Billboard took a look at how the nominees stacked up against each other in some of the key categories of the 50th Academy of Country Music Awards, telecast by CBS on April 19.
2015 ACMs: 10 Best & 5 Worst Moments
The graphs below show sales, streaming and airplay data, as tracked by Nielsen Music, from the award eligibility period (November 28, 2013 to November 26, 2014) for the Entertainer of the Year, Best New Artist, Song Of The Year and Album of the Year nominees. The winners, as determined by ACM members and announced during the broadcast, are indicated with a trophy.
Given that the ACMs are industry-voted rather than a contest of metrics, it’s interesting to note the cases where the winners weren’t the biggest in terms of popularity metrics. It’s also interesting that both of the main cases found in this comparison, the industry favored Miranda Lambert over artists who performed better in radio, streaming and sales metrics.
2015 ACMs: All the Performances Ranked
“Automatic” by Miranda Lambert won Song of the Year, even though Luke Bryan and Eric Church outperformed her in nearly every metric category. Then again in the Album of the Year category, Lambert’s Platinum won over Jason Aldean’s Old Boots, New Dirt and Eric Church’s The Outsiders. One last notable occurrence is Cole Swindell’s winning Best New Artist over Sam Hunt, who had nearly double the amount streaming activity. Of course, Luke Bryan was clearly the standout for Entertainer of the Year, a hybrid industry and fan-voted category, across all metrics.