Artists Music Guild

The Artists Music Guild is a dba company of the International Academy of Music Arts and Sciences, Inc. The company opened its doors on January 1, 2010. The corporation is an entertainment and artists relation firm. Its primary goal is to mentor and protect artists from predatory industry practices.

History

The Guild began as a safe haven for artists who had been taken advantage of in the arts community. Its focus was to place several corporations and business leaders into a position of power within the Guild so that artists would not have to leave the protection of its umbrella.

Leadership

The Guild has two working boards. The first board is the "Executive Board of Directors." These are the CEO's of the Guild and owners of various other corporations. Their function is to oversee and make corporate decisions that effect the growth of the Guild as well as it's visibility and expansion. The second board is the "Board of Directors." It is this board that works closely with the artists and service providers to ensure the mission of the Guild is being met.

Executive board of directors

The leadership of the Guild starts with Christian recording star, David L Cook. Beginning his career at the age of five with his family The Cook Family Singers, Cook spent most of his time onstage as a child. Cook partnered with Chris Nowels the president of IHN Productions, Inc., located in Midlothian, Texas. Nowels and Cook had worked on various projects together. Most notably The Two won an Emmy Award in 2011 for their work on the documentary, "The Award Goes To: A Look Back at the Legends" Elddy Trevino, owner of Loco Sound, Inc., located in Monroe, NC was added to the board and serves as a service provider and director of convention audio for the Guild's annual conventions. Forrest Ward, the CEO and president of US Success Centers located in Dallas, Texas was added as an executive board member and serves as an artist educator and career builder. Jason Howell, an SQL supervisor at Microsoft was added to the executive board and serves as electronic media and marketing. Howell maintains the Guild's websites and builds artist member websites. Philip Irish, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida was added as legal adviser to the executive board. Irish is an attorney but does not represent the Guild in court actions. His role is simply to advise the Guild and to RESOLVE disputes.

Board of directors

The Guild's Board of Directors work hands on with established artists while mentoring up and coming artists. They educate artists on industry pitfalls and how to protect themselves against predatory practices. Each board member must agree to be a mentor in order to maintain their board position.

Artistic board of directors

The Guild's Artistic Board of Directors work on voting and convention activities. This also includes the AMG Heritage Awards broadcast. Gayla Earlene who serves as the Artistic Board Review Leader chooses the twenty five anonymous final judges for the last stages of award voting.

Mentoring

One of the Guild's primary focus' is on education. Members of the Guild must agree to be a mentor in order to achieve and maintain their Guild membership. Once a member, they are required to help in the education sector of the public school systems. Professional artists are asked to go into the classrooms to teach various skill sets such as vocal, stage presence, breathing or industry practices. The Guild works in tandem with school boards across the country to ensure teachers have continued curriculum that otherwise might be beyond their affordability. In 2012, Terry Webster was added to the Guild's board of directors as the "President of Education and Programming." Webster is responsible for setting up programs within the public school systems as well as during the Guild's convention and awards shows.

Heritage Awards

The Guild created the Heritage Awards as an outlet to allow all forms of arts and entertainment to be recognized by their peers. The Heritage Awards are held every year on the second weekend in November and take place at the historic Heritage USA. The AMG Heritage Awards presents twenty five awards to artists in various categories. Despite the term music in the companies title, it umbrellas all forms of artistic expression.

The Guild developed a set of guidelines for voting that make it very difficult for individuals to block vote, campaign or show favoritism during the judging phase.

• Voting Rules

1. The general public, along with Guild members, are allowed to submit their suggestions for artistic Call for Entries.

2. Once the Call for Entries deadline has been met, the submissions will be prepared by the Guild Artistic Board and will be reviewed for eligibility. Eligibility dates are from Jan through the following Jan. If the submission does not meet the Guild’s quality guidelines or standards it will be removed from nomination consideration.

3. Once the Call for Entries are been properly screened, they will be placed into a separate voting format and made available to Guild members only.

4. Once the deadline for voting, on the second round of nominations, has been completed the Guild’s artistic committee will review and place the top ten nominees into a ballot format and submit them to the President of the Guild’s Artistic Review Committee. The names of the top ten nominees will be released to the members of the Guild and the general public.

5. The President of the Guild’s Artistic Review Committee will choose, at random, ten professional members of the Guild to act as a voting committee. These ten individuals will not know who their fellow judges are and all judges who are chosen will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement agreeing not to speak to anyone or to acknowledge being a judge participating in the voting procedures. The membership will NEVER know who these individuals are.

6. Once the voting committee has been selected, the top ten nominees from each category will be required to submit an exemplar of their work to the President of the Review Committee. Nominees can submit their work in Mp3, Mov, YouTube, CD or DVD formats. The President of the Review Committee will then compile all exemplars and will deliver them to members of the voting committee.

7. The voting committee will grade each entry on a scale of 1-10. (10 being the best and 1 being the least favorite). Once the voting member has graded the submission they will fax or mail their ballot to the accounting firm of Hilton and Helms PA. (You will not send the ballots back to the President of the Review Committee or speak to any members of the Committee or AMG membership about your votes! You will only consult with them if you have any questions on how to vote or if there is a technical issue with one of the submissions.)

8. Once all 10 members of the voting panel have returned their ballots, the head of the accounting firm will calculate all the votes and will narrow them down to the final five nominees and winner. They will then certify the top five nominees and the winner.

9. The final five nominees, along with the winners, will be announced during the awards show and not before. (If you are in the top ten nominees list, you will not know if you have made it to the final top five until the night of the awards broadcast).

Unlike other organizations, due to the amount of work that goes into verifying a nominees award worthiness, the Guild maintains very strict rules that state an AMG Heritage Award nominee "must" be in attendance for the awards broadcast or they will automatically be removed from the ballots. The Guild maintains this rule as to raise the prestige value for those who are nominated as well as those who actually receive the award.

External links

• IAMAS Corporation
• AMG Heritage Awards
• IHN Productions, Inc.
• Country Camping Corner
• Loco Sound
• Jason Howell