1st Annual Premios Odeón

In December 2019 the Premios Odeón were announced in a press conference as the equivalent to the Grammy Awards in Spain. The award ceremony was organized by the Asociación de Gestión de Derechos Intelectuales (AGEDI). Nominations were announced on December 19 with Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía leading with seven. On January 17 it was announced that La 1 would broadcast the ceremony. The person responsible for the scenography was Suso33.^[4] Spanish humorist Quequé hosted the gala.^[5]

The ceremony was well organised even though many technical difficulties happened during its broadcast during presentations, monologues and musical performances. This pushed Radio Televisión Española to emit a communicate where they asked for explanations to the organizers of the Premios Odeón for technical errors: "The desire of the RTVE management team to promote and support music motivated the commitment to broadcast the Premios Odeón gala on January 20, on La 1, live and in the time slot maximum audience. Unfortunately, the result of this gala, held and produced by AGEDI, was very far from the quality standards that RTVE demands in its programs. RTVE Management regrets the inconvenience that these technical problems and mismatches produced in the audience and has requested explanations from the event organizers".^[6]

The Premios Odeón were also criticized for being "elitist" and in favor of the main multi-million dollar record labels.^[7] Most professionals highlighted the marginalization of independent artist or simply artists that do not belong to Universal or Sony Music. Awards like Best Live are not given to the artist with the best vocal ability but to the one who had sold more tickets over the past year.