Here we answer some frequently asked questions regarding the 2025 Saskatchewan Music Awards and from previous years.

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Categories that did not go forward for 2025

Unfortunately, the following categories did not receive enough submissions to move forward in this cycle:

• Children's Artist of the Year

• Classical or Broadway Artist of the Year

• Jazz or Blues Artist of the Year

• Traditional Indigenous Artist of the Year

Per our submission guidelines, artists (where applicable) were moved into their backup genre choice. Any other affected artists have been notified.

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Why wasn't (insert name) nominated?

The answer to this is usually one of the following:

- They didn't submit. (This is common.)

- They were not selected as a nominee through the jury process. Not all submissions can move forward as nominees.
- They did not complete their submission or did not meet one or more of the eligibility criteria for their category(ies).

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Can SaskMusic board and staff be nominees?

Yes. There's a note in the submissions guidelines: As per the SaskMusic Policy Guide, SaskMusic staff and board members are eligible to stand as nominees as long as they had no involvement or influence in the jury selection or tabulations for their submitted category(ies).

 

Board members and staff are subject to the same eligibility criteria as everyone else, and have no involvement in the submission verification, or how juries are assembled (ie they don't know who is on the juries). Staff members who submit are completely excluded from involvement in the jury processes - jury selection, adjudicating, tabulations, etc. and do not have access to the materials of any other submissions, nor know who applied in their category(ies). Jurors themselves operate under a conflict of interest policy, and can (and do) remove themselves from evaluating a submission if they are in a conflict of interest.

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We have detailed conflict of interest policies for board and staff in our policy guide. The nut of it is that we want actively working artists and industry folks on our board and staff so they better understand the needs of our members and the industry, and preventing them from participating in our programs would mean we have less folks wanting to volunteer or work for us. 

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How do I become a juror for the SMAs?

Juries for the 2025 SMAS are complete, but you can volunteer for other SaskMusic juries this year through our SaskMusic General Juror form.

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