Hawaii Music Awards started in 1995 as a new concept to support Hawaii’s recording industry, an internet based awards program to take advantage of the international outreach capabilities for marketing and promotional support for the newly released recordings by Hawaii and Hawaiian recording artist any where in the world. Working with one of the top internet specialist in Hawaii to develop this concept we discovered there was no model in existence to follow. We instead created the first interactive voting website on the internet and proved to be successful in concept bringing tens of thousands of people to the site to vote in support of our recording musicians. In our best years there has been over ninety thousand actual votes from over a hundred countries, 48 states, and hundreds of music production companies with as much as three million hits in three weeks. Untouchable stats for a music website in Hawaii. As Hawaii’s first People’s Choice Awards it has been a gratifying experience in being a part of the good things that make Hawaii’s music community special. Mahalo to all who submit their recordings and to the voters in making Hawaii Music Awards a special way to support music from and about Hawaii.

Johnny Kai

Executive Producer