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.


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.