The Polaris prize long list was announced recently. The long list is 40, the short list to be announced in July is 10 (along with the winner). Polaris is a Canadian award for best full-length Canadian album on artistic merit. The UK and Ireland have the Mercury prize, and for a while we had the Shortlist, which basically ended in 2007. Polaris is in its fourth year and is already the most prestigious of the awards. Polaris is chosen by music writers and is specifically focused on "artistic merit", while Mercury is chosen by the record industry (their version of the RIAA and store owners). The Shortlist was not even a true American award, since an album only needed to be released in America, though the stipulation of selling less than 500K copies was good.
I say we follow the format followed by Polaris.
America has plenty of great music which repeatedly fails to win awards of any significance. The Grammy's do not care about artistic merit, even though they have many categories. Polaris has shown the best of what Canada has to offer, mind you it helps to have a number of thriving genre scenes spanning almost every type of music. America has this same variety (UK less so, since much of their electronica is house/dance), if not more. The prize money is not very much, but the prestige of having the best album in the country (artistically) might just be enough to stop the decline what many consider to be music, the radio.
We have so much great music that doesn't get recognized nationally or with radio play. We have the So-Cal punk scene, "Omaha sound", Seattle indie, New York shoe gaze and electronica, and Chicago hardcore, not to mention all the hip-hop other regional scenes. Many of these are an American exclusive style, much like Canada's Toronto hip-hop or Montreal's Broken Social Scene style indie.
I'll turn it over to you guys for more suggestions, and I'll write another post in a week. Also check out those albums for the Polaris prize this year and thank me later.