Lessons from the Jury Room: Reflections on Judging at LIA 2025

Someone once said to me “always strive to be the dumbest person in the room”. The language may have been a bit crude, but it conveys the idea pretty clearly: always try to place yourself in contexts where the people around you have more experience or more years in the business than you. That philosophy always stuck with me - and it was with that very concept in mind that I accepted to take part in the Music & Sound jury for the LIAs this year.

This experience taught me to twist the narrative: there is no “dumbest”, when everyone can bring something different to the mix (excuse the pun).

Music is something you can only be objective about to a certain extent. Of course there is poorly executed music, but when the skill level is already of a certain standard, it all becomes about what moves you. And, being in this business, I am particularly aware of what a hold music has over me. It’s sound, after all. It’s vibrations. It quite literally touches us - nobody is immune.

That was something I knew I had to keep in mind from the start: personal preference had to be left home, at Heathrow Airport, where my 11-hour flight to Las Vegas started.

I read an entire book on the plane and felt pretty damn proud about my plan not to let myself sleep, in order to beat the jet lag, but I also used that time to think of what I wanted to get out of this experience. The answer was clear: a new standard for my own work to live up to.

I wanted to take advantage of not being part of the creative process, for once, to objectively hear what an audience would hear - and then put my music producer hat back on and see why it worked.

But I got a lot more than that. I guess I didn’t know quite how enriching this experience would be.

The first evening I walked about like a zombie, trying to find somewhere to eat a bite before hopefully crashing in bed. The lobby of the hotel was a huge casino itself and, let me tell you, it felt pretty surreal to walk right through it, eyes struggling to stay open thanks to my genius plan to stay awake on the plane.

Red, green, gold and all the colours in between were screaming at me from every angle.

You know when you take a specific sign as a reference point, to remember where you came from? Yeah - you just cannot do that in Vegas. The striking lights, the eclectic architecture, the signage, the billboards and the ads on digital screens… ALL of it is everywhere. It’s the most visually-stimulating place I have ever been to.

It goes without saying: I got lost that first night, ate a sandwich that I cannot name the contents of and got lost again on the way back. But by the time I was in bed, of course, my body was jet-lagged and wide awake, so I didn’t sleep - all I could think about was the morning after, when the judging would start.

Did I mention that the hotel was huge? I mean town-size huge.

So I got out of my room early, that first morning, armed with the map I had been given, and marched into the cafe to get my hands on the largest coffee they had to offer. Then I searched for the conference room called 'Chopin 2' (because, yes, they have a Chopin 1, 3 and 4).

After walking in the wrong direction, turning around and then frantically walking in the opposite one (and repeating that same pattern for about 15 minutes, which must have looked like a bad dancing performance from the outside), I finally got there.

The room was filled with music experts. Whether from a bespoke composition, licensing or sound design point of view, everyone in there had a sharp ear.

We made friends almost instantly: the first talking point was the caramelised cashews that Lucas (our jury president) brought us from Brazil. We munched away and caffeinated our bodies. Then the listening began.

The first day was about filtering the entries and deciding which ones deserved to stay in the competition, so we watched about 356 minutes of content (or something crazy like that).

There wasn’t a lot of discussion that day: all we had to do was select “in” or “out” on our individual iPads. Nine hours later, we had our selected competitors.

That night was a repeat of the first one: I just got lost in a different direction.

The second day is when some of our own areas of expertise started to show. Some of us loved the pieces as a whole but just couldn’t get over the sound design. Others were mainly noticing how well an adaptation of a famous song had been arranged to fit a specific visual, but couldn’t justify the sound editing choices. Others were particularly impressed (or put off) by the mix.

In my job, I usually listen to everything at once (does the music work? Is the mix elevating it? Does the sound editing make it all flow?), but it was surely new to me to have to zoom into one single area of the sound and judge it on its own. For example, only having to isolate the sound design in order to judge whether that piece could win in that one category: the other facets of sound were maybe less impressive, but was that one single aspect deserving of a Gold award? It required a lot of focus, sparked very interesting conversations and most certainly helped me open up my mind, especially when the opinion expressed by one of the other experts in the room clashed with mine. And this is where the most growth happens: whether you agree with that external opinion or not, can you try to hear what that person is saying? If your mind is changed, that’s personal development. And if not, the learning is that we all hear things differently (which is also a universal truth and something to account for, when creating content).

I started to feel at home when I got to know my colleagues at lunch that day, chatting about music and sound with people who are just as obsessed with that subject as me.
What an incredible bunch of people. Gratitude: 1 / Jet lag: 0
Oh - and we all got lost in the meanders of the hotel lobby together, that night, and toasted to it at the bar.

The third day was the most enjoyable one for me. Opinions that were only expressed the day before, were now expanded and justified. Pieces that were praised in their category, now were given the right amount of attention and a reason why they deserved it.

Contrary to what I thought, I found myself being surprisingly harsh when judging sound mixing - mostly because great music and great sound design, when not mixed well, sadly just don’t hit the spot as well as they could. But again: that was me learning. Learning that, maybe, I knew more than I thought. Learning that my standards are high.

There were quite a few instances where the music was on point but the mix didn’t quite cut it, so in those cases the learning was about being honest: if the piece had been submitted for the sound mixing category, it wouldn’t be able to win.

We even had some instances where something was submitted for a certain category but actually truly stood out in another, so we moved it.

Now, from the comfort of my living room in London and with my sleep debt almost extinguished, I look back at room 'Chopin 2' - and I have never felt more sure of this: a successful piece of audio-visual work is rarely the outcome of one single mind at work.

It’s multiple hearts, trying to tell their story in unison. It’s the combination of different skills, fitting together like puzzle pieces. It’s the impossibly-perfect pattern of ideas being born out of someone else’s word and the human need to express ourselves in ever-changing ways. All in one beautiful, often imperfect, thing.

Judging at this year’s LIA made me think about how collaboration is key in art. Whatever their contribution, someone else can elevate or destroy your work - so the magic is often in finding your people, your team.

In the same way, every single judge at the LIAs this year brought a different angle and knowledge to the room, which was the best thing about this entire experience.

By the last night, I felt like I had learned some of the most valuable lessons related to my industry and made some great friends along the way - and surrounded by the Entertainment Capital of the World, for good measure.

Unsurprisingly, I slept like a baby on the flight back to London.

Read more from MassiveMusic London here.