Canada's Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize is expanding its scope this year. The honor, which recognizes albums that might have won the Polaris Music Prize if it had existed at the time of their release, will double its shortlist for each decade, the organization announced.

"Nominees will be announced once again at the gala in September," said Polaris founder and executive director Steve Jordan said at the Slaight Music CMW Social last Saturday. "Voting will open shortly after that. We'll also be expanding our shortlist to 10 titles from the five titles we had last year because we can all agree that there is no shortage of classic, groundbreaking influential Canadian albums to recognize."

The Polaris Music Prize, created in 2006, is "a not-for-profit organization that annually honors and rewards artists who produce Canadian music albums of distinction," otherwise termed "the best Canadian album," with no parameters such as genre or sales. The long and shortlists are determined by more than a hundred music journalists, critics, broadcasters and bloggers from across Canada. The winner is determined the evening of the gala behind closed doors by an 11-member grand jury.

The Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, however, is chosen differently.

"Last year a panel of critics and broadcasters, including people like Tom Harrison, David Marsden, Laurie Brown, Mary Dickie and more, came up with a shortlist of Canadian albums for four distinct periods in Canadian music history -- the '60s and '70s; '80s; '90s; and the aughts ('00s)," said Jordan. "We then put the list, at Gary [Slaight's] request, to a public vote. The winners were announced last fall."

The inaugural winners were Joni Mitchell's Blue (for the joint '60s/'70s category); Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session ('80s); Sloan's Twice Removed ('90s) and Peaches' The Teaches of Peaches ('00s).

"What was great is Peaches totally embraced this award," said Jordan. "I heard stories -- because she's never been nominated or won any award in Canada -- so when she found out she was nominated, she actually stopped her shows, put up the URL for our voting mechanism on the screen and would not play another song until everybody showed their phones that they had voted for her. It's awesome to see that engagement."

A long planned tribute concert to the Heritage Prize winning albums will be held Aug. 4 at Toronto's Great Hall, co-presented by Massey Hall/Roy Thomson Hall, "hopefully with most of the artists," said Jordan.

There is no monetary prize for this award but four graphic artists were commissioned to interpret one album each for a poster that will be presented to the artists at the gig, said Jordan. Limited edition prints are for sale on the Polaris site.

The winner of the Polaris Music Prize gets $50,000 (CAD). Voting for that will begin at the end of the month and the resulting 40 album long list revealed June 15 at a location TBD. The 10 album shortlist will be announced July 14 at The Carlu in Toronto, where the gala will be held Sept. 19.

The eligibility period for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize is June 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016.