The Mercury Awards: not all that evil after all?

At a time when we should be thinking about how the music industry treats its artists, should we really be supporting the Mercury Prize? Even being nominated for the award is seen by some as a poison chalice, with female urban artist Speech Debelle often cited as an example. After her album Speech Therapy won in 2009, its sales actually declined - and for all nominees there is the inevitable pressure of being further incorporated into the industry machine.

Speech Debelle has yet to record a follow up – artists, after all, aren’t the hardened industry professionals who make up the award’s judging panels. On the other hand, under the watchful eye of its head of judges, the distinguished rock sociologist Simon Frith, they’ve broadly helped deliver a selection of quality artists.

Conceived in 1992 as an antidote to the Brits commercialism, the Mercury has notably aided a resurgence in UK and Irish folk, as well as championing jazz and modern classical music. It’s amusing that the award is accused of tokenism for shortlisting such non household names as Led Bib and Portico Quartet ( jazz) and Gavin Bryars ( classical ) alongside mainstream names like Coldplay.

While these artists may not win, surely their inclusion gives the prize a little subversiveness, as well as the assurance that music biz folk do actually listen to music. What's more, sometimes the panels have proved spectacularly ahead of trend; grime was just an alien sounding genre when Dizzee Rascal won in 2003. Now it’s a movement.

The Mercury may be a music biz institution, but its mixture of high and low brow acts suggests in itself that all such awards are - at the end of the day - to be taken with a pinch of salt, commenting on itself in a rather arch way while leaving just enough room to remind us that music can be more than a mere commodity.

In a listener dominated world, the Mercurys have at the least given us some interesting suggestions regarding what we could listen to.