The American Music Awards has created a Favorite K-pop Artist category — the first category dedicated to the K-pop genre in a major U.S. music award show.
ABC announced nominees on Thursday for the 2022 AMAs, which has been dubbed the world's largest fan-voted awards show.
The nominees are BLACKPINK, BTS, SEVENTEEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and TWICE, selected based on their performance on the Billboard charts. The winner will be announced at the show on Nov. 20.
BTS, SEVENTEEN, and TOMORROW X TOGETHER are under the same entertainment conglomerate, Hybe Corporation. Hybe began as Big Hit Entertainment, the record label for BTS, and expanded to oversee seven record labels following BTS's international success.
BTS won its first AMA award in 2018 for Favorite Social Artist and became the first Asian artist to win AMA's top honor, Artist of the Year, at in 2021.
BLACKPINK and TWICE also belong to two of the most successful record labels in South Korea. BLACKPINK's record label, YG Entertainment, created K-pop trailblazers BIGBANG and 2NE1; TWICE's record label, JYP Entertainment, created Wonder Girls, the first Korean act to appear on Billboard's Hot 100 in 2008.
Other new AMA categories this year include Favorite Afrobeats Artist, Favorite Rock Song, and Favorite Rock Album.
Fans will be able to vote for their favorite K-pop artist starting Nov. 1. Voting in all other categories is open on Billboard's website and Twitter.
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