Apple Names Tyler, The Creator as 2025 Artist of the Year
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Apple has announced its annual Apple Music Awards, naming hip-hop visionary Tyler, The Creator as 2025 Artist of the Year for his “outstanding impact on both music and culture.”
In its announcement, Apple highlighted Tyler’s world-building and character exploration narratives in Chromakopia, calling it “his most personal album to date,” followed by the wildly divergent follow-up Don’t Tap The Glass, which quickly rose to number one on the Apple Music charts the day it dropped.
In total, Apple says that Tyler’s fans logged more than 4.5 billion minutes listening to his music between November 2024 and October 2025, making it his best year ever.
“Tyler continues to prove that anything is possible. His creativity has been incredible all year,” said Zane Lowe, Apple Music’s global creative director and lead anchor for Apple Music 1. “His creative risk-taking is only matched by the care he takes to present it, and he inspires his peers and fans now, just as he will continue to inspire generations to come.”
To everyone who listens to my music, thank you. I appreciate you so much. This year, for my career, was the biggest so far. To be this year’s Apple Music Artist of the Year, it’s sick. I appreciate the love. I appreciate the recognition. It means a lot to me, especially for the music and things that I make. Please keep supporting folks who are a bit out of the box for how they do things; it means a lot to us.
Tyler, The Creator
Apple notes that Tyler will soon make his feature-film debut in Marty Supreme and has also received five Grammy nominations for his 2025 albums.
This marks the sixth year of the Apple Music Awards, which kicked off in 2019, naming Billie Eilish as Apple’s first Global Artist of the Year for her full-length debut album, When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which also took the award for Album of the Year. She and her brother, FINNEAS, also shared the Songwriter of the Year award that year.
Eilish became one of Apple’s earliest music documentary subjects for Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, which ultimately got a theatrical release. She then returned to the Apple Music Awards last year, making her the first artist to receive the Artist of the Year Award twice. However, her evolution from teen phenom to a more established artist made her second award feel quite different from her first.
In the intervening years, Apple’s Artist of the Year Award went to Lil Baby in 2020, The Weeknd in 2021, Bad Bunny in 2022, and Taylor Swift in 2023 — who also won Songwriter of the Year in 2020.
During the first three years, Apple also included awards in four other categories: Breakthrough Artist, Songwriter, Album, and Song. In 2021, it also added a unique Regional Artist category, recognizing the best artists in five countries: Nigeria, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia. However, since 2022, the Apple Music Awards have been limited to only the Global Artist of the Year.
Like previous winners, Tyler is receiving a physical award that’s more than just a gold trophy. Each Apple Music Award features a custom Apple silicon wafer suspended between a polished sheet of glass, intended to reflect “the extraordinary craftsmanship integral to creating music.”
In a symbolic gesture, the same chip powering the devices that put over 100 million songs at listeners’ fingertips also sits at the very heart of the Apple Music Awards.
Apple
Apple has also published a special selection of playlists dedicated to “the songs and voices that have shaped the last 12 months,” and notes that fans who have Tyler, The Creator, in their recent Shazam history may also soon be getting a treat in the form of a special message from the artist on their Home Screen.
