2017 MAMA and 2017 MMA Left Us Many Questions for Its Ceremony

Just as usual, the year end awards will always become a controversy once it announced till the end of it. This year is no exception. Korea news outlet ‘Ilgan Sports’ summarize and diagnosing both awards which left us with many questions about its respective winner and how the awards were held.

Controversy over fairness and vote were taking over SNS. MAMA who’s dreaming to be ‘Korean Grammy’ shared a similar prize with different winner. MMA also came with ambiguous awards without decent standards.

2017 MAMA was controversial from the start with the venue and voting. The voting was once stopped and resumed, also the illegal voting controversies surfaces. It’s also showed that even though the number of voting were clearly high, the awards receiver is revealed to be other artist.

The most problematic also the award name. ‘Best New Artist’, ‘Best of Next’, ‘New Asian Artists’ were all actually have the same meaning.. “new comers award” but they decided to separate it into 3 awards. WINNER who also charted high on GAON did not receive anything and people assuming, their attendance is one of the reason.  Apart from IU and Yoon Jong Shin, it was ‘Idol Feast’.  Even though they prepared some collaborations, the line up is a bit lacking compared to last years.

This years MAMA was held in 3 countries, Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong. Organizer said: “3 countries with different language & diverse cultures will coexist harmoniously. To bring harmony and awareness in music combined with each respective country.” However, unfortunately, we can’t feel the culture in the ceremony at all.

2017 MMA, the award winner went wrong (ps: it’s according to the article). The winner of ‘Album of The Year’ is IU even though BTS recorded has the highest album sales. However, this issue refuted with the explanation, the winner is chosen with Melon’s chart (which is digital chart) and the offline sales are not counted. Also this year the score is divided to 60% digital chart, 20% judges, 20% voting, different from last year 70% digital chart, 30% voting.

With the same explanation, ‘Song of The Year’ awards which went to BTS ‘Spring Day’ also beat IU ‘Through The Night’ and Bolbbalgan4 ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ even though the streaming numbers are slightly different. On the other hand, Yoon Jong Shin ‘Like It’ was nowhere to be found on the nominations.

The other issue with ‘Stage of The Year’, Park Hyo Sin concert was held  in 2016. Little did we know, that the concert ticket was eventually sold on Melon’s ticketing platform.

The ‘Best Folk/Blues Award’ also receiving attention as AKMU ‘Last Goodbye’ was charted 10 place higher than Jung Eun Ji ‘The Spring’ and the vote also had huge gap (72% vs 10%).  Ilgan Sports then stated that this might be due to APink’s agency, PlanA which is a subsidiary of LOEN.

Nevertheless, congratulations for all the winner of 2 awards! As we all might not have a satisfying result, please be noted that this is an award where there’ll be a winner and there’ll be not. As fans behavior affect your idols image, let us just enjoy and back where we used to come to Kpop for fun and enjoying their music! 🙂

Source: IlganSports