Apple Music Award Design Features Apple's Custom Silicon Wafer

The inaugural Apple Music awards take place tomorrow at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, and in typical Apple fashion, the company has designed a series of unique vinyl-inspired awards to be presented to the winners.

Apple announces first Apple Music Awards hardware award 120219
Each award features a polished sheet of glass and a machined and anodized aluminum body, between which is suspended Apple's custom 12-inch silicon wafer – the same chips that power the company's iPhones and iPads, and included in the commemorative design as a "symbolic gesture," says Apple.

The wafers start as a perfect 12-inch disc of silicon with nanometer level flatness. Copper layers are deposited and patterned by ultraviolet lithography to create connections between billions of transistors. The result of this multi-month process, before it is sliced into hundreds of individual chips, is stunning and distinctive. In a symbolic gesture, the same chips which power the devices that put the world’s music at your fingertips sit at the very heart of the Apple Music Awards.

The ‌Apple Music‌ Awards will kick off with a bespoke performance from Billie Eilish, whose full-length debut album WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? was the most played album on ‌Apple Music‌ this year.

Eilish will be awarded ‌Apple Music‌'s Album of the Year as the most streamed album of 2019, with more than a billion streams on ‌Apple Music‌. Billie will also receive the award for Songwriter of the Year, which will go to both her and her brother FINNEAS.

Also during the event, the Breakthrough Artist of the Year award will be presented to Lizzo, while the Song of the Year award will go to Lil Nas X, for the track "Old Town Road."

This ‌Apple Music‌ Awards will be streamed live around the world on Wednesday, December 4 at 6:30 p.m. PST. More information on the ‌Apple Music‌ Awards is available in the Apple Newsroom.

Popular Stories

airpods pro 3 purple

New, Higher End AirPods Pro Coming This Year

Tuesday January 20, 2026 9:05 am PST by
Apple is planning to debut a high-end secondary version of AirPods Pro 3 this year, sitting in the lineup alongside the current model, reports suggest. Back in September 2025, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to introduce a successor to the AirPods Pro 3 in 2026. This would be somewhat unusual since Apple normally waits around three years to make major...
smaller dynamic island iphone 18 pro Filip Vabrous%CC%8Cek

iPhone 18 Pro Leak: Smaller Dynamic Island, No Top-Left Camera Cutout

Tuesday January 20, 2026 2:34 am PST by
Over the last few months, rumors around the iPhone 18 Pro's front-panel design have been conflicted, with some supply-chain leaks pointing to under-display Face ID, reports suggesting a top-left hole-punch camera, and debate over whether the familiar Dynamic Island will shrink, shift, or disappear entirely. Today, Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital shared new details that appear to clarify the ...
iOS 27 Mock Quick

iOS 27 Will Add These 8 New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday January 18, 2026 3:51 pm PST by
iOS 27 is still many months away, but there are already plenty of rumors about new features that will be included in the software update. The first beta of iOS 27 will be released during WWDC 2026 in June, and the update should be released to all users with a compatible iPhone in September. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that iOS 27 will be similar to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, in the sense...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

MacBook Pro Buyers Now Facing Up to a Two-Month Wait Ahead of New Models

Sunday January 18, 2026 6:50 pm PST by
MacBook Pro availability is tightening on Apple's online store, with select configurations facing up to a two-month delivery timeframe in the United States. A few 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro configurations with an M4 Pro chip are not facing any shipping delay, but estimated delivery dates for many configurations with an M4 Max chip range from February 6 to February 24 or even later. At...
Liquid Glass App Store Feature

App Store and Apple TV Experiencing Outage

Tuesday January 20, 2026 4:36 pm PST by
Apple's App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple TV service are experiencing an outage at the current time, according to Apple's System Status page. Apple says that some users may be experiencing issues with the App Store and iTunes Store. Apple also says some users may be seeing intermittent issues with Apple TV. The Apple TV Channels feature is down too, and users may be unable to access some...

Top Rated Comments

frou Avatar
80 months ago
First plaque to score more than 1,000,000 on Geekbench.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gplusplus Avatar
80 months ago

They have one main source of revenue. ONE. The iPhone/

If that iPhone revenue dries up they are dead in the water. lmao at trillion dollar company.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you own Apple stock and listen to the earnings announcement every quarter? I don’t even need to ask; I know the answer is no with the misinformation you’re spewing.

Apple makes the most money right now with wearables: Apple Watch and AirPods. They also make a lot of money with iPhones. They make a lot of money with services, too, like Apple Music, iCloud, and AppleCare. They make the least amount of money with Mac computers, but it’s still a lot.

Additionally, Apple has tons and tons of cash on hand.

And beyond all of that, Apple has already laid out the plan for tapering off the iPhone’s revenue and they are already executing this plan, successfully if I might add.

This is all public information you can learn about in their earnings reports.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iapplelove Avatar
80 months ago
I hate to sound negative, and I’m not tryin to hate. But this doesn’t really seem like the direction I would like to see Apple gravitate towards.

Cutting edge software matched with groundbreaking hardware use to be Apples wheel house.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JosephAW Avatar
80 months ago
In other words, these are reject silicon wafers that have been repurposed instead of being recycled.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gplusplus Avatar
80 months ago

I hate to sound negative, and I’m not tryin to hate. But this doesn’t really seem like the direction I would like to see Apple gravitate towards.

Cutting edge software matched with groundbreaking hardware use to be Apples wheel house.
They’re a trillion dollar company. They can have multiple wheelhouses. Relax.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jayducharme Avatar
80 months ago

Wow! Thought this was a dramatically-styled new iPad design…
Or the biggest iPod click wheel ever designed.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)