Mnet Asian Music Awards


The Mnet Asian Music Awards is a major South Korean music awards ceremony presented annually by entertainment company CJ E&M. The majority of prizes are awarded to K-pop artists, though some prizes are awarded to other Asian artists. The awards ceremony was first held in Seoul in 1999 and aired on Mnet. MAMA has been held outside of South Korea between 2010 and 2017 and now airs internationally.
The 2019 edition was held on December 4, 2019 at Nagoya Dome, Japan.

History

Ceremony

The event was launched in 1999 as a music video awards ceremony, modeled after the MTV Video Music Awards, called the Mnet Music Video Festival. By the mid-2000s, the awards ceremony had attracted some international interest due to the spread of Hallyu, and it aired in China and Japan in 2008.
In 2009, the event was renamed the Mnet Asian Music Awards to reflect its expansion outside of South Korea. In 2010, MAMA was held in Macau, marking the first time it was held outside of South Korea. The following year, in 2011, MAMA was held in Singapore, and was then held in Hong Kong from 2012 to 2017. In 2017, the awards ceremony was expanded to four nights, and parts of the event were held in Vietnam and Japan, in addition to Hong Kong. In 2018, MAMA had three parts and was held in three countries; South Korea hosted the MAMA for the first time in nine years, together with Japan and Hong Kong.

Event name

Each year in the table links to the Wikipedia article about that year's awards ceremony.

Award categories

Grand Prizes

The four grand prizes
Unless otherwise noted, each award category was introduced in 1999.
These awards have been given once or occasionally.

''Daesang'' awards

The following lists the artist who received two or more daesang awards.

ArtistRecord SetFirst year awardedRecent year awarded
BTS920162019
Exo620132017
Big Bang520082015
2NE1920092011
Twice320162018
Super Junior320072012
G-Dragon220092013
TVXQ220052008
SG Wannabe220062006
BoA220022004
H.O.T.219992000

''Competitive'' awards

The following lists the artist who received two or more competitive awards.

Controversies

Boycotting incidents

In 2007, Lee Min-woo and Shin Hye-sung from the group Shinhwa canceled their appearance at the event one hour before the awards ceremony began. Shin later said they left because they did not trust the event to fairly select winners.
In 2009, entertainment companies SM Entertainment and Inwoo Production boycotted the 2009 awards ceremony, and therefore none of their artists attended. Both companies said the reason for their boycott was that they questioned the fairness of the voting process. In particular, SM Entertainment said that Girls' Generation had held the #1 spot on a music chart for nine consecutive weeks, but the group never won first place on Mnet's weekly M Countdown music show. The company also criticized a mobile poll which required participants to pay money in order to vote.

Voter fraud

Prior to the 2017 awards ceremony, Mnet found that some fans had cast fraudulent votes through the use of bots. As a result, Mnet temporarily halted voting, then nullified all fraudulent votes, blocked relevant IP addresses, and deleted relevant user accounts.

Broadcasting

The show is broadcast live in thirteen countries across Asia. In South Korea and Japan, it is broadcast on Mnet and across CJ E&M channels. Other TV channels that have broadcast the show include Fox Life, tvN, UTV Bindass, Music On! TV, 8TV, iQiyi, MTV Mandarin, MediaCorp Channel U, GMM 25, Indosiar, Myx, MY TV, Iflix, Mnet America, NRK and SBS. The show is also broadcast online from Mnet's website in South Korea, Sohu in China, YouTube Live, and Vapp for the rest of the world.