The Youth Music Awards 2024 – Celebrating Diversity, and Doing Things Differently

Many music awards ceremonies have come under fire the past few years, mainly for lacking diversity and representation, bias towards certain genres, and little recognition for independent artists. While some progress has been made, it often seems a knee jerk response to public pressure rather than a concerted effort to make long term change.

At Youth Music, inclusion, diversity, equity and access are at the heart of our work. So we created an awards ceremony centered on these important elements. We continue to learn and adapt every year, but here’s how we do things differently…

The music industry has long been criticised for taking advantage of young people’s enthusiasm to get a ‘foot in the door’ by offering unpaid internships. Successful award ceremonies take a team of people behind the scenes to make it all happen on the night. Youth Music offers 18-25 year old creatives paid opportunities to work on the event, alongside a team of experienced professionals. Having young people involved makes the event unique, and differentiates it from other ceremonies.

This year, Live Nation sponsored the NextGen paid roles which include hosting, video editing and production support. All those working at the event received training ahead of the awards, and invaluable on the ground event experience to help progress their careers. Travel to and from the training and awards is covered and all roles are paid at or above Real Living Wage rates. This ensures all young people, whatever background they are from, are given the opportunity to be involved. Finally, we make sure our team are looked after on the night.

Unfortunately, there are less opportunities for young people to play music live than ever before due to financial constraints, inaccessible stages, and grassroots music venues closing.

Through the awards, we are in a unique position to provide young people with an opportunity to perform in front of industry movers and shakers such as record labels, publicists and brands. This year’s awards saw six inspiring performances from YMA nominees; Peri Rae, Sarah Isabella, Lucy Iris, 4 the Brotherhood, Meduulla, Richard Carter. And, to close the awards was an electric performance by recently signed pop/R&B artist, Morgan. 

The theme of this year’s awards was Rescue the Roots. Across 2025, we’ll be campaigning for the importance of investing in the roots.

In a tough funding environment, even prestigious awards such as the Mercury Prize have had to hold on live music being part of their celebrations in 2024. So we’re even more grateful to all of the award sponsors who came through this year. But we need to expand and deepen our partnerships to make the difference for young people that we all want to see.

We’d like to thank all of our team and guests for another amazing evening celebrating music, diversity and creativity – check out our highlights video here!