Watch Billboard Music Awards Online - Full Episodes

The Billboard Music Awards is an annual music awards show that is produced for television broadcast. The special event is a showplace for the year's top musical acts. Unlike other award shows, these awards are not based on the opinions of a voting panel. Instead, the winners of these statuettes are the top selling artists of each genre. Billboard Magazine is the musical industry bible.

The Billboard Music Awards program has been broadcast annually since 1989, with a three year break from 2007-2010 when they couldn't settle a dispute with the television network. The awards presented have changed over the years and the current format breaks down awards on music genre.

One award that has been a constant was the Century Award which was retitled Icon Award. This is a lifetime achievement awards that is based on total number of records sold. The winners of this prestigious honor make quite an impressive list. They are George Harrison, Buddy Guy, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Randy Newman, John Mellencamp, Annie Lennox, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty, Tony Bennett and Neil Diamond.

Although Janet Jackson has won the most career Billboard Music Award trophies, she wasn't among the list of winners from this year's program. Pop Singer Adele won a total of 11 awards including being named the top artist. LMFAO was a new band to the show and they won a total of 6 awards this year. Rap music superstar, Lil Wayne, took home 3 awards. Coldplay also won multiple awards. The award for top new artist went to Wiz Kalifa. Teen sensation, Justin Bieber, was given the first ever prize for top social media artist.

The program typically is scheduled for a three hour broadcast. The show is littered with top musical acts and most of the show's winners also perform live on the show. Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell from TV's Modern Family co-hosted the show this year. In previous years the hosts were mostly musical or comedy acts such as Jon Stewart, Paul Shaffer, Kathy Griffin, Bernie Mac, Phil Collins, David Spade, Chris Rock, Adam Carolla and the band *NSYNC.