As Gwobrau’r Selar announced award winners, Getintothis’ Cath Holland observes triumphs for the country’s new blood making its voice heard. Organised by contemporary Welsh language music magazine Y Selar, the Gwobrau’r Selar annual awards are now in their seventh year and were held at Aberystwyth University for the fifth time. For 2019, the event was expanded over two days, confirming the boom in the popularity of Welsh language music.
Saturday night’s tickets sold out three weeks in advance, and over 1500 people attended over the weekend. Alffa were the recipient of the brand new Platinum award.
The teenagers hit the international headlines last year when second single Gwenwyn hit a million streams on Spotify.
Albums are now declared platinum after 300, 000 sales; this award is intended to acknowledge the value of digital streaming, and gives a much deserved nod to music achieving a million streams.
Gwenwyn’s streaming figures have now doubled in the last two months, meaning the song is now double Platinum – and so Alffa were given two Platinum awards.
Reaching a million streams for the first time was a breakthrough for Welsh music. With digital streaming now dominating the music market, and platinum sales becoming more infrequent, the intention is to present this award to every Welsh song that reaches that million from now on.
The duo were presented with the surprise awards on Friday, the day of the release of new single Pla, which they performed at the event.
Alffa are enjoying Spotify support once more with this new release, landing a spot on the New Music Friday UK, The Rock List and All New Rock playlists this week.
Alffa play the Lexington in London on 27 February with Accu and Private World, promoted by Cardiff venue Clwb Ifor Bach.
Also at Gwobrau’r Selar 2019, Best Individual Artist and Best Independent Promoter were awarded to Alys Williams and Clwb Ifor Bach respectively, for the second year running.
Alys is a former contestant on The Voice, and has released a couple of original singles so far, plus collaborations.
