Norbays Music Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Norbays Music Awards is and who runs it

The Norbays Music Awards is Pacific Sun's music-focused public vote, and it is worth opening with what separates it from the publisher's other ballot work. Pacific Sun also runs Best of Marin, a broad reader's poll covering restaurants, shopping, wellness and the rest of everyday life in its market. The NorBays is narrower and louder: the program's own description says that each year it recognizes the best bands of the North Bay, with voting open to the public and gold disc awards handed to winners. Where a best-of poll spreads attention across dozens of business categories, this ballot puts the whole spotlight on local music.

The host is the organizer itself. The ballot lives on Pacific Sun's own domain, with no outside contest service sitting in between, at pacificsun.com/vote-2016-norbays-music-awards/ for the 2016 edition. That matters for a supporter because everything about the program, from the ballot form to the winners announcement in the paper's issue, lives under one masthead. The 2016 page carries the title "Vote: 2016 NorBays Music Awards | Pacific Sun", and the site's navigation shows the NorBays sitting alongside the publisher's other reader-facing features.

Geographically the program is anchored to the North Bay, and the 2016 awards show was staged in Julliard Park in Santa Rosa. The market sits in California, and the publication's readership is the audience the ballot speaks to. The table below pulls together the program's fixed details.

The dated facts: which editions ran and when voting closed

The confirmed edition years for the Norbays Music Awards are 2016, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The 2016 year comes from the ballot page itself, whose address names the edition directly, while the later years come from the program's presence on the Pacific Sun site in those cycles. The publisher's own description frames the NorBays as an each-year recognition of North Bay bands, and the pattern is consistent with a program that returns annually, with 2027 the year the pattern next points toward.

The dated facts that can be stated plainly all come from the 2016 cycle. Voting ended on Monday, Aug. 8 at 12pm. Winners were announced in the publisher's Aug. 10 issue, a two-day turnaround from the close of voting. The awards show followed on Aug. 14, held live in Julliard Park in Santa Rosa, where two winners were chosen to play live on stage. That sequence, ballot close, print announcement, live show, gives the program a shape that most online reader polls never have: the vote feeds a physical event with bands on a stage.

What the organizer has not published in the material available for this program is the exact opening and closing window for the current edition, so the dates for any live cycle are a matter to confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A nomination round before voting, if one exists, is equally unstated. No rules text for the NorBays is published alongside the ballot, which means the per-supporter vote limit, any one-per-day pattern and the eligibility terms are all left off the page by Pacific Sun.

How a supporter votes in the NorBays today

Voting happens directly on the publisher's domain. A supporter opens the ballot page, enters picks for the North Bay bands they favor, and submits the form ahead of the printed deadline. The 2016 page asked supporters to enter their choices directly, and the closing line of that cycle's instructions was plain: voting ends on Monday, Aug. 8 at 12pm. Nothing about the format requires an account with an outside platform, because Pacific Sun hosts the ballot under its own domain alongside its news and arts coverage.

The categories confirmed for the 2016 ballot include Blues/R&B, Country/Americana and DJ, and the program's description promises gold disc awards handed to the winners. The page's category navigation also shows the ballot sitting inside the publisher's wider best-of family, with phrases for arts and culture, restaurants, fitness and shopping appearing around it, but the NorBays ballot itself is the music program. Anyone backing a band should read the live form carefully, because the categories printed there for the current edition are the ones that count.

Since voting is open to anyone, the practical work of supporting a band is mobilizing people to actually fill it in. Pacific Sun prints no limit on repeat voting, so a band's safest assumption is that the live page governs. The deadline is the one hard constraint the 2016 cycle gives: votes landed after the Aug. 8 close did not count toward the Aug. 10 announcement.

How the NorBays sits beside its California siblings

Pacific Sun's NorBays shares a publisher with a family of California reader's polls, and the contrast with each is instructive. Best of Marin is the closest sibling geographically, a general-interest reader's poll from the same masthead, but it covers the whole local economy rather than music. Best of Orange County, Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants and Best of Silicon Valley are all best-of programs from other California markets, each with a separate publisher behind it and a separate ballot. Further afield, Best of Central Valley Business narrows to the business vertical, and the Best of North State Community's Choice Awards serves the far north of the state.

What makes the NorBays different is its subject and its stage. None of the sibling ballots crowns bands, and none of them pairs the vote with a live show where two winners play on stage, as the 2016 NorBays did in Julliard Park in Santa Rosa. The gold disc trophy is also distinctive: a best-of poll hands a business a plaque, while the NorBays hands a band an award modeled on the music industry's own symbol.

For anyone weighing where to put campaign energy, the practical difference is audience. A best-of ballot draws the publication's whole readership across many categories, so a single business competes in a crowded field. The NorBays concentrates the same readership's music fans into a smaller ballot, which is why a band's own fan base can move the result more directly here than in a broad reader's poll.

Strengthening support for a band on this ballot

Because the NorBays is a public vote for bands, the support that moves it comes from the band's own audience. The confirmed mechanic is simple: people fill in the ballot on the Pacific Sun site before the printed close, which in 2016 was Monday, Aug. 8 at 12pm. A band running a push should name the exact categories it is entered in, link straight to the ballot, and remind fans that the deadline is hard, since the winners announcement followed two days later in the Aug. 10 issue.

Pacific Sun prints no guidance on outside help for this program, so whatever a campaign does, the live ballot page is what governs it. What is verifiable is the format: an open public vote, hosted by the publisher, feeding a live awards show. Support that looks like genuine fan activity, messages from the band's own accounts, shows and mailing lists pointing at the ballot, fits the program's spirit. For a wider view of the options, the award votes overview and the main votes guide cover how purchased support is generally discussed, without promising any result.