This Three-Country, Four-Night Asian Music Awards Show Is A K-Pop Promotion Machine
The Mnet Asian Music Awards aren't as catholic as its unabbreviated name suggests — rather, the show has evolved into a sort of Trojan horse for the K-pop genre across the continent.
The beats of the Mnet Asian Music Awards, known as MAMA, resemble American ceremonies such as the Grammy Awards — a program the former CEO of its namesake television network compared the event to. Despite its name, the event mostly celebrates the best acts from the K-pop industry over the last year, doling out common award-show honors such as "album of the year" and "artist of the year," with a few achievement awards mixed in (mostly reserved for artists from Asian countries that aren't South Korea), mostly in the service of helping to cement the central place of K-pop in the culture of the continent. A mix of online voting, expert opinion and sales measurement to determines the
