Melon Music Awards

The Melon Music Awards (멜론 뮤직어워드) is a major music awards show that is held annually by Kakao Entertainment (a Kakao company) through its online music store Melon. The event was initially a fan-voted award conducted entirely online from 2005 through 2008, and has been officially held offline in Seoul since 2009.

The award show uses digital data from the Melon music platform—along with online voting and judges evaluation—to base its awards to artists who have had exceptional performance during the year.

History
The awards show underwent a logo rebranding starting with the 2019 edition. 2020 Melon Music Awards was held for 4 days from December 2 to 5, dubbed as "MMA Week", and was broadcast online due to government restrictions imposed because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Grand prizes
The four grand prizes (known as daesangs):


 * Artist of the Year
 * Album of the Year
 * Song of the Year

Best Collaboration
Global Rising Artist

2009

 * Star: TVXQ
 * Mania: TVXQ - "Mirotic"
 * Current Stream: Kim Tae-woo – "Love Rain"
 * Smart Radio: Girls' Generation
 * Odyssey: Girls' Generation – "Gee"
 * Mobile Music: Girls' Generation
 * Sudden Rise: Leessang
 * Y-STAR Live: Lee Seung-chul

2010

 * Best Dressed Singer: Girls' Generation
 * Best MBC Radio Singer: Jung Yeop – "Without You"

2016

 * Hall of Fame Award: Sechs Kies
 * Tencent-QQ Music Asia Star Award: iKon

2020

 * Best Drum: Shin Seok Cheol
 * Best Bass: Choi Hoon
 * Best Synthesizer: Hong So Jin
 * Best Guitar: Juk Jae
 * Best Chorus: Kim Hyun Ah

2021

 * Project Music: MSG Wannabe M.O.M
 * Best Session Instrumental Award: Kim Dong-min (Guitarist), Go Tae-yeong (Bassist), Gureum (Keyboardist)
 * Legendary Performance: BTS – "IDOL"

2022

 * Project Music Award: WSG Wannabe
 * KakaoBank Everyone's Star: BTS

2023

 * Kakao Favorite Star: BTS
 * J-Pop Favorite Artist: imase

Discontinued awards
Best Electronic

MBC Music Star Award

Performing Arts Award

Most grand prizes awarded
This list includes Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year Award.

South Korea

 * The 1st Melon Music Awards ceremony was broadcast through CU Media's y-star, Dramax and Comedy TV channels. Internet partners include Melon, Nate (then a sister brand), GOMTV and Afreeca TV (2009-2010).
 * In 2010, LOEN Entertainment partnered with MBC Plus Media, and the latter transmitted the awards night through MBC every1, MBC Dramanet (from 2010 to 2011 and 2013), MBC Game (now defunct) and MBC Life (now defunct). When MBC Music was launched in 2012, it shared the honor of being the flagship station of MMA with MBC every1. MBC QueeN joined in 2013.
 * Daum was the local internet partner in 2013. One year later, it merged with LOEN's incumbent parent company Kakao.
 * In 2018, the awards show was broadcast on JTBC2, JTBC4, 1theK, and KakaoTV as part of their partnership with JTBC Plus Media.

Worldwide

 * Since 2011, Alphabet Inc.'s YouTube (specifically the 1theK (formerly LOEN Music) channel) is the internet broadcast partner of Melon Music Awards. Microsoft's Zune was the first internet broadcast partner (2009).

China

 * Tencent, via its QQ Music and QQ Live services, owns the broadcast rights since 2016.

Japan

 * The Sony Music Japan-owned Music On! TV acquired the local broadcast rights in 2015, making Melon Music Awards the second Korean music awarding event that it broadcasts (the first being Mnet Asian Music Awards).

Thailand

 * Joox, another Tencent-owned music service, together with its sister property Sanook.com, brought Melon Music Awards to its users in Thailand in 2016 and 2017.

Taiwan

 * Streaming rights is handled by Taiwan Mobile's MyMusic service.