It's the culmination of a year or so of dedication to their craft and the night they all get to dress up, come together and cheer each other on and celebrate each other's victories.

In previous years, I've been sceptical about how the voting went, in terms of too many people in different artists' camps voting just for those artists because they were connected to them. I'm sure this happens in all competitions judged by hundreds of people.

However, this year is the fairest I have seen in terms of the distribution of finalists, in my very humble opinion.

This year the number of judges was reduced, the voting was done a little differently and I believe this is reflected in what we now see in the list of finalists.

While we all have our favourite artists, artists we work with and artists we'd rather not see awarded with one of the hallowed Golden Guitars, judging is judging.

Judges should not be making their choices based on who the person is, but rather how they've presented their music and their products throughout the year.

This year, I believe the CMAA has achieved that, after what can only be described as a very challenging time around the 2014 Country Music Awards of Australia, with eligibility issues, artists withdrawing from the finalists lists and resignations.

Tonight we hope to see the improvements in the judging process over the past few months and the hard work of those behind the scenes culminate in another fantastic awards show.

Artists and industry personnel have worked hard over the past 12 or so months to come up with product good enough to be counted among the finalists.

Tonight is the night you can all let your hair down (to a point not all publicity is good publicity, if you take it too far) and reward yourselves for another year of being part of the amazing industry that is the Australian country music industry.