The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) will be discarding its best male and female awards to replace them with a more generalised best artist one.
The updated award will expand its number of nominees from five to 10 in light of this. The ARIA Awards took to Twitter to announce the changes, saying: “This year, ARIA are also proud to announce the new category Best Artist which will be replacing Best Female and Best Male which reflects our commitment to embrace equality and the true diversity of the music industry in 2021.” Annabelle Herd, ARIA’s chief executive, explained that the categories are being updated to give all artists the chance to have their work recognised in the same way.