Three from the Chronicle.
Best Studio 2018. Best Studio 2019. Best Producer, Omar Vallejo, 2019.
The Austin Music Awards are run by the Austin Chronicle and decided by readers. In a city with this many working musicians, that means they are decided by the people who actually book rooms, hire producers and pay for studio time.
That is a different instrument from a trade award or a paid listing. Nobody submits an entry. Nobody buys a place. The people voting are the ones who have been in the rooms they are voting on, which is the only reason a local award is worth anything.
The ceremony is part of the Austin Music Awards, which have run alongside SXSW for decades and are one of the few things in this town that predates the festival economy around it.
Winning Best Studio in consecutive years is the part worth pausing on. One year can be a good year, a loud year, or a year you happened to make a record somebody loved. Two in a row is the room.
The third award is the one Omar keeps quietest about. Best Producer is a vote on a person rather than a place — on whether the records that came out of here in 2019 were better because he was behind the glass.
What it changed, and what it did not
It did not change the rate card, because there is not one — every project is still quoted to the record. It did not change who runs the session. What it changed is the phone: bands who would previously have driven to Nashville or Los Angeles for a certain kind of record started calling a number in South Austin instead.
The awards sit on a shelf beside the record wall, which is the other half of the same argument and considerably longer.
Common questions
Who votes for the Austin Music Awards?
Austin Chronicle readers. It is a public vote rather than a panel or a submission process, which in a city this dense with working musicians means the electorate is largely the people who use the rooms.
Which years did 512 Studios win?
Best Studio in 2018 and again in 2019. Omar Vallejo won Best Producer in 2019.
Is there an entry fee or a submission?
No. Nobody enters and nobody pays. That is the reason the result carries weight locally.
Has the studio won anything since?
Those three are the awards the studio publishes. If you are looking for a current list, call and ask rather than trusting a directory listing.