The label competition to rack up wins at the Billboard Music Award Show tonight turned out to be a two-horse race between Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group.
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Sony Music prevailed thanks to Adele’s dominance of the evening’s proceedings with the majors’ artist roster racking up 22 BBMA’s, versus the 19 awards garnered by the Universal Music Group’s stable of stars. Of Sony’s final count, Sony’s Adele doubled the six awards picked up by UMG’s LMFAO.
Meanwhile, EMI Music artists were involved in six awards, thanks to the four wins by Coldplay and one by Lady Antebellum during the night, while the Warner Music Group picked up one award, with Wiz Khalifa winning the top new artist award.
Within the majors, Columbia Records had a banner night with its artists picking up 15 of the major’s awards. Besides those won by Adele, Foster the People won the top rock song with “Pumped Up Kicks,” Beyonce’s 4 won the top R&B album and Laura Story won the top Christian song award with “Blessings.” At Universal, Interscope artist’s picked up 9 awards, while Universal Republic artists picked up six awards.
Depending on how you count independent artist, the sector had a banner night or were shutout. If you take the extreme definition favored by the majors, then Sony actually had 24 winners since Jason Aldean is on Broken Bow Records, which is distributed by RED.
But if you go by the definition favored by A2IM, which is based on label ownership, then the indie sector collectively garnered 7 awards, if Cash Money’s Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj are counted as independent alongside Aldean.