This year’s edition of the Malta Music Awards, held for the first time in 1995, has been launched by Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech who said the aim was to encourage all initiatives which contributed to promoting Maltese talent.

The awards cover and reward different genres of music and are made not only to bands and singers, but also to recording engineers, for CD sleeve designs, and for music videos.

There is also a Lifetime Achievement Award and an International Award.

The promoters of the awards have obtained the support of MTV, which will be promoting the event over five weeks. MTV will also be judging the best local musical video, possibly to show the winning video on MTV.