October's The Music Show in the RDS will be the occasion of the very first IMRO Live Music Venue Of The Year awards supported by Hot Press and Muzu.tv.

There are five categories: one for each of the provinces, and an already-coveted national award. The criteria? General ambience, staging, sound, lighting, diversity of music, artist relations and venue promotion.

This is a serious business, and so the passionate musicians, composers and publishers of IMRO have been carefully nominating their favourite dedicated music venues, pubs, hotels, arts centres, theatres and whatnot – and the results are now in.

With a drumroll notoriously difficult to convey in prose form, the nominees are:
For Dublin:
- The Olympia
- Tripod
- Vicar St
- Whelan’s
- The Button Factory.
For the rest of Leinster:
- The Stables, Mullingar
- Birr Theatre and Arts Centre
- Dundalk’s Spirit Store
- McHugh’s of Drogheda
- The Mermaid Theatre, Bray
For Munster:
- INEC in Killarney
- The Forum, Waterford
- Cyprus Avenue, Cork
-the Cork Opera House
- Glór Theatre, Ennis
For Connaught:
- The Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo
- McGarrigle’s, Sligo
- Róisín Dubh, Galway
- The Dock, Carrick-On-Shannon
- The Station House Theatre, Galway
And for Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan:
- The Iontas Theatre, Castleblayney
- An Grianán Theatre,Letterkenny
- Chasin’ Bull, Bundoran
- McGrory’s, Culdaff
- The Brewery (McKenna’s), Monaghan.

The prize-giving ceremony takes place alongside The Music Show in the RDS on Saturday, October 4.

Each winning venue gets a special plaque to display proudly outside, and can develop their own online music channel hosted by Muzu.tv, and secure the bragging rights – at least until next year.

As well as IMRO members having their say, the general public can vote for the Hot Press Readers’ Award for the best live music venue. Music fans have been voting for weeks now on hotpress.com, and we've now got a shortlist of ten:

- The Academy, Dublin
- Crawdaddy, Dublin
- Cyprus Avenue, Cork
- Olympia Theatre, Dublin
- Roisin Dubh, Galway
- The Spirit Store, Dundalk
- The Stables, Mullingar
- Tripod, Dublin
- Vicar St, Dublin
- Whelan’s, Dublin

Voting for the Hot Press Live Music Venue of the Year will continue in the run up to October 4. See hotpress.com over the coming days for your chance to have your say.