The 2020 SAY Award: Entries now open

It's time to put forward your favourite records for this year's Scottish Album of the Year Award

Article by Peter Simpson | 06 Jul 2020
  • The SAY Award

The past three months have been rough, and they've been particularly rough for the musicians, engineers, staff, promoters and everyone involved in Scotland's music industry. While there have been some positive noises about support for venues and the cultural scene more generally, it remains a tricky time to think about making and playing music.

One thing to look forward to is the 2020 Scottish Album of the Year Award, with the first wave of nominations getting underway last week. In a time when musicians need recognition, support and some cash money, the SAY Award offers the tantalising prospect of all three. The SAY Award hands out an annual top prize of £20,000, as well as nine runners-up prizes of £1,000, and it's open to musicians from across all genres and from all sections of the music scene.

Anyone can put an album forward for the SAY Award, providing it meets the following criteria:

- The album was released between 1 April 2019 and 31 May 2020
- The album is made up of new material
- The album has six or more tracks and/or its runtime is over 30 minutes
- The artist was born in Scotland, at least 50% of the band’s core members were born in Scotland, or the artist or band (irrespective of nationality) has made their creative base in Scotland for the past 3 years

This is just the first stage of the SAY Award process – once all of the submissions are in, a panel of 100 nominators from across the cultural scene pick their favourites to whittle the eligible albums down to a longlist of 20. That longlist then gets cut down by the judges to make a shortlist of ten, with one of the picks coming from a public vote that'll take place later in the year. Past winners of the SAY Award include Kathryn Joseph, Young Fathers (twice), Anna Meredith, and 2019 winner Auntie Flo.

The SAY Award 2020 will be broadcast on Thu 29 Oct, with more details to be revealed later. Go to sayaward.com to put an album forward for consideration, and to listen to the records that have been entered so far.


The Skinny is a media partner of the SAY Award