Best Music Videos Of: How Voting Works & How to Win

A music-video ballot from a New Orleans magazine, and what a nominee actually cannot find out

A musician, a label or a manager whose video lands in the Best Music Videos Of conversation faces an unusual problem for a Louisiana ballot: the program is real and recurring, but almost none of the operational detail a nominee wants is published. Where Y'at Magazine runs the vote from its New Orleans base, and it carries the ballot on the magazine's own website rather than on a third-party contest platform. That single fact shapes everything else, because the magazine's own pages are the only place dates, categories and rules can ever appear.

The published evidence for the program is thin but consistent. The confirmed ballot page carries the 2015 edition, and its own text describes Rolling Stone magazine releasing nominations for the best music videos of the past year, naming Drake, Chvrches, Justin Bieber and Missy Elliot among the countdown. That tells a reader two things: the topic is real national music coverage, and the magazine frames its ballot around the year's video conversation rather than a long slate of local business categories.

For a nominee trying to plan, the gaps matter as much as the facts. The pages held for this program name no category roster, print no per-supporter limit and carry no eligibility text, and the precise days each round begins and ends are not published anywhere this page draws on; the practical answer to any of those questions is to confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Everything else below is what can be stated plainly.

The dated history of Best Music Videos Of

The year list is the strongest fact this program has. Confirmed editions land in 2015, then 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, five runs spread across a decade with a seven-year gap after the first. Most Louisiana ballots on this site show shorter published histories. The gap itself is part of that list: nothing in the published material explains whether the program paused, changed shape or simply left no trace between 2015 and 2022, and inventing an explanation would be worse than leaving the question open.

Timing within each year is clearer at the month level than the day level. The confirmed 2015 evidence places the cycle in December, with the ballot's own text sitting alongside a December 30, 2015 dateline, and the phase is described as nominations. Every confirmed year anchors to that same month, so December is the safe planning assumption for any future round, 2026 included.

What the published years do not carry is anything finer. The organizer has not printed exact opening and closing days for the current or past cycles in the material this page draws on, so a supporter who needs the closing day for planning should confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same applies to any platform-level round dates, since no promotion schedule for this market exists in the published sources. The 2015 ballot page remains live at whereyat.com as the program's representative address, even though later editions have run on the same site.

One more dated caution: because the most recent confirmed run is 2025, nothing on this page should be read as a promise of a 2026 edition. The program has earned its annual label on the strength of four consecutive recent years, and nothing more.

How a supporter casts a vote in this ballot today

The mechanic is the simplest kind this site covers: a public vote on the publisher's own page. A supporter opens the Where Y'at Magazine ballot for the current cycle, reads whatever list of videos the magazine has posted, picks their favorites and submits through the form on that page. There is no third-party platform to register with, no contest account to create, and no separate nomination site in the published evidence.

The undecided details sit around the edges of that act. Whether the magazine accepts one ballot per reader, allows daily returns or imposes any cap at all has never been printed in the pages this program's history carries. An honest supporter plan treats that silence as a reason to read the live ballot's own instructions rather than as permission to vote repeatedly. If the page asks for an email or a name, the form will say so at the point of submission.

The December phase is described as nominations, which suggests the published window in the confirmed edition was about putting candidates forward as much as ranking them. A supporter arriving mid-December may find the list already assembled; arriving earlier may mean the field is still open. Which of those states applies in any given year depends on dates only the magazine sets.

For the artists and labels on the ballot, the practical move is straightforward. Secure the direct link to the current cycle's page, share it with fans as soon as the December round opens, and point everyone at the magazine's own instructions. Outreach tactics that respect the ballot's rules are covered in our votes guide, and the general mechanics of purchased support are on the service overview.

Where this ballot sits among its Louisiana neighbours

Louisiana is well served with best-of ballots, and this program is the odd one out among them. The state's other confirmed surveys are broad community choice awards: the Alexandria Community's Choice Awards in the state's centre, the Bayou's Best Community's Choice Awards around Houma, Best of Baton Rouge in the capital, Best of SWLA in the southwest, Best of New Orleans in this program's own city, and Best of The River Parishes upriver. Each of those asks readers to pick favourite businesses, restaurants and services across dozens of categories.

Best Music Videos Of narrows instead. It takes one slice of culture, the year in music video, and puts a single ballot around it. Its audience is artists, labels, managers and fans of the nominated acts, not the general shopping public the readers-choice surveys court. That also changes the competition: a nominee is not up against every plumber and po-boy shop in town, only the other videos in the cycle.

The publisher relationship differs too. Several of the neighbouring ballots belong to their own publications and run on their own schedules, and Where Y'at Magazine holds this program the same way, on its own domain. A vote here carries no weight toward the magazine rival's New Orleans survey or any other Louisiana ballot, and support in one does not transfer. Our page on award votes generally explains how these publisher-run ballots differ from platform-hosted ones.

What makes this one distinctive in the state's history is longevity at the margins: five confirmed editions stretching back to 2015, all anchored to December, in a format no other Louisiana publisher on this site has copied.