PLUG is different from all of the institutional accolades for the music industry - the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, Radio Music Awards, GRAMMY Awards, Teen Choice Awards, MTV Music Awards, etc. etc. Those are all devoted to recognizing the mainstream hits. Very rarely do these honors reach, let alone embrace, independent music or the community of artists and fans who now represent more than 25% of the global music market. This is a community that thinks for itself and doesn't take its cues from mainstream media or marketing.

PLUG is about the independent music community coming together to recognize our own. This includes everyone from writers, DJs, websites, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly fans - who gather together each year to celebrate the artists who live and flourish in the margins. PLUG is about the artists who inspire and the music that disrupts the artistic and corporate mediocrity that dominates our culture.

We discover these records on blogs, in magazine blurbs, fanzines, recommendations from our local record store, in IM conversations, in links from friends and passionate testimonials overheard in line outside a club... PLUG is the experience of trading mix tapes with friends. The most satisfying thing for PLUG is to see how often fans of one become new fans of another during each year's get-out-the-vote campaign.

Important note about major labels: PLUG recognizes that there are talented and important, artists whose careers develop on major labels. Although many of these artists are forced to fight their own upstream battles within the large companies that adopt them, there are opportunities and resources afforded them that only large companies can provide. PLUG devotes its resources to those artists, labels and media who operate outside that market share.