On May 22, some of the top names in the music business will gather together in Las Vegas for the 2016 Billboard Music Awards. Last year’s award show saw Taylor Swift reign queen but this year’s leading artist (so far) serves to be alternative R&B artist, The Weeknd.
But how do they get there? Finalists are based on a variety of statistics including album and digital song sales, radio airplay, streaming, touring and social interactions on platforms like Instagram and Spotify. The Billboard team, along with its other data partners, track the stats year-round. Thus, the awards are based off these measurements, making it the end-all, be-all for a musician’s level of popularity. This year’s awards are based on the tracking dates of March 23, 2015 through March 17, 2016 and Billboard chart dates of April 11, 2015 through April 2, 2016.
After all that number crunching and data logging, the 2016 finalists were announced with The Weeknd leading the way. He is nominated 19 times throughout 16 different categories, with Top Artist being one of them. Justin Bieber follows with 12 nominations, Drake and Fetty Wap with 11 and Taylor Swift and Adele each with eight.
Some of the major artist-nominee categories are listed below. For a full list of nominees, including album and song nominations, click here.
Top Artist
- Adele
- Justin Bieber
- Drake
- Taylor Swift
- The Weeknd
Top Male Artist
- Justin Bieber
- Drake
- Fetty Wap
- Ed Sheeran
- The Weeknd
Top Female Artist
- Adele
- Selena Gomez
- Ariana Grande
- Rihanna
- Taylor Swift
Top R&B Artist
- Chris Brown
- Jeremih
- Rihanna
- Bryson Tiller
- The Weeknd
Top Rap Artist
- Drake
- Fetty Wap
- Future
- Wiz Khalifa
- Silentó
Top Country Artist
- Zac Brown Band
- Luke Bryan
- Sam Hunt
- Christ Stapleton
- Carrie Underwood
Top Rock Artist
- Fall Out Boy
- Elle King
- twenty one pilots
- Walk the Moon
- X Ambassadors
Top Dance/Electronic Artist
- The Chainsmokers
- DJ Snake
- David Guetta
- Major Lazer
- Zedd
