprising more than 51,500 songwriters, recording artists, publishers, record labels, producers and basically any other music-type, um, "folks." Their goal is simple: to help people involved in all levels of the music community network, share their experiences, build relationships and grow. JPF members have gone on to win Grammy’s, Emmys, CMA Awards and Academy Awards.

The largest independent music awards event on the planet, this year’s installment of the JPF Music Awards takes place on August 29 in Nashville, Tennessee. The 2009 “award cycle” saw submissions of more than 560,000 songs and 42,000 albums from 160-plus countries around the world. The final nominees span just about every conceivable genre —from rock, punk and country to hip hop, salsa and reggae. The awards are split into several general categories; the Founder's Awards, Song Awards, Album Awards, Video Awards, and Lyric Awards; from there the categories are then split further (although we didn’t see any emo-crunk-deathmetal-zydeco grouping).

We think the Just Plain Folks Music Awards are awesome because they help call attention to the hard work of so many independent musicians, and at an impressively wide-scale level. With extremely limited radio access and a crowded digital environment, today’s musicians have a lot of hurdles on the road to recognition, which is probably why the JPF Awards are such a hot ticket in the indie world.

Congrats to all the nominees and to JPF for all the effort they put into this event.

To check out the list of the 2009 nominees click here.