Listen Up Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and why the Capital Region shows up

The Listen Up Awards exists for one audience: the people who go to shows in New York's Capital Region. Mirth Films and Radio Radio X created it as a peoples choice music award ceremony celebrating local talent, which means the nominees, the voters and the winners all come from the same community. The organizer's founding message has stayed constant since 2021, when Radio Radio X and Mirth Films started the program to honor excellence and achievement in the region's music scene, spotlighting the artists, venues and industry professionals who keep the local sound alive and thriving.

Supporters are not voting as strangers on a national ballot. They are picking the band they saw last weekend, the venue that books local acts, the sound engineer or promoter who makes the scene work. That is why the organizer phrases the pitch as YOUR VOTE and YOUR CHOICE: the result is only as good as the turnout from people who actually care about the answer.

The scale of that turnout is real. The organizer reported nearly 50,000 votes in the year before the 2025 ceremony, a figure that for a regional music award shows how much the scene mobilizes when the ballot opens. The vote runs on Mirth Films' own website at mirth-films.com/listen-up-awards/, so supporters go straight to the publisher rather than to a third-party contest platform.

The dated record: nominations, the voting close and past editions

Everything dated about the current cycle comes from Mirth Films' published announcements. The organizer has confirmed that the nomination process has begun for the 2026 Listen Up Awards, with a link inviting supporters to start nominating right away. Once the ballot opens, the voting page carries the close: voting wraps up on February 28th at 11:59 pm. The page also states voting is open now, so the live cycle is in motion as of those announcements.

The ceremony that concluded the previous cycle is dated precisely. The 2025 Listen Up Awards, brought by Radio Radio X and Mirth Films, returned to The Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes, NY on March 23rd, 2025 at 3pm. The word "returned" matters because it confirms the venue as the ceremony's established home rather than a one-off choice.

The program's history as a recurring event rests on confirmed edition years of 2022, 2024 and 2025, and on the organizer's statement that the Listen Up Awards was founded in 2021. That makes 2026 the next expected edition, and the open nomination window is the first sign of it arriving on schedule.

What the organizer has not published on the pages at hand is the full category roster, any per-supporter vote cap and the eligibility rules; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How to vote in the Listen Up Awards right now

The ballot lives on Mirth Films' own website, not on a platform like Crowdsignal or a paper form. A supporter opens the Listen Up Awards page at mirth-films.com, clicks the voting link the page offers, and picks who they want to win a Listen Up Award in each category the ballot presents. Mirth Films' own sentence describes it plainly: voting is open, click here to vote on who you want to win, and voting wraps up on February 28th at 11:59 pm.

Before a supporter can vote, someone usually has to nominate. The 2026 cycle's nomination process has already begun, and the nomination link at mirth-films.com starts that. Nomination is how an artist, venue or industry professional gets onto the ballot at all, so fans who want their favorite considered should act during that window rather than waiting for voting to open.

The mechanic rewards a daily habit if the ballot allows repeat visits, but since Mirth Films has published no voting-frequency rule, the practical advice is simple: follow whatever the form enforces when you use it. The form is the authority on a supporter's return visits.

Immediate updates come through the organizer's channels. Mirth Films maintains profiles on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, all linked from the awards page, and Radio Radio X carries the program as well. If the close date shifts or a new round opens, those channels are where the change appears first.

How this ballot differs from its New York neighbours

New York has no shortage of fan-vote programs, but most of them are broad best-of ballots run by magazines covering whole markets. Best of Brooklyn, Best of Hudson Valley, The City's Best, Best of New York City, Best of Queens, Best of the Bronx and Best of Westchester each cover a geographic slice of the state under a separate publisher.

The Listen Up Awards is different on every axis. It is music-specific rather than general business, its home is the Capital Region around Cohoes rather than the downstate metros, and it is run by a film and music outfit, Mirth Films with Radio Radio X, rather than a magazine. It also carries a ceremony: the 2025 edition filled The Cohoes Music Hall, giving the vote an in-person payoff most readers-choice ballots never have.

For a nominee, that changes the strategy. A best-of ballot spreads attention across restaurants, shops and services, so a musician competes against businesses. Here the whole field is the local music scene, which means the fan base that shows up to gigs is the same fan base that votes, and a single artist's audience can move the result more directly.

Strengthening support in this program therefore looks different from a citywide readers poll. The campaign that works is the one the scene itself would recognize: an announcement from the stage, a post the band's followers share, a nudge from the venue that nominated them. Support built that way fits a peoples choice award, because the votes arrive from the community the award exists to celebrate, and they arrive before the February 28th close.