The about 50 Academy Board members drawn from Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi were made up of media personnel and players in the Ghana music industry consisting of music producers, entertainment journalists, disc jockeys and radio presenters.

The vote of the Academy Board will constitute 30 per cent of the total votes except in the Song of the Year category, which is exclusively 100 per cent public voting through text messages. Results of Saturday’s voting which was supervised by the event statisticians, KPMG, will be added to the public and the VGMA Board votes.

The controversies which has characterised the event was once again manifest at Saturday’s event that was held at the Alisa Hotel in Accra as some industry players questioned the inclusion of some songs on some albums which were released before the year under review.

Some Academy Board members did not see the justification for some singles released two years ago but appearing in recent albums.

However, a member of the VGMA Board, Nii Ayite Hammond who admitted to the claims, justified the nomination of those albums with songs released two years ago, contending that once those albums were released in the 2012 year review, there was nothing wrong with it.

Mr. Hammond said it is the albums that have been nominated for the Album of the Year and not those individual songs on those albums; hence one cannot fault the inclusion of those albums in the awards.

Themed “The Next Level”, this year’s event is scheduled to take place on May 18, at the Accra International Conference Centre. This year’s event is geared towards encouraging artistes to think bigger in creating and marketing their music.

The Vodafone Ghana Music Awards is sponsored by Vodafone and organised by event organising giants Charter House with support from GhOne television, Star Beer and KPMG.