Independent Music Weekly Announces the OGIMAs 2025 Special Edition

Independent Music Weekly OGIMAs Special Edition cover — global independent music awards issue with featured artists from 2025.

This week marks a turning point for Independent Music Weekly. Issue 32 steps out of the usual rhythm and into something far bigger — our first-ever OGIMAs Special Edition, a fully dedicated celebration of the Orpheus Global Independent Music Awards 2025.

For the first time, this publication becomes the official home of a global awards platform built on a simple, urgent truth: independent talent exists everywhere — long before institutions decide it does. The OGIMAs were created for that reason alone. No gatekeeping. No inflated barriers. Just a clear, open door for artists who have carved their own lanes from sheer creative force.

Across digital libraries, airports, hotels, colleges, and PressReader hotspots worldwide, this issue now serves as both a celebration and an archive — a permanent marker of where independent music stood in 2025, and who pushed it forwards.

Celebrating the Artists Who Redefined Independent Music in 2025

Inside this special edition, readers will find the stories behind the artists whose work didn’t just make noise — it made impact.

Highlights from this year’s winners include:

• Hazlewood — Best Pop Act Carrying Birmingham’s R&B and soul lineage into a new era with emotional honesty and melodic elegance.

• Neurolapse — Best Dance Act A minimalist, pulsating vision of electronic music that lands as feeling first, genre second.

• Matilde G — Best Indie Rock Act & Artist of the Year A dual win that reflects scale, craft and a rare fearlessness in reinvention.

• DAX — Best Country Act & Best Rap Act Proof that genre is a language, not a fence. DAX bends both worlds with clarity and conviction.

• Miss Lilly — Best Soul Act A new voice with the weight and warmth of a long-standing classic.

• Lulu Leloup — Songwriter of the Year Inventive, cinematic, witty — a writer who turns emotional nuance into theatre.

• The Theos Variant — Band of the Year Heavy music stretched into atmosphere, storytelling and emotional depth.

• Amelie — Rising Star Award A reminder that activism and artistry can coexist without reducing either.

  
  

Every profile, every photo, every line of commentary feeds into the heart of the OGIMAs — the belief that independent music deserves reverence, record-keeping, and global visibility.

The Story Behind Orpheus — and Why It Matters

Within the centrepiece of this issue (pp. 8–9), readers will find an exploration of why Orpheus became the emblem of this awards platform: a figure rooted in transformation, rebellion, and the ancient truth that music has always been capable of moving entire worlds.

Just as Orpheus travelled between realms, independent artists today move between cultures, genres, and expectations — reshaping the industry’s borders without waiting for permission.

A Global Archive for Future Eyes

This issue isn’t just celebration. It’s documentation. I t’s legacy.

Everyone featured here becomes part of an international archive that outlives social algorithms, platform cycles, and the fleeting nature of digital discovery. That permanence — library distribution, academic access, global readership — is a rarity in independent music. It’s also the foundation of why the OGIMAs exist.

Thank you to every artist who submitted, every nominee who trusted us with their work, and every reader who continues to believe in what we’re building:

a world where independent music is treated with the same seriousness, depth and global reach as the major-label sphere.

Welcome to the OGIMAs Special Edition.

— Tamara Jenna

Editor-in-Chief, Independent Music Weekly

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