Apple announces third annual Apple Music Award winners including The Weeknd

Apple Music Awards The Weeknd (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple has announced the third annual Apple Music award winners.
The Weeknd picked up Global Artist of the Year.

Apple Music has announced the winners of its third annual Apple Music Awards, with The Weeknd picking up the title of Global Artist of the Year. The Apple Music Awards celebrations kick off on Tuesday, December 7, with interviews and more streaming in the Apple Music and Apple TV apps.

Apple made the announcements via Newsroom release, noting that the awards "honor achievements in music across five distinct categories." Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Breakthrough Artist of the Year, Top Song of the Year, and Top Album of the Year are all covered, and "winners are chosen through a process that reflects both Apple Music's editorial perspective and what customers around the world are listening to the most."

Apple Music Awards Her (Image credit: Apple)

There's a new regional award, too.

This year, the Apple Music Awards will introduce a new category of awards for Regional Artist of the Year, recognizing artists from five countries and regions: Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia. The Regional Artist of the Year awards recognize artists who made the greatest impact culturally and on the charts in their respective countries and regions.

The full rundown of winners reads:

Global Artist of the Year: The Weeknd
Breakthrough Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year: Olivia Rodrigo
Songwriter of the Year: H.E.R.
Artist of the Year (Africa): Wizkid
Artist of the Year (France): Aya Nakamura
Artist of the Year (Germany): RIN
Artist of the Year (Japan): OFFICIAL HIGE DANDISM
Artist of the Year (Russia): Scriptonite

Apple Music is more than just the best iPhone music-listening experience these days — it's a whole business within Apple, with these awards showing how deeply Apple Music feels about the industry it's in. You can read more about the awards in the full Newsroom post, while a ton of celebratory content will be available to stream in early December.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.