The American Music Awards is an American pop music awards ceremony that has been held since 1973. If someone were to ask which American ceremonies people outside the US would be interested in, the only others would be the Grammy Awards and the Billboard Music Awards. At first glance, they all appear to serve a similar function: to honor and celebrate all the achievements made throughout each year. However, they vary in their approaches to the rules that select the nominees and winners, so we have to look at the various ceremonies and their outcomes in a different light.

If comparing them to famous awards ceremonies in other fields, the Grammys are the most similar: They’re hosted by an association of workers and journalists in the field and its members participate in the nomination process and in selecting the winners. The Grammys have the Recording Academy, the Oscars the Motion Picture Academy, the Emmys the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and the Golden Globes the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Simply put, it’s highly meaningful to be recognized by fellow industry insiders.

The Billboard Music Awards falls on the opposite side of the equation. Billboard takes all the criteria they use to compile their charts and applies them to their awards ceremony, including album and other music sales, streaming figures and radio airtime. In other words, the BBMAs is a year-in-review version of their otherwise weekly charts that culminates in an annual ceremony. You can determine the nominees and eventual winners if you watch the charts closely, but you have to be careful not to jump to conclusions given that some artists climb the charts over a period of several months rather than bursting right out of the gate. Regardless, it’s all about the numbers.

Prior to 2006, the American Music Awards were somewhere in the middle between the other two awards shows. Nominees and winners were selected through a combination of feedback from those in the industry, music sales and radio airplay. From 2006, however, the AMAs took the bold step of basing their choices entirely on votes from the general public. The awards for most categories begin with the word “Favorite.” But what about the most important award? That would be Artist of the Year. Over the past decade, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, One Direction, Ariana Grande and Bruno Mars have all received nominations, with Swift winning five out of her six, including the past three years in a row. It’s testimony to the massive size of her fanbase that exists alongside her overwhelming sales.

There are six nominees this year (in alphabetical order): Ariana Grande, BTS, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and the Weeknd. Unlike other awards ceremonies, the expression “it’s anyone’s game” refuses application to the AMAs even with the amazing stature of all of this year’s six nominees. That is because fan votes are what separate the AMAs from other ceremonies entirely. The most telltale sign of this arrangement is that Taylor Swift, long a favorite of the ceremony, is up against a new challenger. Thanks to their year of excellent performance, BTS was nominated for Artist of the Year for the first time ever. They’re also the artist most likely to shake up the category since One Direction did in 2015. And that’s what makes this year’s ceremony so interesting.