U.S. music prize for emerging artists resurrected

The Shortlist Music Prize, the American answer to Britain's Mercury Prize, has a new lease on life.

The $10,000 US prize to honour critically acclaimed albums that don't draw mainstream attention has had a one-year hiatus while the founders disputed its future.

One of the original founders of the award, Greg Spotts, has taken over the process and will go ahead with a prize in 2006, he announced Tuesday.

Spotts, a former music industry veteran, is also a political commentator and maker of the documentary American Jobs.

The Shortlist Music Prize, started in 2001, is modelled after the prestigious Mercury Prize in Britain, won this year by the Arctic Monkeys.

Like the Mercury, it elevated the status of winners and nominated bands.

A rotating panel of cutting-edge artists and journalists, including Beck, Mos Def and Spike Jonze, would nominate acts they admired but had not had wide commercial success.

Another competition

Past winners of the prize, given annually in Los Angeles,were Icelandic band Sigur Ros, Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice, hip-hop/rock hybrid N.E.R.D. and TV On The Radio.

No prize was issued in 2005 after an apparent split between Spotts and co-founder, Tom Sarig, a music manager and label consultant.

Sarig announced last year he would launch a new competition, the New Pantheon and said he hoped it would catch on more with music fans.

The New Pantheon went ahead in 2005 and named a winner, Sufjan Stevens.

On Tuesday, Spotts announced he has an agreement with Sarig for the rights to both the Shortlist and the New Pantheon.

"We're going to use the Shortlist name going forward and we're going to welcome (New Pantheon winner) Sufjan Stevens into the family of Shortlist prize winners," Spotts said.