The ‘Top 20’ songwriter finalists for the 2017 Silver Scroll Award were released last night.

The APRA Silver Scroll Award recognises outstanding achievement in the craft of songwriting and the finalists were chosen from over 200 entries by a jury of 11 fellow Kiwi songwriters.

For the first time, APRA decided to publicise the list of judges this year, a move that other major awards will now need to consider following.

“They’ve never really been a secret as such, but we’ve never announced them before,” says Lydia Jenkin, who is in charge of APRA’s communications and events. “We’ve also increased the number of judges from 5 to 11.”

Those 11 judges were: Anji Sami (She’s So Rad/Sami Sisters), Buzz Moller (Voom), Chris van de Geer (Stellar, Bigpop Studios), Devin Abrams (Pacific Heights/Shapeshifter), Godfrey de Grut (Che Fu/The New Loungehead), Jane de Jong (Ruby Frost), Julia Deans, Hollie Fullbrook (Tiny Ruins), Phil Bell (DJ Sir-vere), Rob Ruha, and Sandy Mill (SJD/The Bellbirds).

From here onwards the voting is up to APRA’s almost 10,000 New Zealand members. The Silver Scroll Award (along with several others including an induction of a songwriter/s into the NZ Music Hall of Fame) will this year be presented at Dunedin Town Hall on September 28.