The Billboard Music Awards will now be online-only

The Future. The 2023 Billboard Music Awards is going fully digital for its 2023 awards show… which is set to air in one month. That’s a revolutionary overhaul, but it falls in line with other name-brand (but not top-tier) awards shows shifting to streaming — a move forced by TV networks opting not to pick up shows amid declining ratings. With most people watching awards shows via clips on YouTube, TikTok, and X, Billboard may just be leaning into audience behavior, packaging the show in ready-to-share clips and hoping to reap associated ad revenue.

Social broadcast
The Billboard Music Awards is done with TV (for now).

• The awards show will air across Billboard’s social channels and on its website. In recent years, the show bounced around NBC, Fox, and ABC.
• The show date is also moving from May to November 19th to align with the end of Billboard’s annual chart-tracking period.
• And the publisher is partnering with Spotify on the show, tapping the streamer to “identify fans who have consumed the most hours of music over the past year and helped drive their favorite artists to the top spots on the Billboard charts.”
• Those fans will be given a “golden ticket” to attend “a once-in-a-lifetime performance curated by their favorite artists.”

These performances will take place in several locations around the world “in the midst of sold-out tours.” Is this strategy a way to include performances from on-the-road artists who wouldn’t be convinced to fly back to LA or Vegas otherwise?

Potentially… which may only show how much leverage Billboard and Dick Clark Productions have in roping in Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Drake, and Ed Sheeran to sit in the same room at the same time for a show that’s not the Grammys.

In the age of cord-cutting and on-demand TV, awards shows aren’t what they used to be.