The musical award show were created by Dick Clark in 1983 to compete with the Grammys after the move of that year's show to Nashville, Tennessee led to CBS picking up the Grammy music show after its first two in 1971 and 1972 were broadcast on ABC. Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond co-hosted the first award show with Rodney Allen Rippy and Ricky Segall.

While the Grammys are awarded based on votes by members of the entertainment industry, the AMAs are determined by a poll of music buyers. The "big three" established awards shows AMAs, Billboard Music Awards, and Grammys compete for prestige and television ratings, with the Grammys nominally rewarding quality and both the AMAs and Billboard Music Awards rewarding popularity. Stories of artists being pressured to participate in one awards show over the other have been fodder for tabloid gossip and controversy.

Although the American Music Awards is primarily for artists that originate from the United States, international artists like Elton John, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, George Michael, Rihanna, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira and the Spice Girls have also won awards on the show. Although this is in part of their large popularity in the United States.

For the first decade or so, the AMAs had multiple hosts, each representing a genre of music. For instance, Glen Campbell would host the country portion (Campbell, in fact, has co-hosted the AMAs more times than any other host or co-host), while other artists would co-host to represent his/her genre. In recent years, however, there has been one single host. For the 2008 awards, Jimmy Kimmel hosted for the fourth consecutive year.