The MTV Video Music Awards are an annual American ceremony honouring music videos, first held in 1984. Most winners are decided by public voting, and the trophy is a figurine of an astronaut standing on the moon.
The award in brief
The Video Music Awards, almost always shortened to the VMAs, are a televised prize ceremony run by the music network MTV. Where most music awards reward recordings, songwriting or performance, the VMAs were built around a different object: the promotional music video, judged as a piece of filmmaking as well as a piece of pop.
The show is held in late summer or early autumn, usually in a large arena in or near a major American city, and the venue rotates from year to year. It lasts a few hours and mixes the handing out of trophies with live performances, which for much of the show’s history have attracted more attention than the awards themselves.
Search interest in the United States, as reflected in Google’s trending searches, frequently pairs VMA queries with the name and age of an individual performer. That pattern is typical of the event: the ceremony tends to enter general conversation through whoever appeared on its stage rather than through its list of winners.
Origins in the video era
MTV launched in 1981 as a cable channel built almost entirely on music videos, which at the time were promotional items produced by record labels rather than works treated as art in their own right. Within a few years the format had become central to how songs were sold, and the directors, editors and choreographers who made the videos had no ceremony of their own.
The first Video Music Awards were staged in 1984 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The event was positioned as a younger, less formal counterweight to the established recording awards, with categories that named craft roles directly and a tone that made room for the unpredictable.
The trophy came out of the channel’s own branding. MTV’s earliest on-air identification sequences used footage of the Apollo moon landing, with the network’s flag planted in the lunar surface, and the award was modelled on that image: a silver astronaut holding a flag. It was known informally and then officially as the Moonman until 2017, when MTV renamed it the Moon Person as a gender-neutral alternative.
The modern format
The categories now fall into three rough groups. There are the general prizes, headed by Video of the Year, alongside artist and new-artist awards. There are genre categories covering pop, hip-hop, rock, alternative, Latin, K-pop and others, with the exact list changing as MTV adds or retires fields. And there are the craft categories — direction, cinematography, editing, visual effects, art direction and choreography — which reward the people who make the video rather than the person on screen.
The voting works differently across those groups. For most of the main and genre categories, nominees are drawn up by MTV and the winner is decided by public online voting, promoted heavily on the network’s website and social accounts in the weeks before the show. The craft categories are generally decided by a panel of industry professionals rather than by the public, since they turn on technical work that a general audience is not positioned to compare.
The ceremony also carries the Video Vanguard Award, a lifetime achievement honour that has borne the name of a late pop performer since the early 1990s and is given for a body of work in video rather than for a single release.
The broadcast itself has widened. For decades the VMAs were an MTV property watched on MTV; in recent years editions have been simulcast across other channels owned by the same parent company and streamed, reflecting a general decline in music-video programming on cable and a shift of the audience to clips circulated online after the fact.
Common misconceptions
The most persistent misunderstanding is that a VMA is a critical judgement. In the headline categories it is closer to a popularity measure, because the winner is chosen by whoever turns up to vote online, and organised fan campaigns are a well-established part of how that voting goes. The craft awards are the part of the ceremony that functions like a jury prize.
A second is that the awards track a calendar year. Eligibility runs over a window that closes some weeks before the ceremony, so a video released in the autumn typically competes in the following year’s show rather than the one immediately after its release.
A third is confusion between MTV’s several ceremonies. The Video Music Awards are distinct from the MTV Movie & TV Awards and from the MTV Europe Music Awards, which is a separate event held later in the year. None of them is connected to the Grammy Awards, which are run by a different organisation with a membership vote.
Finally, the trophy’s nickname is often used as though it were current. Moonman was the name for more than thirty years, but the official term has been Moon Person since 2017.
Where to look next
MTV’s own awards pages are the primary record for nominees, voting windows, categories and the confirmed venue and date of any given edition, and they are the place to check before repeating a claim about a particular year. Press releases from the network’s parent company cover broadcast arrangements.
For the history, general reference works on American broadcasting and on the cable industry describe MTV’s launch and the commercial logic that produced the ceremony. Writing on the music video as a form — its directors, its economics, and its move from cable rotation to online platforms — gives more context than awards coverage usually does.
Music trade publications report each year’s nominations and results and are the usual route to finding out what actually happened at a specific ceremony. This article does not establish the outcome, date or line-up of any individual edition, including any that may have taken place recently; those details are not verified here.
Frequently asked questions
What does VMA stand for?
VMA stands for Video Music Award, the singular form of the MTV Video Music Awards. The plural, VMAs, is used both for the individual trophies and for the ceremony as a whole. The awards have been given annually since 1984 by the American music network MTV, and they honour music videos rather than recordings, albums or live performance.
What is the VMA trophy called?
The trophy is a figurine of an astronaut standing on the moon and holding a flag, derived from MTV’s original on-air identification sequences, which used Apollo moon-landing footage. It was called the Moonman for most of the ceremony’s history. In 2017 MTV renamed it the Moon Person, adopting a gender-neutral term, though the older nickname is still widely used in casual conversation.
How are VMA winners chosen?
It depends on the category. Most of the headline and genre awards, including Video of the Year, are decided by public online voting from a shortlist of nominees drawn up by MTV. The technical or craft categories — direction, editing, cinematography, visual effects, art direction and choreography — are generally decided by a panel of industry professionals rather than by the general public.
Are the VMAs the same as the Grammys?
No. The Grammy Awards are run by a separate organisation and are voted on by its professional membership, covering recordings, songwriting and performance across many genres. The VMAs are run by MTV, centre on music videos, and rely largely on public voting for their main categories. The two ceremonies are held at different times of year and have no formal connection.
When are the VMAs held each year?
The ceremony is usually staged in late August or September, at an arena in or near a major American city, with the venue changing from year to year. The exact date, location and broadcast arrangements are announced by MTV in advance and vary between editions, so the network’s own announcements are the reliable place to confirm them for any particular year.
Sources and further reading
- MTV’s official Video Music Awards pages — the primary record for categories, nominees, voting rules and each year’s venue.
- Google Trends, United States — the search-interest signal behind this article, showing VMA queries clustered with an individual performer’s name.
- Music trade publications — annual coverage of nominations, winners and broadcast details for specific editions.
- General reference works on American cable television and the history of the music video — background on MTV’s launch and the commercial context for the ceremony.
Surfaced from the google:US signal “awards show search interest”. AI-assisted draft, editorially reviewed.
