The 31st Annual South African Music Awards (or SAMA31) is set to take place in the first half of 2025. Presented by the Recording Industry of South Africa, the event is scheduled to go live on YouTube and broadcast on SABC1. It will honour the excellency in South African music, celebrating best albums, music videos and songs released in South Africa during the period 16 April 2024 to 31 January 2025.
Background.
The 31st Annual South African Music Awards (SAMA31) celebrates the excellency in South African music and honours the best music videos, albums and songs commercially released in the country during the period 16 April 2024 to 31 January 2025. Entries for nomination consideration were open from 10 December 2024 to 31 January. For members of the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA), the entry fee for an individual or entity was R862.50 ($), and for non-members it was R4,600.00 ($) including value-added tax per entry for all categories. The RiSA extended the entry period to 10 February 2025, due to various requests from the industry.
The Public Voting Categories, Record of the Year and the Music Video of the Year, were strictly not open for entries. For the Record of the Year, songs were short-listed based on airplay and streams tracked by Radiomonitor and the Official South African Charts respectively. In a weighted formula, streams and airplay were combined to determine the top 20. For the Music Video of the Year, music videos were short-listed based on the most played music videos (excluding visualizers) sourced from the RiSA Audio Visual Licensing NPC and YouTube from the period 16 April 2024 to 31 January 2025.
The South African Music Awards (SAMAs) fell short on sponsorships since MTN parted ways with the organization in 2014. The SAMAs signed a three-year contract with the Motsepe Foundation in 2023. The foundation sponsored the ceremony in 2023, 2024 and 2025 will be their last. In attempt to score sponsors, the SAMAs' spokesperson, Lesley Mofokeng told "The Citizen" that the SAMA31 will take place in the first half of 2025, for the first time since the 25th Annual South African Music Awards in 2019.
Nominees.
Below is the list of nominees. Winners are listed first and highlighted in bold.
Special awards.
In the list below, winners are highlighted in bold where necessary.
Prizes.
The cash prizes awarded to the winners of the Annual South African Music Awards. Adapted from the SAMA31 general rules booklet.