TunesLiberia Music Awards responds to controversy

The TunesLiberia Music Awards honour the year’s music output, recognising artists on record labels as well as independent artists across the country.

Nonetheless, pundits in the country’s music industry lashed out at the organisers for questionable appearances and, in particular, the omission of Stunna in the coveted Artist of the Year category.

Elvis Juasemai, founder and CEO of TunesLiberia, the website responsible for the awards, has said the list was compiled from data gathered from Liberian music fans during a public nomination process. 

“I apologise if anyone feels hurt, but the decision is not ours,” he said. “Rather, it came from fans across the country. As organisers of the awards, our role is to compile the data we received from fans during the nomination or voting process.

“After listening to fans complain about being neglected during the first awards last year, we decided this time around to have them control the nominations and the entire voting process.”

This year the list of TunesLiberia nominees is topped by CIC, who received six nominations. Bucky Raw and Stunna follow – both appearing four times.

Juasemai added that the fans’ nomination exercise was intended to promote a balanced and fair process, as everyone had equal rights in deciding who deserved to be nominated. “I understand people are disappointed, but they have to accept the result the way it is,” he said. “The fact is, going forward, fans will do the nominations, not us.”

During the public nomination process, fans were asked to nominate six candidates at most in each of the awards' categories based on the artists' work throughout 2018.