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The 4th Annual Polaris Music Prize: The True North Strong and Free

The Polaris Music Prize is Canada’s only juried prize given to a band or artist based on artistic capability. It doesn’t matter how many records Nickleback sell, or how many sold out shows The Hip have played over the last 10 years. This prize has everything to do with music, and artistic merit. The Polaris jury is made up over 180 journalists, bloggers and broadcasters from across the nation. The jury nominates albums that have been released in the course of a year and the only rules the albums have to adhere to, in order to be nominated are as follows:
• An album has to contain at least 30 minutes of music or at least eight songs.
• For 2009, the album had to have been released on CD between June 1, 2008 and May 31, 2009.
• The albums have be commercially available. This means the album has to be available to purchase at any “bricks and mortar” retailer or available in digital form online.
• Artists must be Canadian Citizens, with bands at least 50 per cent of the band has to be Canadian.
As the Polaris Music Prize gears up to give away it’s fourth award and another $20,000, there’s still a couple more steps to go through. The longlist (40 albums) was announced on June 15, and to get to that stage every juror independently picked five albums for the long list. Now, the second round of voting is currently happening, where the jury again, independently chooses five albums. This time, the jury has to pick five of the 40 albums on the longlist, where before, the jurors were free to pick any album that fit the criteria. On July 7, the shortlist is announced and even more speculation and anticipation occurs.
On September 21 in Toronto, an 11–member jury is selected to pick the winning artist. The jury works together to decide who will win the prize, the fame and the cash. The past winners of the Polaris Award have been Final Fantasy (2006), Patrick Watson (2007), and Caribou (2008).
So, who’s going to win? I have my favourites who I think could take home the prize in September, but for now I’m going to speculate who is going to make the shortlist, and who in a week is going to be saying, “Wasn’t it awesome making the long list?”

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