Frequently Asked Questions

Firstly, don’t worry! We group our categories into Standard Categories (including Sales and Marketing categories) and Special Awards.

The Standard categories are mainly genre-based. So things like Best Comedy or Best Fiction. Each podcast can enter up to three categories.

The Sales and Marketing Awards are a group of categories that look at the business of podcasting. The new Best Marketing category will reward any show (big or small) that’s sone a good job (maybe over social, video or PR) to generate more awareness (and listens!) for their show.

The Special Awards are categories that you don’t have to create a new entry for. When you enter, say, Best Comedy, there’s some tick boxes for you to opt in (this is for categories like Bullseye or the Spotlight Award).

All of our podcasts get entered into the Creativity Award and the winners of each of the Standard categories go forward for the Podcast of the Year battle!

So, start by reading the entry guidance, look at the categories, and then the rules. Then you should be ready to enter.

Oh, and also check out our previous winners, to see the kind of people that won the different categories.

Every year, lots of independent shows are nominated and win in our sister awards in the UK and Australia.

Our judges are made up from the whole sector – independents, big companies and international judges too. Each entry is judged by three to five people and we design it so that different kinds of people hear your work.

All of our categories have their own panel, who aren’t aware of the deliberations of the other panellists. The first time the organisers know the nominees is when our panel chairpeople get in touch with their lists.

Whilst people from our sponsors are some of the judges, they make up a very small proportion of them and the nature of the panels mean they have no more say over who wins than anyone else. When we talk to our judges about the process it often comes across that they’re just mainly creators themselves who love hearing brilliant shows, there ends up being virtually no politics. Honest!

In our sister awards we’ve had winners with hundreds of downloads and ones with hundreds of thousands. We’re just about rewarding great work.

Generally, we’re after a 15 minute ‘best of’ of your show. For most categories we ask for three to five clips, from at least three separate episodes. You’ll upload a single MP3 that has all these clips edited together, but with a second of silence between each clip. We don’t want you to add any non-podcast clips – so no adding clips of you explaining your clips (this explanation should go in the written track listing that accompanies your entry).

The reason it’s 15 minutes is that are judges have to listen to around a 1,000 entries – that’s already 250 hours of audio! Your job is distill your podcast brilliance down to clips that demonstrate that to someone who’s never heard your show before.

We also ask for a number of clips from a number of episodes to demonstrate that you regularly create brilliant material and didn’t just have one good episode!

Doing it this way allows us to compare every entry in the same way.

Do check out the rules, as some categories deviate a little bit from what’s above (things like we allow Fiction to be a bit longer due to the nature of the material).

The closing date for entries has been extended to Monday 23rd May 2022 at Midday

Think of a clip as a chunk of unedited audio from an episode.

If you were to have your episode in an editing timeline in front of you, a clip would be an unbroken section that you select and then copy into your entry.

Probably not. We send the entries off to the judges at 6pm on the closing date so there isn’t much wiggle room.

If you’ve ever worked on a complex project you know how you feel when people try and get around the rules. Just like you we try to be helpful, but we’re trying to organise a really complex thing that involves over a thousand people. It may not seem much to extend a deadline or change a submission – but the machinery is already in motion.

The Awards cost a surprising amount of money to put on. Logos, social videos, the entry system, nominations announcements, PR, insurance, accounting, the trophies, the ceremony – it all adds up! We don’t pay our judges, but we do like to pay everyone else who works on it – mainly freelancers and small businesses.

All of this contributes to our main aim – helping to make brilliant Irish podcasts more famous – and to drive more listening.

Compared to other professional media awards, like TV or Film, we charge the least amount of money.

The Listeners’ Choice category remains free to enter.

Firstly, like all IT things, log out and log back in again – and see if that fixes it. If not email us.

Our very broad thinking is that if your show is a labour of love or isn’t really designed to make any money then you should qualify as an independent podcaster. If you’re part of a business or organisation (whether the podcast is purely promotional or revenue generating) or if your ability to make the podcast is enabled by a business or organisation, then you should be paying the corporate podcast fee.

Independent podcasters (where the podcast’s turnover is less than €100,000 per year), educational institutions or charities: €35+VAT

Corporate podcasts (if its part of any business/corporate entity, OR is an independent podcaster that earns more than £100,000 per year): €95+VAT.

Check your spam. If it’s not in there you may have entered the wrong email address when you registered (surprisingly common). If you don’t think it’s that try the forgot my password link on the homepage of the system.

When you get to the payment stage there’s a toggle in the top right of the system that allows you to select Independent or Corporate.

The nominations will be revealed in late July/early August.

If you’re making ten or more entries, yes we can do an Invoice, PROVIDING you email us 7 days before the closing date. Otherwise it’s credit cards (over 95% of entries are paid for by credit card).

The ceremony will be on the evening on Friday 16th September at Liberty Hall, Eden Quay.

Yes, the details should have been emailed to you, that is unless you selected ‘send me no emails’ when you registered. You can check that in the Settings on the system.

However, you can get a PDF receipt from the system by logging in and clicking on the word PAID by your entry.

Probably best to email us, through the contact form.