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For your average Canadian recording artist, $20,000 is a nice wad of cash to take home. Every September for the last five years, one lucky recipient has had a massive, oversized cheque written in their name for that sum of money, thanks to the Polaris Music Prize. Recognizing the best homegrown talent, the Prize is “awarded to the artist that creates the Canadian Album of the Year, as selected by an independent jury of Canadian music critics, judged solely on artistic merit, without consideration of genre or record sales.”

Well, the winner of the sixth annual Polaris Music Prize will be happy to know that on September 19th, they will take home an extra $10,000, after founder Steve Jordan announced today that the prize money has been increased to $30,000.

On top of that, the nine unlucky artists shortlisted for Polaris that don’t win will now be presented with generous $2,000 each. All of a sudden losing just got a whole lot nicer.

The Long List of the 40 albums will be announced on June 16th, while the Short List of ten nominees will be announced on July 6th.

The 2011 winner will be revealed at CTV’s Concert Hall studios at Toronto’s Masonic Temple on Monday, September 19th at the Polaris Music Prize gala. The event is broadcast live on Sirius channel 152 and CBC Radio 3 and will also be broadcast on MuchMusic and muchmusic.com.

Past winners have been Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson, Caribou, Fucked Up, and Karkwa.

Tags: caribou, Final Fantasy, fucked up, karkwa, Patrick Watson, Polaris Music Prize

Posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 at 1:00 pm by Cam and is filed under Blog, News, The Wedge.

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